Red Sea heritage: Interpretive approaches through site management and community engagement

Abstract

The recognition of Egypt's western Red Sea coast as a tourist destination for beachfront resorts and aquatic interests like snorkelling, diving, and sea safari has grown significantly during the past forty years. However, significant archaeological excavations have already been carried out at specific locations along this coast, showing a number of ancient harbours dating from about 2500 B.C. to the 20th century. Nevertheless, with the exception of the innovative community engagement work that has been done at Quseir, little focus has been placed on the long-term management of these sites concerning their public presentation, protection, and, in particular, even less focus on community engagement and sustainable archaeological development for the benefit of the local community.
These archaeological resources are also seriously endangered by some threats, including uncontrolled tourism, the construction of power plants, looting, and rapid urban expansion. This highlights the vitality of promoting these archaeological sites as heritage assets and tourist attractions by enabling public access to the sites, developing their public interpretation and involving the community in interpretive site management plans as an outcome of collaboration and co-creation between various stakeholders.
This research is concerned with exploring the potential of public presentation and interpretation of the Red Sea heritage sites as a tool for preservation and development by defining the main archaeological resources, their condition and their potential for display. Then, it will survey how the different stakeholders conceive of their heritage. Finally, it will suggest convenient management strategies through comparison with similar case studies to ensure sustainable archaeological heritage management of the heritage resources.

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Identifiers

ORCID for Noran Hamed: orcid.org/0009-0008-9401-5807

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