Cultural heritage, as is defined by the 1972 UNESCO Convention
on the Protection of the World’s Cultural and Natural Heritage, is
the complex of monuments, buildings and archeological sites “of
outstanding universal value from the point of view of history, art or
science” (cited in Hewison 1987:15). However, ruins and monuments
rarely survive untouched through the centuries. Relics are constantly
transformed and thus updated, both directly - by protection,
restoration, or iconoclasm - and indirectly - by replicas, emulations
and fakes (Lowenthal 1985:chap. 6). In fact, as Hewison (1987:9)
laments, heritage can be manufactured like other commodities. At a
time when the authority of archeology to authenticate the remains
of the past is questioned as being functional to nationalist agendas
(Fowler 1987; Trigger 1984), the quest for authenticity has assumed
a global dimension.