Assessing Methodologies in Archaeological Ethnography: A Case for Incorporating Ethnographic Training in Graduate Archaeology Curricula

Abstract

Archaeologists have increasingly turned to ethnography as a tool for understanding the contemporary social context of material culture, archaeological practice, and ‘de-colonizing’ archaeology. Furthermore, ethnographers have turned their analysis to the practice of archaeology, providing insights into key ethical dilemmas. This work has produced signi?cant dialogue, demonstrating the potential for research and collaboration at the interface of two sub-disciplines. However, much of the research to date has relied on a limited range of ethnographic methods. We suggest that archaeologists working in this area would bene?t from using a wider repertoire of ethnographic data collection tools and ethics training opportunities. We advocate for greater collaboration between archaeologists and ethnographers and provide suggestions on methods that are well-suited for use in archaeological practice. In the long term, the most effective and far-reaching solution may be to incorporate ethnographic methods training as fundamental to graduate programmes in archaeology.     

Ethics and Archaeological Tourism in Latin America

Archaeological tourism and ethics are two fields that, with exceptions, scholars have been reluctant to combine. There is, however, an increasing concern on the general subject of tourism and ethics and this article will draw examples from Latin America to explore the intersection between both. An overview of the history of archaeological tourism in Latin America will be provided. A growing number of archaeologists all over Latin America are becoming active in promoting or assisting the conversion of sites into tourist attractions. For some, it is a way of protecting sites in the face of the dangers brought about by uncontrolled tourism and for others helping locals to earn a living is a humanitarian question. Yet, archaeological remains are not neutral, but powerful means of creating historical memory and identity. Tourism becomes a means of advertising and even of legitimizing the existence of groups and that politicizes archaeologists’ engagement with tourism. This politicization represents an ethical challenge for the profession. Also, the conversion of archaeological ruins into tourist attractions can only be made through the commodification of culture. This has been denounced by some scholars as another postcolonial appropriation and neoliberal method of controlling indigenous groups, but hailed by others as a good thing for indigenous communities as it provides them with a living.     

Consuming the Past: Public Perceptions towards the Discipline of Archaeology in Zimbabwe

This paper discusses the public perceptions of archaeology and the information that archaeologists produce in Zimbabwe. There have been accusations that archaeologists in various parts of the world research for themselves. The products of archaeological research are often presented in academic jargon only accessible to those in the profession. Archaeological research in developing countries has been criticized for having limited involvement, if any, with the local communities in which it is conducted, and fails to address development issues that are important and much more relevant to the concerned societies. The paper discusses the extent to which these accusations are justified in Zimbabwe, focusing on the perceptions that local communities have on archaeology, archaeologists, archaeological remains, archaeological research, and institutions dealing with archaeological cultural heritage in that country. It also discusses why it seems difficult to put into practice some of the suggestions that have been made in the past on how to engage with the public. The paper argues that, although there have been efforts to change the situation, southern African archaeology in general and specifically its practice in Zimbabwe remains largely a preserve of the initiated. It concludes by recommending that writing on archaeological issues be accessible and that research issues should have social relevance. Awareness of local communities in research, outreach activities to schools, and the benefits of archaeological resources for local communities, are crucial means by which the value of the discipline can be appreciated by the public.     

The Public’s Archaeology: Utilizing Ethnographic Methods to Link Public Education with Accountability in Archaeological Practice

This paper discusses exploratory PhD research which utilized ethnographic methods in an attempt to understand the myriad connections to archaeology, history, and heritage in a small Indiana town. I rejected an initial hypothesis that archaeological resources are an integral part of collective cultural identities and, instead, discovered that talking with living people can facilitate more effective communication and collaboration between archaeologists and local communities by making research and educational efforts contextualized and community-based. Through discussions with local stakeholders, I believe all archaeologists have better opportunities to link the professional ethics of accountability, public education, and stewardship in their research.     

Regulating Scientific Diving and Underwater Archaeology: legal and historical considerations

The regulation of scientific and archaeological diving is complex but it is essential that underwater archaeologists are familiar with the requirements placed on them by legal systems. This paper outlines the history and development of current legal systems in four jurisdictions: the UK, USA, EU and Australia. This historical and legal approach informs key discussions facing maritime archaeologists; reference is made to training requirements, safety records and the question of who should be allowed to participate and who should be excluded from archaeological diving.     

