The present past
April 8
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The past is often contested
“Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past” - George Orwell, 1984
What is Heritage?
“Heritage is a property – something that is passed down from previous generations. Cultural heritage consists of the cultures, values, and traditions of a particular community, group, or nation. Cultural heritage can be comprised of tangible things such as artifacts, artwork, and buildings, or intangible things, such as language, dances, and stories. Regardless of whether it is tangible or intangible, cultural heritage reflects the human aspects of our communities that shape who we are and how we interact with the world around us.” -Joe Watkins
- Archaeology: “preservation-by-record” (Hoberg et al. 2017)
- Preservation of information: subtractive and irreversible;
- Heritage: “preservation in site” (Hoberg et al. 2017)
- Conservation; memory and emotional responses; architecture, monuments, sacred sites, archaeological places; “that which may be inherited”; central to discussions of cultural identity
- Power and Heritage: weaponized: to deny or promote a particular narrative; destroyed; contested in terms of interpretation and ownership
Monuments and Memorials
- Monuments are also public art; not neutral or objective; usually put up by organizations wanting to promote a specific narrative about the past; Confederate monuments put up during Reconstruction or Civil Rights era, not by coincidence
- Assimilation and “vanishing native” myth. Example: “Moundbuilder Myth”: idea started by scholars documenting North American earthworks; were up to 10 000 at some point; idea that natives were not sophisticated enough to build the mounds, and outsiders built them; taught in US schools until myth was overturned in the 1890s
Archaeology, Heritage, and Development
- Cultural resource management (CRM); compliance archaeology; salvage archaeology; development is a huge threat to archaeology; assessment must be undertaken before development, to determine value and significance of potential archaeological finds); state opinions on significance may differ from other opinions
- Juukan Gorge, Western Australia: destroyed by mining company, despite being considered sacred by Aboriginal Australians; evidence for human inhabitancy ca. 46 KYA
- Jemseg Crossing Archaeology Project: Jemseg, New Brunswick: Excavated prior to twinning and rerouting of Trans-Canada Highway; community-engaged project in Wolastoqey homeland; initially set to be excavated, but discovery of an ancient burial changed that; considered significant by both archaeologists and Indigenous peoples
- Who are the stewards of the past? Who owns the past? Who gets to decide what gets excavated and what doesn’t? Who determined site interpretation? Who “owns” artifacts? In Canada, artifacts are held “in trust” for Canadians (by provincial repositories; different in Ontario)
Indigenous Critiques of Archaeology:
- Vine Deloria “Anthropologists and Other Friends” (Custer died for your sins); colonial process; critique of people as objects of study; research of no benefit to Indigenous communities; artifacts and information were removed; money spent on projects should be better used to help Indigenous communitie
Ethics and Legislation:
- United States: NAGPRA (Native American Graves Protection and Reparation Act)
- 1990; repatriation of human remains, funerary and sacred objects (not all, but those deemed significant) Canada: province-by-province basis; each institution has its own policies on repatriation
- The Ancient One (Kennewick Man): ca. 8500 years old; Kennewick, Washington; discovered by two men in 1996, eroding along a riverbank; initially believed to be remains of a European settler, based on skull morphology; part of a cascade point discovered embedded in the man’s hip; point dated 8500 years ago; claim that Kennewick Man was not related to modern Indigenous peoples, contrary to their claims; genetic analysis confirmed that the remains were indeed related to the Indigenous groups
Canadian Example: Rainey River Mounds Repatriation: repatriation of human remains and artifacts excavated in 1950s and 1960s near Rainey River; artifacts now at museums owned by descendant communities
- Indigenous Archaeologies: shift in power away from researchers and towards descendant communities; draws on multi lines of evidence and centres non-archaeological ways of knowing (i.e., Indigenous ways of knowing); it requires rigorous methods, analyses, and interpretations, just like good scholarship anywhere; “two-eyed seeing”; “braided knowledge”
- Archaeology in the cause of Nationalism: beginnings of archaeology as discipline during the rise of Nation States in late 19th century; ancient past became central to new identity; example: Germany (post-WWI); 1920s, ethnic regions of Europe identified by archaeological remains: German ancestry rooted in prehistory of Central Europe
- Ahnenerbe: research organization established by Himmler; sees itself as the centre of European civilization; name means “inherited from the forefathers”; National Socialist regime: Germany 1933-1945
- Externsteine: natural sandstone formation; 12th century Benedictine monks carved rooms into the stone; Ahnenerbe excavation to find “Germanic temple”; interpreted as place of worship for cult of the sun; cited as an example of Germany’s glorious past
- Thingstätten: established in places where “significant Germanic occupation” demonstrated through archaeology; intended to show German cultural continuity through time
- Dolni Vestonice: Silvia Tomaskova; Moravia: was a German-speaking area during Austro-Hungarian Empire and Czechoslovakia; two kilns; 2300 clay figurines; clay pellets and slabs; bird bone flutes; 25 000 years old
- Dolni Vestonice: putting Czechoslovakia on the map: Karel Absolon, 1924: large-scale horizontal excavation; compared with Pompeii, King Tut’s tomb; Czechoslovakia and Moravia in the study of human origins; new nation with rich archaeological history like other European nations; massive mammoth hunting site and settlement (houses built of mammoth bone); concluded that all Northern peoples must have originated from northern peoples in Czechoslovakia
- Dolni Vestonice becomes Unterwisternitz: 1939: Ahnenerbe takes over excavations; Bohmers: to “correct” earlier work; wanted to trace “Nordic” (German) past to the Paleolithic; focus on art objects to understand worldview of peoples who “conquered” Europe and vanquished Neanderthals; site becomes an Indo-German village
- Great Zimbabwe: urban centre ca. 1000-1500 AD; Cecil Rhodes finances excavation to “prove” Great Zimbabwe could not have been built by Africans (must have been foreigners); official interpretation until 1979
- International trade in artifacts and repatriation: the Elgin Marbles; one of many examples where artifacts were acquired, with conflict between the involved parties
- The bust of Nefertiti: excavated in Egypt, taken to museum in Germany; Egypt wants it returned, Germany refuses
- History of Looting: tombs of Pharaohs moved to Valley of the Kings to protect them from looting, which wasa big problem even back then; King Tut’s tomb was very significant due to lack of looting
- International Conventions: the 1954 Hague Convention on Preserving Cultural Heritage; the 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export, and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property; will not loot sites during warfare, and will not allow looted material to enter/leave their borders
- Archaeology and Mesopotamia: Mesopotamia viewed as the cradle of Western civilization; modern states have drawn on this history to promote narratives; excavations of Ur attracted many people, including Agatha Christie; Syrian and Iraqi leaders took control of archaeological sites after independence; ancient history became part of modern states’ identity; one of Saddam Hussein’s palaces built in the style of a ziggurat, and overlooks Babylonian ruins
- Looting, Destruction, and ISIS: performance (for attention); to anger “the West”; emphasizes the overthrowing of old political order of Nation States; destroying “idols” of nationalism (Christopher Jones, 2018)Looted Artifacts and Insurgences: ISIS known to sell looted artifacts; estimated to have made between $4 million – 7 billion this way