On the Quality of Archaeological Reconstruction

Re-creating the past in full-scale, open-air reconstructions has been done for a long time, but the phenomenon has been accelerating and changing character during the last two decades. The article examines how the reconstruction activities are motivated. Explicit aims are contrasted with implicit motives inherent in reconstruction. Public utility is proposed as an important excuse for the reconstruction activities. As a consequence of the relationship between explicit aims and public utility, we get a rigid form of quality thinking that expresses elitism, Instead of fruitless criticism we can express more clearly what we expect from a reconstruction, and why. Examples used are taken from the island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea.


Re-creating the Past
On the Quality of Archaeological Reconstruction on Gotland Bodil Petersson Re-creating the past in full-scale, open-air reconstructions has been done for a long time, but the phenomenon has been accelerating and changing character during the last two decades. The article examines how the reconstruction activities are motivated. Explicit aims are contrasted with implicit motives inherent in reconstruction. Public utility is proposed as an important excuse for the reconstruction activities. As a consequence of the relationship between explicit aims and public utility, we get a rigid form of quality thinking that expresses elitism, Instead of fruitless criticism we can express more clearly what we expect from a reconstruction, and why. Examples used are taken from the island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea. When I arrived at the village one of the two villagers, both of whom were men, was at the entrance taking the admission fee.
When his cell phone rang, he hurried oA'and hid behind the entrance shed.
Inside the earthen rampart, which was evidently built with the help of an excavator and which surrounded the village, I caught sight of a tired-looking guy dressed in something old and greyish with a rope round his waist. He asked if I wanted to try swinging an axe against a tree trunk. Then he showed me his talents in spinning wool and working in the smithy. It was late in the summer and there were few visitors. The late season and fading enthusiasm was the reason, I decided, for the apparently weary staff. I went into the long-house where no obvious elforts had been made to hide the anachronistic traits of the sawmill-produced planks. In the centre of the  "Erik Bloodaxe ruled his farm as a sovereign. The free men and women of his great clan were strongly united, and blood feud was always claimed if one of the clan members was killed. Erik Bloodaxe and his men exchanged slaves and furs into silver coins.
A man of Erik Bloodaxe's caliber can sure arrange great parties.
The evening begins with all sorts of martial gamesthrowing axes. . .and other exciting war games. At the table we eat with our bare hands One thing is certainthis will be an evening you will never forget!" (Vikingabyn Gotland Information Folder n. d. , author's translation).
The programme of the Viking village is offered to schoolchildren and tourists as well as business companies. Perhaps Erik Bloodaxe's party is well suited to the advertised "leadership development", strengthening the team and showing who is the boss. Reconstruction has also been part of the history of archaeology since the 18'" century (Petersson 1998 (Ottosen 1984:3).
From this we can conclude that to reconstruct is far more intervening than to restore. Reconstruction is often done from much slighter traces than those in restorations. This fits well with the state of most archaeological traces that constitute the basis for reconstruction.
During the 19'" and well into the 20'" century there was immense discussion on how to restore the past, in particular the medieval buildings. There was a schism between antiquarian-orientated advocates (e.g. John Ruskin in England, and later Alois Riegl in Germany) and those purporting the norms of unity of style in building restoration (e.g. Eugene Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc in France). The antiquarian-orientated advocates were aiming at historical preservation, while the unity-of-style advocates were more concerned with the unity and purity of style, to restore something to its former glory (Kåring 1992:24, 59ff, 187ff, 312ff). This schism has relevance for the reconstruction activities of today. In our time there are both reconstructors who have a cautious attitude, and those who primarily care about presenting a vision of the past in which historically authentic details do not matter as much.
