ABSTRACT
While research investigating the public meaning of archaeological/cultural heritage has increased in intensity and scope over the past decades both in the USA (Little 2005; McManamon 2005; LaRoche 2005) and the UK (Merriman 2004), limited progress has been made in the African region (Keitumetse 2005). In particular, specifi c methods for investigating the changing attitudes that communities (or hosts, as they are referred to in tourism studies) have towards cultural heritage as it becomes a tourism product, that is, a product used in tourism transactions, are scarce. This means there is a signifi cant lack of well-informed management strategies to guide the implementation of cultural heritage tourism projects in developing countries such as Botswana. Geographical variations, defi nitions and categories of cultural tourism products exist at both the local and the international level. Terms such as cultural heritage, archaeological heritage and heritage tourism are becoming global and increasingly popular due to the emerging demand for new tourism products. Consequently research that provides an understanding of the hosts’ own defi - nitions of these terms is needed. This chapter discusses how a preliminary approach based on case-study methods, combined with ethnographic research and visualisation, can be used to develop and supplement existing approaches to research on community-based heritage tourism.
