Mining Memories: Recovering Social and Environmental Pasts at International Industrial Heritage Sites

Heritage sites tend to fall into two broad categories. On the one hand designations of 'natural' heritage such as the Grand Canyon and Great Barrier Reef serve to celebrate great national environmental endowments. On the other hand designations of cultural heritage, the Great Wall of China or the Giza Pyramids, reflect great human achievement or creative genius\n\nThis project is devoted to exploring the emergence of industrial heritage as something that sits uneasily between the conventional 'natural' OR 'cultural' listings taxonomy. Industrial heritage sites grew in number and prominence during the second half of the twentieth century and have reached new prominence in recent years with a number of mines and industrial manufacturing premises being recognised for their significance at the global level.\n\nThis project explores the establishment and maintenance of heritage at three prominent sites of large-scale resource extraction: The Big Pit Blaenavon (UK), Malakoff Diggins (USA), and The Big Hole, Kimberley (South Africa). The locations have been chosen because they each make plain the presence of environment change (destruction, restraint, remediation) in places most often interpreted through an exclusively cultural lens. The locations enjoy different kinds of relationships with local, national and international heritage institutions and are at different stages of development in terms of their pursuit of designations of significance. \n\nThis project seeks to explore strategies deployed to simultaneously celebrate the industrial past, and associated forms of human endeavor and sacrifice, while also conveying important lessons about the mistreatment of social and ecological environments within the processes of industrialization. \n\n