Personalizing the Past: A Review of Literature with Implications for Historical Interpretation

Abstract

The recent perspective known as meaning-making has advanced the belief that understanding interpretive site visitors’ frameworks and past experiences is critical to successful interpretation. How, then, do visitors make meaning of heritage site experiences and of the past in general? This review examines and synthesizes recent studies and considers their contribution to the theory and practice of historical interpretation. In sum, research suggests three major realms of experience from which visitors draw schemata that inform meaning–making at heritage sites: (a) associations with and knowledge of history, (b) experiences and behavior regarding the past in everyday life, and (c) expectations of and behavior at heritage sites. Using this literature as groundwork, three strategies for empirically driven historical interpretation are presented: (a) addressing the nature of history and visitors’ associations, (b) incorporating everyday life behaviors, and (c) interpreting for the social nature of the heritage site visit.

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