In this article I use the concept of reeonstruction as a comprehensive label for the ambitionfor the purpose of science, mediation, tourism, or adventureto re-create the past in full-scale, open-air context. This delimitation is made so that I can avoid the discussion of traditional museum mediation and go a step further to discuss relatively new forms of reconstruction activities used for a wide range ofpurposes. My use ofthe concept is close to the everyday use ofthe word, which contains different elements as mentioned above. In my discussion I do not have direct use for the division among replica, copy, and

Settlement
The earliest example of settlement reconstruction on Gotland, and also in the whole of Sweden, is the Lojsta hall. It was erected in 1932 to try the building technique discerned during an excavation of a "giant's grave" near Lojsta. The giants' graves are house foundations from the Iron Age, around 0-600 AD. After excavation the reconstruction was erected on top of the ancient stone remains, that is in situ. Even the high settle was placed on top of a stone base interpreted as the place for it. The original floor layer was sealed with an earthen layer on top, so that the archaeological site would not be disturbed by the reconstruction activity. The experiment was conducted by the art historian Gerda Boethius and the archaeologist John Nihlén, with the aid of the Lojsta society for local history (Boethius & Nihlén 1932:342ff;Nylén 1966:188f).
The Stavgard Iron Age area contains reconstructions from the period 500 BC-1050 AD, that is, covering the whole Scandinavian Iron Age. The period includes the Viking Age, but at Stavgard they do not use the "Viking" label. The activities started in 1976 when a group of schoolchildren and their teachers tried to learn something about how people lived during the Iron Age. By chance they found a silver hoard from the 11'" century AD. For this they got a reward from the authorities. They decided to use the money to make a trip to the famous reconstructed Iron Age village of Lejre in Zealand, Denmark. The visit to Lejre inspired the teachers and schoolchildren to establish an Iron Age village for school-educational use. The different reconstructions at Stavgard consist of a long-house, a baking house, a cooking house, a fireplace, a smithy, ovens, kilns, a picture stone and a sacred area (Stavgard Information Folder n.   (Nylén 1983(Nylén , 1987Sjöstrand 1988). It is shown not least in all the succeeding boat-building projects carried out in Krampmacken's wake. All other Viking ships built on Gotland after that, such as Nöiriven, Aifur, Samargon and Langsvaige, were more or less inspired by Krampmacken and its travels. Each of these ships has been built by people with connection to the Krampmacken project.
Nöiriven is a Viking ship built in 1990.

The project was led by the fisherman Erik
Johansson, who was a member of the Krampmacken crew during its expedition to the Black Sea. The ship was built as an improved version of Krampmacken (Nylén 1987:264;VHD 1997).
Aifur, the Viking ship named after a rapid in the river Dnjepr, was built and sailed eastward along the eastern European and Russian rivers to the Black Sea. The basis of the reconstruction was Krampmacken and an excavated boat from the boat-grave cemetery in Valsgärde, north of Uppsala in eastern central Sweden. Aifur was built in 1991-92 by the Gotlandic boat-builder and fisherman, Jan Norberg. The drawings were made by the boat club "Aifur" (Carlsson & Söderberg 1995;Edberg 1994Edberg , 1998VHD 1997).
Samargon was completed during the first half of the 1990s, and reconstructed as a socalled knarr, a trading boat from the Viking Age. It was Erik Johansson who, again, after he had been involved in building Nöiriven, wanted to use his newly won skills in shipbuilding to make his own Viking ship. The prototype of Samargon was ship representations on Gotlandic picture stones (VHD 1997).
The latest, most recent Viking ship built on Gotland is Langsvaige, launched in 1997.
The project was once again related to Krampmacken. The ambition was to build a ship that was larger than Krampmacken. All the people involved had participated in the Krampmacken project many years ago (VHD 1997).
A boat-building project somewhat different from the above-mentioned Viking examples, but still with some resemblance to them, is the building of Aliaaku I and II, two log boats built as outriggers, an example of possible boat-types in use during the Stone Age. The source of inspiration when building the boats was ethnographic analogy with boatbuilding traditions in the South Sea Islands and motifs from rock-carvings in southern Scandinavia. The reconstructions were made by Sven Österholm from Gotland within the project "The Stone Age on Gotland" together with the Scanian project "The Past in the Present". It was the latter project that provided the economic prerequisites and the building place for the boats. The experiments with building and sailing the log boats were conducted primarily in the years 1986 and 1987. The sailing routes tested went from Gotland to Öland and along the coast of Current Swedish Archaeology, Vot. 7, 1999 Öland to the mainland of Sweden (Österholm 1996, 1997).

