Staging Antiquity: A Comparison of Five Greek Cultural Heritage Sites and The Construction of Their Authenticity

Abstract

The text consists of an analysis of how the classical Greek sites of Marathon, Thermopylae, Delphi, Olympia and Mycenae are staged and presented to the public. This analysis is focused upon how the cultural heritage management views the authenticity of these sites and their physical remains, (i.e., as genuine) phenomenon firmly, and solely, belonging to the past, and how these attitudes are materialized in the form of presentations at information boards and in the physical staging of the sites. The materialization of this attitude constitutes the conditions for the public’s physical and imaginative access to the sites and for the public’s possibility to reflect critically around them. Thus, the sites are products of the past, but their authenticity is in parallel also a product of its role in present negotiations of interpretive supremacy, control, power and politics. The article further stresses that a changed attitude towards authenticity is crucial also for a development of a constructive relationship between heritage management and the public. In accordance with this, the article also presents a reconstructed view of authenticity—as the cultural process constituting both humans and material remains.