This part introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters. The part begins with David C. Harvey's 'Heritage pasts and heritage presents: temporality, meaning and the scope of heritage studies'. It considers conceptions of heritage during a period when Euro-American perspectives came to dominate global discourse on the subject, particularly through the implementation of international conventions in the mid-twentieth century to late-twentieth century. The part explores the conception of heritage, emerging largely from European contexts, and its codification via various national legislation and international conventions. It represents that understanding heritage in this way sets up 'debates about the production of identity, power and authority throughout society'. The part concludes by extracts from 'Iconoclash in the age of heritage', in which Peter Probst considers heritage in African nations as 'a highly unstable and precarious affair', a consequence of colonialism.