ANTH 235, ARCHAEOLOGY & THE PUBLIC: WHO OWNS THE PAST?
Why, beyond perfectly valid and sufficient reasons of scientific curiosity, do we want to know about the past?
What does the past mean to us? (or, stated another way, Why is the past salient?)
What does the past mean to others with different viewpoints?
Who does the past “belong” to, anyway?
Charles McGimsey, Public Archaeology (Seminar Press, 1972):
“The next 50 years – some would say the next 25 – are going to be the most critical in the history of American archaeology. What is recovered, what is preserved, and the goals which are accomplished during this period will largely determine for all time the knowledge available to subsequent generations of Americans concerning their heritage from the past. The next generation cannot study or preserve what already has been destroyed.” It’s ironic, but the very interest that archaeology has generated in our past has created new destructive forces:
looters and illicit excavators whose plunder finds its way into private collections and public museums to satisfy an antiquarian lust
tourists who by their numbers threaten the sites they seek to enjoy (Lascaux, France; Stonehenge, England; Luxor, Egypt: sites that have been “loved to death”)
Celebrating the summer solstice at Stonehenge, 1905 Two of the large standing stones (called trilithons) fell in 1900 due to the enormous number of visitors to the site. Such destruction was finally halted only in the 1980s by strictly limiting visitors’ access to the stone circle. The past is big business – in tourism and in the auction rooms. The past is politically highly charged, ideologically powerful, and salient.
THE MEANING OF THE PAST: THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF IDENTITY
The past means different things to different people.
How we interpret the past, how we present it (in museum displays, for instance), and what lessons we choose to draw from it, are to a considerable extent subjective decisions, often involving ideological and political issues.
NOTE: Advocates of Critical Theory have been at the forefront in pointing this out to archaeologists. WHO OWNS THE PAST?
Difficult questions have arisen: Should antiquities acquired for Western museums during the colonial era be returned to their lands of origin? Should archaeologists be free to excavate the burials of groups whose modern descendants may object on religious or other grounds? Or, should human patrimony outweigh that of any particular group to ensure the preservation of the past for future generations?
“Repatriation” refers to the return of cultural properties and human remains to the lands and peoples from which they were originally taken.
Repatriation involves a complex web of legal, ethical and moral issues:
Are treaties signed in the 19th century giving Western nations exclusive access to archaeological remains in some former colonial nation still valid? (The British Museum says “Yes!” at least where the “Elgin Marbles,” below, taken from the Parthenon in 1806, are concerned…)
Since interest in the past is a human universal – not restricted to one or just a few cultures – don’t those interests transcend the geographical boundaries of modern nation states?
Is it not a profound and important experience to be able, in the course of one day in one of the world’s great museums, to walk from room to room, from civilization to civilization, and see unfold a sample of the whole variety of human experience?
Would it not be a greater service, in response to requests to repatriate one nation’s antiquities, to offer instead great works belonging to different cultural traditions? The Herakleion Archaeological Museum (Αρχαιολογικό Μουσείο Ηρακλείου) on Crete (Κρήτη) houses the vast majority of the surviving remains of the ancient Minoan Civilization (Μινωικός πολιτισμός), ca. 2700-1650 BCE. The museum is located in an active earthquake zone and was already seriously damaged during World War II.
In North America, the on-going solution to this problem seems to lie in acquiescence, compromise, and collaboration:
archaeologists acquiesce in the return of very recent remains of identifiable ancestors of living peoples. Native Americans have compromised by formally recognizing the scientific value of the study of human remains and, in many cases, allow such study before repatriation occurs. now there is more collaboration between archaeologists and Native Americans: local museums to help celebrate Native American culture rather than strict reburial of remains, collaborative archaeology projects 1990 – Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). Federal legislation requiring some 5000 federally-funded institutions and government agencies (including the University of Arizona and the Arizona State Museum) to return Native American skeletons, funerary and sacred objects, and items of profound cultural importance to American Indian tribes, Native Alaskans, and Native Hawai’ians.
See: http://www.cr.nps.gov/nagpra/
WHO INTERPRETS & PRESENTS THE PAST?
There are other legitimate issues here beside nationalistic or religious sentiments. For example:
Concerns of feminist archaeologists. The past has tended to be interpreted from a largely male point of view, yielding a distinct androcentric bias.
19th century views still persist in many areas (e.g., most archaeological displays in Chinese museums today are still based directly on the century-old writings of Morgan, Marx and Engels). Some colonialist and racist preconceptions still persist (e.g., Minoan Crete still is often presented as it appeared to its Victorian discoverer, Sir Arthur Evans, nearly a century ago).
Reconstruction of Minoan bull-vaulting loosely based on a mosaic in the Palace of King Minos (Μίνως) at Knossos (Κνωσός) on Crete, ca. 1650 BCE
WHAT DOES ALL THIS MEAN TO YOU?
The past does have a value; in fact it is valuable for many reasons. It’s up to you (and me…) as we play out our diverse roles in modern human society to participate in figuring out the answers to some of the questions posed today, of which the most important may well be “Who owns the past?”
Suggested reading – food for thought regarding the preservation of our cultural heritage:
Castañeda, Q. E. and C. N. Matthews, editors. (2008). Ethnographic Archaeologies: Reflections on Stakeholders and Archaeological Practices. Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press.
Habu, J., C. Fawcett, and J. M. Matsunaga, editors. (2008). Evaluating Multiple Narratives: Beyond Nationalist, Colonialist, Imperialist Archaeologies. New York: Springer.