This thesis analyzes the late patrimonialization of the Morro da Queimada Archaeological Site, territory in ruins of a prosperous mining camp from the beginning of the 18th century, prior to the city of Ouro Preto (Brazil). Its patrimonialization is analyzed as a process that is by nature dynamic, discontinuous, unfinished or not yet consolidated at the current time of the case. To this end, this patrimonialization is documented and structured over a long period, shedding light on its discontinuity, identifying and sociologically analyzing moments, processes, discourses and subjects, in order to constitute the proposal for a method of socio-historical analysis of long-term patrimonialization. In this method, patrimonialization is approached in its socio-historical processuality, both linear and anachronistic, consisting of memory policies, contiguous, coexisting or competing in time and space of a cultural asset, in which different socio-functional interdependencies take on each time a form of patrimonialization of the place, forming a figuration, which in turn, is expressed in mentalities and imaginaries in which what, how and for whom is preserved changes throughout the socio-historical process. It is demonstrated that it is precisely through changing patterns of interdependence that changes in conceptions of cultural heritage occur over time. What matters is not the heritage itself, but the relationships, interdependencies and balance of tensions established, from and with the heritage at different times. What is or is not heritage is in motion and changes over the long term. Patrimonialization needs to be driven by the ability to imagine within the politics of memory, to the point of recognizing how a heritage asset was, is, and will continue to be crossed by different governments, policies and institutionalities in time and space. In this sense, what is socially considered heritage, at the same time, includes and excludes non-heritage. The ruin is revealed as the anachronistic synthesis of the process, expression of the movement and dialectic between preserving and destroying, existing in all patrimonialization, because it is placed at the crossroads, dialectic, beyond the place of memory and the opposition between history and memory, not only material or immaterial, unfinished and powerful to what it can be or become, which underlies the proposition of the notion of “place of ruin”. It is necessary to patrimonialize the ruin in the movement between destruction and what is to come.