ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the thinking involved as a form of “common sense”, building on Michael Herzfeld’s definition of anthropology as “the study of common sense”. Archaeology, as a contemporary practice, shares this common-sense framework of creating historical time from the present with cultural heritage thought. The chapter argues that places privileged in heritage thought as sites of intentional commemoration of events that lend themselves to being treated as if they had been created with an eye to a future are privileged by archaeological emphasis on the monumental. It discusses the overlap between the sites drawn on by planners and United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) World Heritage in order to make clearer the parallel common sense that underwrote the nuclear waste planning project and World Heritage designation. UNESCO World Heritage guidelines seek to portray cultural heritage sites as stable points of reference that maintain some fundamental significance.