Evenl
The events on Gotland are of very different character. The Torsburgen wall experiment was done to see whether lime was formed when burning a stone-and-timber wall resembling that of the Iron Age hillfort of Torsburgen. Calculations were made concerning the number ofworkdays it might have taken to build a wall like Torsburgen. The experiment took place at Klints backar in a parish near a limestone quarry in the year 1980 and was conducted by an archaeologist from Uppsala University, Johan Engström (Engström 1982(Engström , 1984. The Middle Ages is the period in Gotlandic history that has the greatest impact because of the annual Medieval Veck arranged in Visby and in later years also on Gotland as a whole. This arrangement started in 1984 as an initiative by the former county antiquarian on Gotland, Marita Jonsson, and it has since been established as an annual event (Jonsson 1990). It is in fact an occurrence beyond classiftcation, but its annual appearance makes it best fit into the category of events. Many people all over the island and even all over the world that have an interest in the medieval way of life, visit Gotland during this week in August every year. Not least the Society for Creative Anacronism (SCA) constitutes a great visual and contextual base for the experience of medieval atmosphere during the week (Gustafsson 1995). Lots of activities keep people busy the whole year round in study circles and projects related to Medieval Week. One example of activity is the manufacturing of costumes in medieval style for people to wear during the week (Gutarp 1994).The so-called "Stiftelsen Byggnadshyttan", an institution on Gotland that takes care of the medieval buildings' restoration all over the island, is also part ofthe arrangements during Medieval Week. During my visit to Gotland and Visby in August 1997, Byggnadshyttan performed an experiment with a lime kiln before the public to test an authentic method of producing lime for use in mortar. Medieval Week engages local government institutions as well as private groups and individuals. The fact that the town of Visby with its well-preserved medieval character was put on the World Heritage List in 1995 has undoubtedly meant a strengthening of the medieval profile of the whole island (Edlund 1996;Tchudi-Madsen 1997:166ff).Each year this profile is accen- EXPLICIT AIMS OF RECONSTRUCTION I have tried to find some essential motivations overtly used to explain why a reconstruction is made. As a guideline I have used the categorizations oftwo scholars who specialize in reconstruction activities, namely the American historian Jay Anderson and the German archaeologist Claus Ahrens. Anderson divides "living history" activities into mediation, science and play/game (Anderson 1984 Gotland, almost in the same way as the prehistoric cemetery at the Bunge Open-air Museum.

Tounsm
The third main purpose of reconstruction activities has economic and personal instead of scientific or educational implications. As a tourist attraction the reconstruction can perhaps attract enough people to make a place or region interesting within the tourist industry. The individual also makes a choice whether or not to take an interest in the socalled cultural tourism. Tourism as a category therefore belongs to two different spheres at the same time, namely the economic and the personal.
Fjäle is an example of reconstructions of the Krampmacken project. I prefer to categorize these subsequent projects as "way of life" and "adventure", since it is members of the Krampmacken expedition who have continued to build ships. Building and sailing ships seems to have become a second identity for the crew members. They build, they travel, and they write books and articles about their ships and travels. It has become a separate genre, a life-style. My reason for not including the Krampmacken project here will be explained later.

EXPLICIT VERSUS IMPLICIT
To show how explicit aims work together with some yet undefined implicit purposes within one and the same reconstruction activity, I will exemplify with four different reconstructions: the Viking ship Krampmacken, the Iron Age sites of Stavgard and Gervide, and Medieval Week. These four are all more ambiguous in their character than the abovementioned examples related to explicit aims.
They are hard to put into one category of explicit aims.

Krampmacken
The Krampmacken project is the first reconstruction of a Viking ship on Gotland. It should be noted that the reconstruction was made around fifty years after the prototype, the Bulverket boat, was found, and was probably an effect of the growing knowledge in Scandinavia about boat construction in the Viking Age thanks to the finds and activities concerning the Skuldelev ships in Roskilde Fjord in Denmark in the late 1960s (Olsen & Crumlin-Pedersen 1969).The reconstruction of Krampmacken was done in the first half of the 1980s when the reconstruction boom had started.
