ABSTRACT

Until quite recently, it is unlikely that many anthropologists or archaeologists are likely to have been receptive to suggestions that some of the most fundamental changes in theoretical and methodological orientations might arise out of areas of so-called ‘applied’ rather that ‘pure’ research. It would also have been unlikely that many would have been receptive to suggestions that fresh approaches to controversies over by and for whom cultural heritage is managed might bear directly upon pressing life quality issues in an irreducibly complex world (Funtowicz and Ravetz 1997; Skeates 2000; Layton et al. 2001; Hodder 2001; Carman 2002; Cleere 1984, 2006; Sloderdijk 2005; Darvill 2007).