Julia Clark wrote:

> Can anyone help with some innovative strategies for the above.
> I am on the Port Arthur Heritage Advisory Panel, responsible for heritage
> advice to the Board of the Port Arthur Historic Site, Tasmania, Australia.
> Colleagues may remember it most recently as the scene of an horrific
> massacre by a lone gunman in 1996.It has a much longer history of horror
> than that however, having been for several decades in the 19th century a
> prison for transported felons. Much of the site is now removed or in ruins
> but it retains a powerful atmosphere and some impressive ruins of its major
> buildings. Some buildings are intact, albeit heavily restored.
> Does anyone know of any good strategies for interpretation on such a site
> that do not involve 'signs on sticks'? Personal experience or references to
> published work, conference papers etc would be very welcome.
> Thanks and best wishes for the New Year to you all
> Julia Clark

This is just a very personal reaction, but the sites of the genre you describe
that I have liked best had been maintained in what appeared to the visitor to
be a state of recent abandonment, retaining the 'powerful atmosphere' that you
refer to.  Perhaps the heavily restored buildings could contain some
interpretive exhibits, and there the visitor could pick up a map of the rest of
the site, with explanations, thus avoiding the signs that you don't want.  The
two sites that come to mind in this regard are the jail at Laihaina, on the
island of Maui in Hawaii, and Fort Stevens, a military site near Astoria,
Oregon.

Lucy Skjestad
Corvallis, Oregon