Krampmacken is officially called a "scientific experiment" in the report on the first half of the project, edited in 1983 (Nylén 1983:6).
It is also referred to as an important and impressive part of the strivings to investigate how the Vikings made their way along the rivers in eastern Europe to Bysans (Vadstrup 1993:65. Carrent Snedish Archaeology, Voh 7, l999 Boclil Petersson The Krampmacken project was initiated within the Swedish Central Board of National Antiquities' archaeological department on Gotland (RAGU). The leader of the project, the archaeologist Erik Nylén, was at the time head of the department. He was also named professor of archaeology in 1984.
Nylén has taken part in the debate concerning the subject of experimental archaeology and archaeology as a science (Nylén 1987:10ff). He criticises what he calls the "complicating and theorizing that have characterized the subject [ofarchaeology] for decades". He considers himself as a findpositivist and well familiar with the archaeological material. He describes experimental archaeology as practical tests based on finds and facts. He points out that the serious scientific researcher must tell enthusiastic amateurs that "it must not be done in this way"it is not permissible to mediate a severely wrong picture of the real circumstances. Nylén points out the aAinity between experimental archaeology and natural science (Nylén 1987 (Nylén 1986:112f).
Here he emphasizes a nationality that might not have been very relevant at the time, but which is very important for Nylén in his argument for why he has chosen Gotlandic remains and traces from totally different contexts to build his ship. Nylén's own publications on the subject are rather revealing. The report from 1983 is written in a joking manner, often pointing out the Viking character and mentality acquired by the crew during the adventurous travel. Pictures are shown of a "Viking pack ofwolves around beautiful female slaves" and of "naked rowing" (Nylén 1983:86, 95). Needless to say, all of the crew were men.
The report mediates an obvious wish to tell a Viking story in which the author and his crew all seem to have adopted an identification with the supposed Viking mentality. Both text and photographs tell this male and brutal story ofhard life as a Viking. All of this could of course be related to the obviously ambivalent archaeologist Nylén, who on the one hand propagates for the empirical approach and on the other hand legitimizes Viking myth by exclaiming, "Does research have to be boring?" (Nylén 1983:5).
To contrast Nylén's own words, I read a book about Krampmacken's eastward expedition by two of Krampmacken's crew members, both amateurs at the time. This book is much more of a poetic contemporary travelogue. It is rather free from the macho style inherent in Nylén's opus. Instead it observes the crew as well as the people that they meet along the travel route. The book contains reflections upon the political system in eastern Europe at the time: "We are travelling in a Europe where the borders are moved after each war so as to secure occupation for cartographers and incomes for publishers of geographical productions" (Sjöstrand 1988:117,author's translation).
Regarding boat replicas and reconstruction, there has been an intense debate on quality. The maritime archaeologist Christer Westerdahl has said about the Krampmacken project that it is "the worst Nordic example" of an attempt to build a Viking ship, because Cttrrent Sn:echsh Archaeology, Vol. 7, l999 the prototype Bulverket boat was too fragmentary and probably also of Slavonic origin (Westerdahl 1994:98).Also Westerdahl

Medievctl Veck Explicitly and officially Medieval Week has been used as a main tourist attraction on
Gotland since 1984. The event is assigned to the second week in August so as to prolong the tourist season, and it has been a complete success. And of course all these tourists do a lot more than just take part in the medieval arrangements. They sleep, they eat, they buy, and they travel around the island. Initially Medieval Week was confined primarily to Visby, but in later years it has spread all over the island. During the week there are arrangements from the north to the south. Most activities in the countryside focus on markets, music and on church-related ceremonies (Program 1997), not on specific peasant activities.
Medieval Week is an event that gives the tourists a vision of the past in well-suited surroundings. The town of Visby and the island of Gotland provide unsurpassed coulisses for playing games related to the Middle Ages.