The Dynamics of Heritage-Making at an Archaeological Site in South 24 Parganas,Bengal, India

Archaeological heritage is seldom fixed in time. Heritage-making is an ongoing process deeply entwined with social/cultural memory and identity formation. These processes are traced through an archaeological monument, located in the Sundarbans, in the South 24 Parganas district of West Bengal, India. The monument, named ‘Jatar Deul’, is a brick tower, stylistically labelled as a rekha deul — a curvilinear tower with a cruciform ground plan —belonging to the Orissan architectural style. Its exact chronology is unknown, as is its creator, although it is stylistically dated to the thirteenth century ce. It has survived more in myths, legends, and local tradition than in historical sources. This paper explores how the monument becomes a site of memories and how multi-vocal identities are forged around the locus of the site, now revered as a sacred place of Shaiva worship. The Postcolonial State has only a marginalized presence and the main stakeholders remain non-professional archaeologists, local schoolteachers, and the local population living in close vicinity. Identity work at the site is no longer the archetypal Bengali/regional identity seen in the pre-independence context, but reflects sub-regional cultural/religious affiliations. This paper is the result of ethnographic research, particularly interviews, of select sections of the local community, focusing on the recent organization of an annual fair at the site, which has thrown up questions on archaeological tourism. On the whole, this study examines how an archaeological monument is shaped and formed in the present in contemporary South Asia.     

Global Application of Indigenous Archaeology: Community Based Participatory Research in Turkey

What does Indigenous archaeology offer archaeologists who do not work on Native land, at Indigenous sites, or with Indigenous people? This article demonstrates the broad applicability of Indigenous archaeology and the way it can be utilized by archaeologists working in any locale. Through recent fieldwork in south central Turkey working with a non-indigenous community of local residents near the archaeological site of Çatalhöyük, I demonstrate ways that the theories and methodology of Indigenous archaeology are a useful and relevant part of practice for archaeologists working in areas that are neither on Native land nor involve sites related to indigenous heritage. It also points to the need for further investigation into collaborative methods for the development of a set of best practices within archaeological and heritage management settings.     

金手铲:80年代考古学的寓言(下)

这篇寓言小说叙述了“我”的一次坐飞机旅行的不寻常的经历,以考古学家最常用的发掘工具－一把金色的手铲为线索,以文学性的语言刻画了上世纪80年代三个美国考古学家的生动形象。新生哲学家是一个理论家,自诩为“理论的创造者”,而将他人贬为“理论的消费者”。70年代为骄子以编辑他人的见解为生,擅长将他人的观点变成自己的观点。以上二位从不参加田野发掘,但是却位居要津,声名显赫。老前辈是个传统而又守旧的考古学家,常年奔波在野外考古工地,但由于跟不上形势的发展而被迫提前退了休。他们争论的话题包括：考古学理论、基建考古学、课题考古学、考古学家的道德等等。小说发表后,由于其语言生动风趣,切中了考古学界的种种弊端,立即在学术界引起了轰动,堪考古学史上的一篇旷世奇文。     

Archaeological Ethnography,Heritage Management,and Community Archaeology: A Pragmatic Approach from Crete

This article examines the introduction of archaeological ethnography as an approach to establish positioned research and bring context-specific and reflexive considerations into community archaeology projects. It considers recent critiques of heritage management in archaeology and the role of archaeologists as experts in it, contending that smaller and less prominent sites exist in different contexts and pose different problems than large-scale projects usually addressed in the literature. We describe how the ‘Three Peak Sanctuaries of Central Crete’ project, investigating prehistoric Minoan ritual sites, involves communities and stakeholders and what demands the latter pose on experts in the field. Archaeological work is always already implicated in local development projects which create and reproduce power hierarchies. It is therefore important that archaeologists maintain their critical distance from official heritage discourses, as they are materialized in development programmes, while at the same time engaging with local expectations and power struggles; they also have to critically address and position their own assumptions. We use examples from our community archaeology project to propose that these goals can be reached through archaeological ethnographic fieldwork that should precede any archaeological project to inform its methodological decisions, engage stakeholders, and collaboratively shape heritage management strategies.     

Collections,Collecting and Collectives: Gathering Heritage Data with Communities in the Mountains of Matatiele and Lesotho,Southern Africa

Gathering digital data is a twenty-first-century research concern. Working in the previously undocumented region of the Eastern Cape’s former 'Transkei' homeland presents several data collection opportunities and obstacles. Local community collectives can vastly enhance the data collection process, aiding in administration, field walking, translation and—as trained archaeologists—excavation and rock art documentation. In the last 7 years, the Matatiele Archaeology Rock Art (MARA) team has discovered over 240 archaeological sites, the vast majority of which contain rock art. The principal investigator (PI), postdoctoral fellows, technical skills specialists and students have all engaged with, helped train and benefitted from field technicians chosen by the local communities to work with us. With their help, we have undertaken excavations and taken thousands of documentary photographs. We have documented oral traditions and the indigenous knowledge of local healers, all of which research is produced, and stored, digitally and requires preservation in perpetuity. The present contribution outlines some of the many and varied ways in which this programme has undertaken these tasks, in the endeavour to redress the imbalance in this region’s history.     

