A particular theme dominates contemporary heritage projects in the neoliberal context of Jordan: sustainable development on the basis of participatory approaches. Although these approaches are celebrated in academic and governmental circles, the history and power dynamics within which they operate remain underexplored. We aim to establish a theoretical framework that examines why and how local communities in the Arab region shifted from periphery to centre, and from background to foreground, in the field of archaeology and heritage. We situate archaeology and heritage within two seemingly different contexts, colonialism and neoliberalism, that have governed the relationship between the West and the Arab region. As we contrast colonialist exclusionary policies with the inclusivity promoted by neoliberal policies in archaeological and heritage projects in Jordan, we argue that despite the obvious differences between the two, they both managed to make substantial shifts in the perception of and attitudes toward archaeology and heritage. In spite of participatory paradigms, the shifts seem to have always come ‘from the outside’, operating on sites and peoples alike.

This is an ethnographic study based on a fieldwork carried out in Khriebt al‐Suq, in Jordan, in the time between 1 June and 14 September 2004. In this paper, the meaning of archaeological sites is investigated as a ‘structure of understanding and attachments’ (Marris 1986, p. 4), through which individuals interpret the time and the place of the past. The paper suggests that values and meanings that individuals ascribe to material of the past derive their importance from being a reflection of people’s contexts. Throughout the process in which meanings are created and ascribed to archaeological sites, the remains of the past are transformed into such reflections. Archaeological sites in this process are transformed into cultural heritage: something relevant to local communities’ contemporary contexts and cultures. The credibility of cultural heritage is thus derived from its being a ‘reflection’ of these contexts. It is through this ‘reflection’ that people are able to identify themselves with the past and its material.