In a book about Medieval Week the question is posed, "Where did the idea come from. .. "? The explanation given is that Gotland and Visby have a rich history and many historic monuments. It has a "medieval atmosphere". In order not to be like tourism Current Swethsh Archaeology, Voh 7, lWV all over the world, the tourist board and the antiquarian authorities together chose to build up tourism around the medieval theme, considered to be "new" and "unusual" (Jonsson 1990:99).
The history told in the events during Medieval Week relates to the year 1361 when the Danish king Valdemar Atterdag came to Gotland and extorted payment from the burghers of Visby. This act of oppression against the rich town of Visby is an excellent background for the manifestation of regional independence today.
When Valdemar came to Gotland he first confronted with armed peasants outside Visby's walls. The peasants defended the island and may have hoped for some aid from the burghers, but the latter did not come to help. Around 1800 men died and were buried outside the town wall (Jonsson 1990:103).
This confrontation and "regional betrayal" between burghers and peasants is passed over in silence during Medieval Week. The socalled Valdemar cross marking the place where the men were buried has no part in the activities relating to Valdemar and the Gotlandic people. To a large extent it is a peasantfree story that is told, in spite of the fact that the majority of the medieval population on Gotland were peasants.
When people dress up, many of them do it as burghers. There are few peasants. The knights and ladies are all the more frequent. The younger generation is not content with identifying themselves with well-situated burghers. They want to play the role of noblemen and -women. They are part of a common idea about the Middle Ages more than part ofa specific Gotlandic history. Many ofthe knights and ladies belong to the Society for Creative Anachronism, SCA. They manifest the obvious wish for role-playing and they have chosen a good playground with a genuine atmosphere. For them, travelling to Gotland from all over the world to take part in Medieval Week activities is not done out of Gotlandic regional interest but out of the wish to play. The ethnologist Lotten Gustafsson has described the role-playing, through which the actors search for genuine experience during the week (Gustafsson 1995). It seems to be important to protect the atmosphere so that adults as well as children get the opportunity to enter into the world of the Middle Ages. This protected atmosphere is exactly what Visby provides during the week in August. The fact that Visby is now on the World Heritage List is important for cultural tourism, and it is a good incitement for coming arrangements in connection with the Middle Ages theme. Throughout the year the county museum in Visby arranges conferences with a medieval theme under the slogan: "With our aid your conference will become historic". Food, tournaments and old Gotlandic games and handicrafts are on the programme.

IMPLICIT AIMS OF RECONSTRUCTION
As we have seen in the examples above, there are constant meetings between explicit aims and implicit ones in the reconstructions. In trying to discern obvious categories of implicit aims, I find the following: reconstruction as cultural identity reconstruction as a wish to play reconstruction as commercial interest.
The first implicit theme, cultural identity, covers a lot of different uses of the past. It can represent everything from regional pride and identity to racism and political supremacy expressed in terms ofcultural identity. Among other social anthropologists, Jonathan Friedman has reflected upon this phenomenon, which he understands as an effect ofthe crisis of modernity (Friedman 1994:17ff).
The second theme is a wish to play. At first it seems to be related to the explicit aim call ed way oflife. My distinction here is based upon the concept of morality, to which I shall return below. Way of life is related to hobby and interest; the wish to play, on the other Current Swedish Archaeology, Vol. 7, l999 hand, has no good moral reason, and it is suspect as an explicit category because in a world ruled by utility it is not accepted to play for the sake of playing alone. Johan Huizinga has reflected upon the concept of play/game as a genuinely cultural activity. Play/game is often interpreted from its apparent opposite: seriousness and labour (Huizinga 1945:55).
From this point of view the moral content of play/game is inferior.
The third implicit reason for reconstruction is commercial interest. Of course there are overlappings with the explicit tourism reason. But while tourism is something good both for the economy and the individual, the commercial interest is "pure" economy. It is not often seen as morally defensible when related to cultural issues. Instead commercial interest must be put under the tourism label. This is done by the economist Peter Bohm, who has written about tourism from a purely political-economical point of view: "To obtain an economic optimum concerning the production of tourism services in Sweden it is thus a question of trying to identify those product variants that for a proper cost gain the demands of the tourists, and at the same time trying to minimize the production costs for these services" (Bohm 1990:127, author's translation). The Viking Age and the Middle Ages are well known to attract great interest. This fact is expressed on Gotland by Krampmacken and Medieval Week. The reason for the popularity of these periods is probably the possibility to combine explicit and implicit purposes within one and the same reconstruction activity. This ambiguity is needed to attract as many people as possible.