No Compensation Needed: On Archaeology and the Archaeological

The archaeological is regularly perceived in negative terms as lacking and deficient. It is fragmented, static, and crude, a residue of past living societies. Accordingly, much of archaeologists’ efforts are directed toward the amendment of these flaws. The present paper, however, argues that these so-called deficiencies are in fact constitutive absences. Whatever the archaeological lacks, it lacks by definition. It thus follows that working to render the archaeological “complete” is in fact an effort to undo it, to convert it into something else. For the sake of discovering the past, archaeological practice is a sustained effort to rid itself of the very phenomenon that defines it, consequently setting in motion self-perpetuating circularity predicated on deficiency and compensation. The reason for this, it is suggested, is the otherness of the archaeological, being at one and the same time a cultural phenomenon and a fossil record, a social construct and a geological deposit. This condition is so baffling that it is approached by transforming it into something familiar. The paper argues that understanding the archaeological should be archaeology’s first priority. Insofar as it is also the study of the past, this should be predicated on the understanding of the archaeological present.     

State Archaeology and the Private Museum: An Integrated Approach to Archaeological Site Management for Local People in China

During the emergence of Chinese archaeology, the legislative system of cultural heritage in China included archaeological excavations and investigations as being the ‘exclusive right of state’. This mode of state archaeology has proved its worth by increasing the authority and quality of archaeological research and excavations, as well as enhancing the social values and benefits at the state level. The local communities, however, have hardly been embedded into the archaeological projects, nor have the archaeological projects been employed to improve local and regional economic development. This paper considers private museums as embodying regional values and beneficial to projects under the mode of state archaeology. With a case study outlining collaborations between archaeologists and local agents under the excavation and conservation of ancient kiln sites at the town of Zichuan, I argue that private museums could be relatively prominent platforms for public engagement in activities of state archaeology. It might contribute to a reconsideration of the following: indirect archaeological concerns, local economic benefits, identities and alternative interpretations of locality.     

The role of the Italian Central Institute of Restoration in the field of underwater archaeology

In 1987, given the importance and complexity of the correct recovery and conservation procedures for underwater archaeological finds, an Underwater Archaeological Operations Unit was set up within the Italian Central Institute for Restoration. This Unit is made up of archaeologists, conservators, biologists and chemists, all of whom are underwater experts. It provides consultancy services and scientific and technical assistance for problems relating to the recovery, conservation, protection, and restoration of underwater archaeological heritage at the request of the Archaeological Superintendents. Great attention is paid to the professional training of underwater conservators. Specialized courses in the conservation of materials of underwater provenance are organized as part of its programme. This paper illustrates some of the main initiatives both in the restoration of archaeological objects and in training, in which the Institute has been involved, since the Underwater Unit was created.     

Archaeologists and the Military in Iraq, 2003–2008: Compromise or Contribution?

An offer to teach military units deploying to Iraq about history and culture of the region raised questions that are relevant to all archaeologists whose areas of study are subjected to armed conflict. Should we engage with the military at all, giving them the benefit of not only our archaeological knowledge, but our familiarity with local customs? Or could that knowledge be used against the local population that has welcomed us over the years or in some way lead to destruction of monuments, sites, and museums? I summarize my experience and compare this program with parallel efforts by other archaeologists working with the military since 2003.     

Heritage Formulation in Overtly Politicized Environments: A Commentary

Archaeology undertaken in overtly politicized environments creates situations and data that archaeologists are not positioned to control either in the moment or in perpetuity. This commentary examines the five diverse, revealing case studies that appear Archaeologies 2.2 and 3.1 and identifies the underlying dynamics that can create both an ethical burden for archaeologists and potentially charged, even dangerous, situations for others. These include archaeological heritage management demands and failures; contrary heritage valuation; restriction of associations with potential heritage resources; balancing archaeological research goals against local economic, political and social aspirations; and the complex trans-border reality of archaeologically identified societies that complicates heritage deployment in modern contexts. Whether or not activist engagement or outcomes are part of our practice or intention, there is no such thing as a value-free archaeological outcome.     

