Presenting archaeological heritage to the public: ruins versus reconstructions DISCUSSION 6 41 41 4/2007 euroREA Presenting archaeological heritage to the public: ruins versus reconstructions This article is the result of four years’ research into the presentation of Bronze and Iron Age archaeological sites in Europe. n Clara MASRIERA I ESQUERRA (Spain) To focus and deine our ap- proach, we chose irst to estab- lish which existing archaeolog- ical locations had been used to trace the course of European Protohistory, and then to in- vestigate which of these loca- tions were presented to the public at a 1:1 scale. Running parallel to this was our plan to compare the communicative or didactic eicacy of those sites which were presented in a traditional manner – that is, through the preservation of ex- isting remains without further direct intervention – and those which had been three-dimen- sionally reconstructed or repli- cated. Was this latter approach an efective means of achieving better public understanding of the period in question? Our ield work focused on ive ar- chaeological sites from the Ibe- rian period, all located in Cata- lonia. Four of these display preserved remains, while one is partially-reconstructed. 1. Reconstructions: between distrust and discredit It may seem ambitious to at- tempt to analyse Bronze and Iron Age archaeological dis- plays throughout Europe in the limited time span of four years, but our research objectives were quite modest from the out- set. Our fundamental aim was to establish how worthwhile it was to carry out volumetric re- constructions of archaeological sites, in all their possible varia- tions. Many of our archaeologist colleagues were unconvinced by reconstructions. Some put for- ward scientiic scruples; others referred to the problems raised by Spanish legislation, which is also reluctant to allow this type of intervention; but none of them had gone so far as to consider whether reconstruc- tions could actually be useful as a means of increasing pub- lic knowledge. We do not refer here to the critical voices which reject reconstructions on the basis of an elitist, conservative and retrograde view of scientiic knowledge and of our heritage. Our concern is with those who, despite their critical approach to this particular issue, clearly believed that scientiic knowl- edge should be available to the whole of society, which, ater all, foots the bill. 2. Finding answers to our hypotheses Our fundamental hypothesis was this: given that most peo- ple ind it diicult to concep- tualise physical space, a visit to a reconstructed archaeo- logical site should help them to reach a better understand- ing of that space. However – and contrary to our hypoth- esis – there was a perception that some reconstructed sites in Europe were not exactly in the best of health. Ater en- joying a decade of acclaim between the mid-70s and mid-80s of the last century, it seemed that the world of re- constructions was now head- ing downhill, and had be- come a target of criticism as visitor numbers decreased. If this was indeed the case, how could it be explained? his led us to a secondary hypoth- esis: namely, that the reason for the crisis currently afect- ing sites with architectonic interpretations on a 1:1 scale was not so much their com- municative ineicacy, but rather their failure to demon- strate archaeological meth- ods of analysis to visitors in an interactive way. Our research was driven by this situation and the ques- tions it raised, which we aimed n Fig. 1 Iberian village of Tornabous (Tornabous, Lleida), a general view of the settlement.