Like the "good" explicit aimsscience, mediation, tourism, way of lifethe abovementioned implicit ones contain more of ambivalence. This has to do with our views of the use of such aims. A morally indefensible use of cultural identity can be racism.
To play as an adult human being is not really accepted in our society. And to intermingle commercial interests with cultural matters is not very respected, at least not as a leading reason.
To illustrate more clearly what I mean, I have found an article by the economic historian Svante Beckman. He discusses utility aspects on human action. He has formulated the "Svante law", social norms for human action, as follows: l. You shall behave in a motivated way 2. You shall have strong motives 3. You shall have explicit motives 4. You shall have respectable motives 5. You shall have the right motive for the right action 6. It is of greater value to act out of utility and norm than out of pleasure and need 7. You shall not act out of pleasure alone (Beckman 1997:7, author's translation).
Public utility becomes an important excuse for reconstruction activities in our time. Not to put a clearly defined utility label on your activities can be the same as asking for a reputation of bad quality. Therefore, the Krampmacken project is labelled as science The only way to close in on the problem is to learn how to use the "quality" stamp. Then we can free reconstruction activities from hypocrisy and allow combination forms, provided we are aware that reconstructions always combine purposes, something my examination has showed very clearly.
We are necessarily confronted with our own ideas and shortcomings when we try to visualize and sensualize the past. As long as reconstruction remains two-dimensional on a book's page it is not dangerous and does not challenge our preconception that we are capable of re-creating the past by using a source-critical standpoint. There is pronounced criticism of reconstruction activities among archaeologists (cf. Näsman 1986;Edgren & Herschend 1987), since the purpose of many of the newer reconstructions is not purely scientific. As archaeologists we want reliable reconstructions. Therefore we primarily reconstruct things related to some kind of work, such as households with cooking and weaving and surroundings with arable land and pasture for cattle. When, as is becoming more and more usual in all sorts of reconstruction as well as in research, we start to reconstruct art, religion, symbols, and sensations, we find it strange and unscientific. Svante Beckman reflects upon cultural heritage in an ironic manner. His main points of criticism are very much in accordance with the presented implicit purposes. He criticises the use of cultural heritage for identity purposes, whether they are national or local. He expresses his disgust ironically when commercial interests use experience and identity as a way to force money out ofculture.
He also ridicules people as unreflecting consumers of experience (Beckman 1993:28f). Beckman's example shows a typical researcher's rather elitist defence of good quality and taste, based on his judgement that a crisis is occurring in our postmodern society (Beckman 1993:39 (Caesar 1997:32).
The geographer David Lowenthal distinguishes between "history" (read "archaeology") and "heritage". History is the scholarly enterprise that "explores and explains pasts", while heritage "clarifies pasts so as to infuse them with present purposes. . . " (Lowenthal 1997:xi).In this scheme most ofthe Gotlandic reconstruction activities must be called "heritage". But within the realm of archaeology the distinction between fact and ftction is hard to maintain. From a source-critical point ofview almost everything in an archaeologically based reconstruction can be dismissed as fiction (read "bad quality"). This is sometimes done, especially by archaeologists themselves. Curiously enough, the criticism often does not include the twodimensional reconstructions made in books, either as texts or drawings. The distinction between archaeological fact and fiction is actually difficult to discern immediately.
All reconstructions contain "history" as well as "heritage" in the Lowenthal sense. We do not have to claim one or the other just to guarantee good quality in reconstructions. Instead we as users, visitors, tourists, critics, or researchers must put the following questions to ourselves: What kind of quality do I demand? From what point of view? Do I have explicit and/or implicit purposes behind my demands for "good quality"? What are my ideals? It is in fact the conception of "badquality" reconstruction that makes it possible for each of us to formulate alternatives.
