Worth considering Cornelius "where will it end?" question a bit further. At the risk of (also?) being a Devil's advocate, one might argue that the "under-represented" in the EH/HE document are the well represented under-represented. e.g. there is only one mention of mental health in the document, no mention of travellers of any kind, the homeless etc.

There's also a danger of essentialism here that resembles the recent debate about the NAACP person. This argument is as old as the hills in archaeology - whether certain material culture belongs exclusively to certain groups, ethnicities or whatever. In the case of homeless people, for example, there is a homeless heritage, but one can both become and cease to be homeless. Equally any individual can be connected to a variety of "heritages" as it were. Clearly, as Sarah says, one does not want to homogenise or sanitise heritage, but perhaps better to see it in terms of David Clarke's polythetic sets than as a ven diagram of non intersecting circles.

Another problem, it seems to me, is being choosy about whose heritage we advocate. Is there a place for studying neo-nazi heritage without prejudice? wrt what I said earlier about advocacy, the EH/HE document largely deals with what one might see as officially sanctioned "under-representedness". Yet as those who have worked with undocumented migrants on the US border have sometimes found, some heritage is frowned upon by officialdom. In the UK, to take two examples from John S's work, the attempt to officially recognise the monument erected at Twyford Down didn't get official sanction and as far as I know, although the bits inside the fence at Greenham get recognition, those outside have not yet.

I could say more, but have got to go and cut the lawn

P

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