Back in Rome after a few weeks away, and there's a real change in the air. The leaf fall accompanies a more workaday environment as the Romans return from the sea and the mountains, refreshed by the August holiday. Those who stayed seem either have wished themselves somewhere else during August, or benefitted financially from sacrificing themselves to tourism. The summer months were marked by an even greater number of visitors in what has been, even for Rome, an extraordinarily touristed year.

And yet, Rome, and Italy in general, can't afford to be complacent, according to newspaper reports. The Eternal City has been slipping in the lists of favourite destinations, and price hikes - everyone blames the euro - have put people off, apparently. There have been cuts in the city's heritage budget. Not least, ongoing security concerns have led to increased measure. The Colosseum now has barriers (those fake gladiators I snapped and posted earlier in the year now have a smaller arena) and lines are longer as visitors have to accept more stringent checks at museums and galleries.

In tandem with this, I have been thinking more about tourists. Or more to the point how those outside the archaeology or heritage industry view sites and judge the interpretative process constructed for their benefit.

In July, I took a group of students from the University of Oklahoma on a field-trip to two major prehistoric sites in England: Stonehenge, which needs no introduction, and White Horse Hill at Uffington, which is by contrast, a no-ticket, no audio-guide site. I asked the students - none of them archaeology majors - to write about the two experiences. I'll be posting extracts from these in coming weeks, when they will appear in the November-December edition of British Archaeology.

Meanwhile I am planning to visit several sites in Rome as part of an organised tour to get a sense of how visitors respond to my now-familar territory.