Probably reconstruction would be boring if it was adapted to suit, say, professional archaeologists.
Reconstructions are part of the growing sector of cultural tourism. As the anthropologist Inge Damm points out concerning the cultural tourism sector, it is sensitive to mass effect. If cultural tourism becomes commonplace it loses its exclusive cultural value (Damm 1995:26f). I think this is one aspect ofthe criticism against reconstruction.
It is easy to find fault, and much harder to find valid alternatives and at the same time be tolerant of who may be permitted to do reconstruction and of what reconstruction is.
But who is to give permission, and for what?
The ethnologist Orvar Löfgren writes of tourism that it has been exposed to elitist critique from the beginning. When the tourism reserved for the upper classes gradually turned into a pleasure for the majority of people, it became disregarded (Löfgren 1990:40ff). The same is valid for museums and reconstructions. We must be aware of the elitism and utilitarian morality that characterize the criticism. It is of greater importance that we can judge each reconstruction according to its ambition, appearance, and impression. We must also consider the visitor's own judgemental ability regarding quality. And we must be aware and also respect that different users have different claims, exactly in the same way as you choose to go sunbathing in Mallorca, look at paintings in Florence, or camp in the wilderness (Löfgren 1990:32ff).

RE-CREATING THE PAST
The supposedly dangerous thing concerning reconstruction of the past can be formulated with the aid of David Lowenthal. "History" is when we see the past as "the other". "Heritage", among which are reconstructions, becomes an equality of then and now, "they" become "us" (Lowenthal 1997:139).But is it dangerous and wrong? Jay Anderson, who has focused on the theme of "living history" in his book Time Machines. The 14orld of living History (1984), is of the opinion that living history in different forms is not a "lunatic fringe" but "a medium of historical research interpretation and celebration that is absolutely right for our times" (Anderson 1984:189).Even though he is a historian, he respects a kind of empathy that challenges everyone involved and is as important as understanding (Anderson 1984:191). Kevin Walsh, on the other hand, has expressed sharp criticism of so-called heritage centres and open-air museums in our (post-) modern times (Walsh 1992:94ff). He sees empathy as a dangerous thing, excluding questions and criticism, promoting escapism and the idea that time travel is possible and that history becomes constructed as a single historian's monopoly (Walsh 1992:102). He Current Syyedish Archaeotagy, Vcrt. 7, tillte means that it is dangerous when it becomes difficult to discern education from entertainment. He discusses the possibility to relive the past; that many heritage centres have the ambition to give the visitor a "first-person" experience, while a former "third-person" interpretation would be more accurate (Walsh 1992:101). I see an important difference between experiencing and living the past, between third-person and first-person achievements. Experience does not necessarily mean that I as a visitor am part of history. That is more explicit in "living" the past. I mean that it is possible to distinguish between places that go in for experience, and places that want the visitor to "live" in the past. And I do not think that either of them is wrong. The conflict here is at the level of single heritage centres and open-air sites that reconstruct the past. Some have not decided what form the place should have. I think that is part of the ambiguity of for example, the Viking Village on Gotland. Are we as visitors "others" who come there, or are we members of Erik Bloodaxe's clan? It is better that each place decide which direction should be taken.
But I am optimistic about the aims of experiencing history, and I am positive to the alternative it comprises to the traditional, sometimes dull, museum exhibitions with their supposedly objective attitude. As I see it, we are dealing with a hermeneutic understanding derived from practice and experience within the realm of "living history" activities from experiment to re-enactment. And it is an understanding that accepts the "play with history", or re-enactment, as one way to reach an idea about the past. This wide and tolerant perspective, represented by Jay Anderson, is the best way to tackle and understand the concept of quality within the complex, extensive and expansive world ofreconstructing the past.
The advantage of re-creating the past with the help of reconstructions is that they invite you to an archaeology of the senses, that is, that all senses are allowed to be used in the encounter with the past. Reconstructions encourage an active, four-dimensional, doit-yourself participation in the essence of interpretations of material culture. Reconstructions inevitably reveal the misconceptions and obscurities inherent in written interpretations.