Tilden Blog,
Freeman Tilden’s argument derives from his 6 Principles, although he states that there is no magical number – the principles could be ‘telescoped into one – love...” (pg. 19), later generations can add more or do with these principles as they seem fit. Tilden’s principles are well-structured and his experience as a writer appears exceptionally well throughout Interpreting Our Heritage – Tilden's writing abilities is perhaps what propelled his work forward. His book changed the way history at sites has been interpreted to audiences since the book’s initial publication in 1957.
There are some weaknesses: Tilden’s use of the masculine pronoun and drawing on (males) experiences creates a disconnect with audiences. Many of his sources cited our drawn from (male) poets or (male) historians and his own experiences at the sites. There appears to be a fixed pool of sources from which he draws, which begs the question: from where does Tilden derive his authority from? He spent much of his career writing for different newspapers and writing fiction and non-fiction alike. Only after he ‘retired’ did he begin writing for the National Park Services. What criteria made Tilden the landmark mind for historic interpretations at different sites?
History is forever evolving as new questions are asked and new histories are discovered. Therefore, it seems strange that in a field always changing, we turn back to an individual whose work was published in 1957 (before my own father was born), and who uses terminology that doesn't reverberate to our modern senses.
