Co-sponsored by  the NYU Center  for Ancient Studies and the
College of Arts and Science  Dean's Office. 

Jurow Lecture Hall, New York
University, 100 Washington  Square East (enter at 32 Waverly Place). 

6:30 P.M. lecture,  reception to follow.

This illustrated lecture will  describe today's disturbing, bizarre, sometimes tragi-comic landscape of World  Heritage attractions-dug up by archaeologists, heavily promoted by would-be  tourist magnates, and enabled through such international marketing promotions as  "The New Seven Wonders of the World" and the UNESCO World Heritage list.   Cultural tourism has all to often become just another entertainment alternative  in an age when Indiana Jones has become the AIA's fundraising icon and  developing countries desperately strip mine their archaeological resources in a  quest to attract high-end adventure tourists to earn hard foreign  currency.  This lecture will present anecdotes and telling examples of how  the past is being supersized and trivialized from Mongolia to Mali to Machu  Picchu and how archaeologists are all too often knowingly-or  unknowingly-complicit in the creation of this vast global theme park of the  past.