Balancing the Elements: An Archaeological Story

In this piece of short fiction, readers will explore the experiences of four American archaeologists as they complete an archaeological excavation impacted by laws at the local (Massachusetts State) and national (federal USA) level. All four archaeologists are in various stages of their careers in archaeology and find themselves working together for the same privatized Cultural Resource Management (CRM) firm on an unexpectedly complex and sensitive site excavation. Here readers are urged to consider how archaeologists’ previous experiences (both personal and professional) impact site excavations, and how, in turn, each project leaves an impression on an archaeological professional moving forward. They are further invited to relate the experiences of the archaeologists in the story to their own—possibly very different—experiences. While site context is key at every excavation, is the human context equally relevant?     

Archaeological investigations and OSL dating of terraces at Ramat Rahel,Israel

Abstract

Dating terraces, the most prominent feature of the agricultural landscape in many parts of the world, is a problem for archaeologists. This study presents an interdisciplinary approach that combines archaeological survey and excavations with direct sediment dating of terrace fill using Optically Stimulated Luminescence (OSL). The study focuses on Ramat Rahel, a multi-period site located in the southern outskirts of modern Jerusalem, Israel, where, on a defined terraced slope chosen for a small-scale landscape archaeology project, three main phases of terrace construction and use were identified. The earliest phase dates to the Late Byzantine/Early Islamic period, the second to medieval times, and the last to the Ottoman period. The results enable a comprehensive reconstruction of the changing local landscape through time and demonstrate the validity of OSL, when combined with archaeological investigations, as a reliable method for terrace dating.     

Contexts for Conflict: Conceptual Tools for Interpreting Archaeological Reflections of Warfare

Abstract

There has been a long history of interest in the material remains of conflict, but in the last two and a half decades archaeologists have made strides in the study of war and warfare. Techniques have been developed, refined, and borrowed to expose the material record of combat. Sites associated with other military undertakings have been discovered and the material culture of conflict has been documented. This growth has expanded an understanding of past conflicts and challenged previously held ideas about warfare. Although archaeologists do not currently have interpretive frameworks to link the diverse sites and objects that form the archaeological record of war, modern military planners have developed such models. This paper uses sites from the North American Great Plains to suggest that military models of conflict analysis can contribute to a synthetic archaeological interpretation of conflict.     

Geographic Visualization in Archaeology

Archaeologists are often considered frontrunners in employing spatial approaches within the social sciences and humanities, including geospatial technologies such as geographic information systems (GIS) that are now routinely used in archaeology. Since the late 1980s, GIS has mainly been used to support data collection and management as well as spatial analysis and modeling. While fruitful, these efforts have arguably neglected the potential contribution of advanced visualization methods to the generation of broader archaeological knowledge. This paper reviews the use of GIS in archaeology from a geographic visualization (geovisual) perspective and examines how these methods can broaden the scope of archaeological research in an era of more user-friendly cyber-infrastructures. Like most computational databases, GIS do not easily support temporal data. This limitation is particularly problematic in archaeology because processes and events are best understood in space and time. To deal with such shortcomings in existing tools, archaeologists often end up having to reduce the diversity and complexity of archaeological phenomena. Recent developments in geographic visualization begin to address some of these issues and are pertinent in the globalized world as archaeologists amass vast new bodies of georeferenced information and work towards integrating them with traditional archaeological data. Greater effort in developing geovisualization and geovisual analytics appropriate for archaeological data can create opportunities to visualize, navigate, and assess different sources of information within the larger archaeological community, thus enhancing possibilities for collaborative research and new forms of critical inquiry.     

Cultural Imperialism and Heritage Politics in the Event of Armed Conflict: Prospects for an ‘Activist Archaeology’

The production of archaeological knowledge is embedded in a long-standing tradition of colonial encounters. This paper asks how political-economic interests impinge on archaeological work, specifically in the event of armed conflict. To answer this question I discuss commodification of cultural heritage and analyze it as a form of structural violence. I argue that the attitude that allows treatment of archaeological artifacts as saleable items with international owners is part of a strategy of global cultural imperialism. Exemplified by the case of the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, this paper shows how the clash of global ‘heritage’ politics with local practices of memorializing the past results in a tension: because capitalist governments consider the locales whose glorious pasts are studied by archaeologists to be culturally inferior, the nexus between (trans-)national actors and local communities is an asymmetrical one. In order to overcome the hegemonic role of archaeology within these dynamics, I propose an ‘activist archaeology’ that enables a political activism grounded in recursivity.