Industry, Heritage, the Media, and the Formation of a British National Cultural Memory.

This paper examines the premise that officially sponsored heritage bodies in England are intrinsically involved in the formation of national memories which fail to reflect the stresses within British society and ignore the value of areas of recent past. As a result, investigation of sections of British history is discouraged and the archeological potential of sites of conflict and confrontation between the mainstream elements of society and those seen as threatening it are being destroyed without the proper archeological investigation. This premise will be examined by looking at the how the history of British industry and a former mining community are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]