This book is an inquiry into the relationships between archaeology, colonialism and ecotourism at the famous standing stones of Hintang, Laos. It investigates the conditions under which archaeological knowledge has been produced, appropriated, contested, commodified, and consumed by colonialism from the 1930s until today and what it shows about the power dynamics of heritage and ecotourism. The volume-explores how the discourses of colonialism and ecotourism affect tourists, archaeologists, heritage managers, and the local community;-is written as a set of overlapping creative essays, each giving an overlapping perspective on Hintang;-is a multidisciplinary research project based on ethnographic fieldwork, archival research, interviews with community members, biography, material culture studies, and text analysis.

This book is an inquiry into the relationships between archaeology, colonialism and ecotourism at the famous standing stones of Hintang, Laos. It investigates the conditions under which archaeological knowledge has been produced, appropriated, contested, commodified, and consumed by colonialism from the 1930s until today and what it shows about the power dynamics of heritage and ecotourism. The volume-explores how the discourses of colonialism and ecotourism affect tourists, archaeologists, heritage managers, and the local community;-is written as a set of overlapping creative essays, each giving an overlapping perspective on Hintang;-is a multidisciplinary research project based on ethnographic fieldwork, archival research, interviews with community members, biography, material culture studies, and text analysis.

This volume represents the report of investigations at the site of Lao Pako, including excavations carried out since 1993. The aim of the investigations was to recover artefacts from the main area of the site which would elucidate evidence on site function, dating and identify the trade and contact networks with the surrounding area. Evidence relating to pottery production, metal- and textile-working and the use of stone tools is discussed in detail. Interpretations of the material evidence and priorities for the future are also explored.

Cultural history tends to elude positive definition. It deals in some sense with culture, and with history, combined in a creative and often critical analysis. But its strength and analytical potential is to be found in its slipperiness, in its critical attitude to authoritative categorisation, and its relentless movement towards new angles, new spaces beyond the evident and the canonical. This volume has sprung out of the Research School for Studies in Cultural History at the Faculty of Humanities of Stockholm University, a five-year interdisciplinary research programme focusing on interplays between past and present. The Research School has provided a productive space for border-crossing academic enterprises. And as a result, the seventeen essays of this volume display just as many innovative approaches to traditional academic subjects such as celebrity, literary genre, prehistoric remains, television, and historic monuments. All stem from unexpected combinations and sliding perspectives, focusing on obscure corners and gaps between the illuminated centres of traditional academic knowledge. From such sliding perspectives follows the realisation that all narratives, representations, and claims of culture and history are in some sense political. The seventeen essays in this volume demonstrate how a shifting kaleidoscope of the academic subjects makes new knowledge possible, and enables the formulation of new critical questions. Challenging, disturbing, inspirational, these essays all make cultural history.