That ‘authenticity’ is something that matters to museum visitors has been shown in a
number of studies (e.g. Bagnall 2003, Macdonald 1997). These have, however, also shown
that what is meant by ‘authenticity’ may vary and is not necessarily simply a matter of
‘the real’ versus ‘the virtual’ as some theoretical discussion tends to assume. In Bagnall’s
study, for example, some visitors employ the notion of authentic to refer to an overall
‘feel’ of the site rather than to artefactual originality; and in my current work in