The Excluded Past represents a major new departure in exploring the relationship between archaeologists and educationalists, and seeks to explain why aspects of the past are excluded. The book argues that archaeology will only come of age when archaeologists accept a role within education alongside interpreters and mediators of the past, and when educators accept and understand the complexity and the potential of the archaeological discipline. The concept of the excluded past rests on two basic observations: that the prehistoric past is almost universally excluded from school curricula, and that the version of the past presented to many indigenous and minority groups is not their own but rather that of dominant social groups. The book contains specially commissioned contributions from a variety of different perspectives and countries, and it provides a forum for hitherto underrepresented viewpoints from the Third and Fourth Worlds.
This ground-breaking book will interest everyone who is concerned with the educational treatment of the past: archaeologists, historians, educationalists, interpreters and custodians of cultural heritage, and all those who seek to understand and influence national and international cultural policies.