ABSTRACT
Battlefield sites are some of the most iconic locations in any nation’s store of heritage attractions and continue to capture the imagination of visitors. They have a strong sense of place and can provoke a range of cognitive and emotional reactions (see Daniels et al. and Vanneste and Foote, this volume), but as sites they are often inherently unremarkable and seldom leave a significant physical footprint on the landscape (Gold and Gold 2003). One might suggest, therefore, that they need to be endowed with a level of distinctiveness to set them apart from other parcels of land and enlivened with a narrative to place them in their proper historical and cultural context. Battlefields have thus been marked by memorials and plaques for commemorative reasons and more recently several have been subject to varying levels of tourist interpretation (Piekarz 2007). This chapter contains an examination of this tourist interest in battlefield sites and how they have been interpreted (see also Ryan 2007). The discussion shows how interpretation is a powerful adjunct to the presentation of battlefield sites and gains potency from the showcasing of human interest stories within the context of locale.
