What do people want from visits to historic sites? In "Excursions into the
Un-Remembered Past: What People Want from Visits to Historical Sites," anthropologists Catherine Cameron and John Gatewood answer the question in one word: Numen.

Numen, they explain, refers to a transcendent experience, a connection to the holy, or a sense of awe. Authenticity is important in fostering numen as visitors seek "real" historic objects and "real" historic sites, places and things which allow them to transcend time and develop a feeling for the past.

While long wall texts and commercial spaces can get in the way of this experiential approach to understanding the past, Cameron and Gatewood note that the desire for numen does not exclude other motivations for visiting historic sites such as information seeking or entertainment. The study also reveals the importance of more concrete considerations such as good signage and effective tour guides in encouraging visitation.

Cameron and Gatewood base their findings on interviews conducted in 1995 with visitors and residents of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Bethlehem is well known for its Moravian heritage sites, but in the mid-1990s collaborated with the Smithsonian to expand its interpretation of the steel industry's history and, because of this initiative, the article contains specific advice for those museums exhibiting industrial history.

While the information gathered is now over ten years old, readers will find that it resonates with many of the conclusions of the Connecticut Historical Society's audience survey conducted by the firm SonicRim.

--Briann Greenfield

Read the complete article by clicking on the link below.

Catherine M. Cameron and John B. Gatewood, "Excursions into the Un-Remembered Past: What People Want from Visits to Historical Sites," in The Public Historian vol. 22, no. 3 (Summer 2000), 107-127. (c) 2000 by the National Council on Public History.  Published by the University of California Press.

Article courtesy of University of California Press.