The fusion of law and ethics in cultural heritage management: The 21st century confronts archaeology

Abstract

Archaeologists around the world face complex ethical dilemmas that defy easy solutions. Ethics and law entwine, yet jurisprudence endures as the global praxis for guidance and result. Global legal norms articulate ‘legal rights’ and obligations while codes of professional conduct articulate ‘ethical rights’ and obligations. This article underscores how a rights discourse has shaped the 20th century discipline and practice of archaeology across the globe, including in the design and execution of projects like those discussed in the Journal of Field Archaeology. It illustrates how both law and ethics have been, and still are, viewed as two distinct solution-driven approaches that, even when out of sync, are the predominant frameworks that affect archaeologists in the field and more generally. While both law and ethics are influenced by social mores, public policy, and political objectives, each too often in cultural heritage debates has been considered a separate remedy. For archaeology, there remains the tendency to turn to law for a definite response when ethical solutions prove elusive.

As contemporary society becomes increasingly interconnected and the geo-political reality of the 21st century poses new threats to protecting archaeological sites and the integrity of the archaeological record during armed conflict and insurgency, law has fallen short or has lacked necessary enforcement mechanisms to address on-the-ground realities. A changing global order shaped by human rights, Indigenous heritage, legal pluralism, neo-colonialism, development, diplomacy, and emerging non-State actors directs the 21st century policies that shape laws and ethics. Archaeologists in the field today work within a nexus of domestic and international laws and regulations and must navigate increasingly complex ethical situations. Thus, a critical challenge is to realign approaches to current dilemmas facing archaeology in a way that unifies the ‘legal’ and the ‘ethical’ with a focus on human rights and principles of equity and justice. With examples from around the world, this article considers how law and ethics affect professional practice and demonstrates how engagement with law and awareness of ethics are pivotal to archaeologists in the field.     

The Anthropology of Virtual Worlds: World of Warcraft

Three recent ethnographies of the well-known massively multiplayer online game World of Warcraft demonstrate the health and vitality of the study of virtual worlds. In particular, they emphasize the importance of anthropologists reading ethnographic work done by researchers in other disciplines, and by connoisseurs and cultural practitioners of video games who deserve to be taken as intellectual interlocutors. It may be, however, that less and less work will be done on virtual worlds in the future as scholarly attention focuses on other, more novel forms of technology.     

Social Relations and War Remembrance: Second World War Atrocities in Rural Tuscan Villages

This article addresses the issue of how long‐term memory of extreme conditions is socially transformed. It focuses on elements of the social structure and pre‐war habitus that might help understanding of the divided memory of massacres that were perpetrated by the Nazis in three rural Tuscan villages between 1943 and 1944. Within the “mnemonic communities”, discrepancies arise since some of the villagers paradoxically blame the partisans instead of the Nazis. An attempt is made to trace current representations of historical events in the framework of traditional social institutions and political life of these small villages in time of crisis. Battles over memory are seen as a twofold process—that is, as part of “internal”, intra‐village relations as well as a form of reaction toward the “external” world of which they feel victims. The article argues that long‐term memory of past political violence is strictly bound up with local power relations.     

Apollo and the Virgin: The Changing Meanings of a Sacred Site on Anafi

The ruins of an ancient Greek temple on a Cycladic island form part of an Orthodox Christian shrine. To local people and returning migrants, the site is that of their patron saint; its pre‐Christian past is irrelevant except in so far as it establishes their specific link with the ancient world, and thus with national claims of unbroken continuity between modern and ancient Greece. To early travellers and antiquarians, and to today’s archaeologists, it has been primarily the ancient site which is of interest, while tourists are more concerned in finding “an unspoilt island”. A historical survey of information about the ancient and the Christian site reveals ambiguities and confusions about both. These multiple meanings for locals and scholars are discussed.     

Dark Nightmare: The Shooting of William Alexander as Canon Scott Saw it

Frederick G. Scott's World War I war memoir, The Great War As I Saw It, contains the sole unofficial eyewitness recording of a court martial execution that we possess. The case of William Alexander 20726 Alexander, William. 20726. Service records. Library Archives Canada, RG24, vol. 2538 HQS 1822, RG 150/acc 1992-93/166/Box 83-992 and RG24-C-1, 1946 Central Army Registry R112-553-X-E, Reel C-5053 90,  [Google Scholar], executed in October 1917, for desertion in the face of the enemy compelled Scott to devote more printed space to it than to the death of his own son, Henry. A discussion based upon a close reading of Scott's memoir and an exposition from archival sources of Alexander's case demonstrates the ways in which Scott evades the case's disturbing implications echoes wider aspects of Canada's early memorialization of the Great War.     

From Imperialism to Internationalism: British Idealism and Human Rights

ABSTRACT

The article provides a historical account of the younger generation of British Idealists’ (1880–1930) approach to international relations and human rights. By focusing on pre-Great War and post-Great War periods, it reveals the shift that occurred in their approbation of T. H. Green's theory of rights. It shows that the Great War put an end to perceptions of the Empire as a plausible and sustainable international order for the younger generation of British Idealists, as it did for the significant majority of liberal British intellectuals. Their work, especially in the post-Great War period, reveals an attempt at translating Green's theory of rights into an internationalist human rights theory, which they saw as being indispensable to maintain a stable international order. As an alternative to contemporary attempts to locate Green's rights theory within the cosmopolitan–communitarian divide in human rights theories, this study draws attention to the younger generation of British Idealists’ long neglected internationalist approach to human rights as a middle way position.     

The First World War and European Integration

The importance of the First World War in European integration history has been understated. Before 1914, intensifying economic integration had not brought corresponding political integration. But once hostilities broke out, Germany pursued indirect economic and military domination over its neighbours and a Central European economic association based on agreements with Austria-Hungary. The drive for the latter had little success, because of Germany's own uncertainties as well as Austria-Hungary's resistance. From 1916 the French government also pursued the goal of border buffer states, together with a permanent inter-Allied economic bloc, but was likewise unsuccessful. Nonetheless, the wartime experience helped to shape later integration initiatives during the inter-war years and even beyond.     

The Laurentian world map with special reference to its portrayal of Africa

When the Jesuit missionaries began to work in China, they attracted the attention of the Chinese by introducing European knowledge. This is the context in which Jesuits such as Matteo Ricci, Giulio Aleni, Francesco Sambiasi and Ferdinand Verbiest made their Chinese‐language world maps. Sambiasi was a man of many talents. He was a tactful diplomat and a learned scientist. His world map shows him to be a skilful adapter of earlier knowledge, which he passed on to future generations. The six known copies of his map are in two versions, printed from two sets of wood blocks (c. 1639). A text at the top of one version explains why the world must be seen as a sphere, which demonstrates how these maps were meant to convince the Chinese public of European scientific findings.     

A Flawed Saint: The Popular Image of William Gladstone in the Australian Colonies

ABSTRACT

This article looks at the popular image of William Gladstone which gradually emerged and evolved in the Australian Colonies throughout the nineteenth century. By using a wide variety of newspaper sources and political speeches, the piece shows how Gladstone was extensively discussed and interpreted on the far side of the ‘British World’. It tracks the ups and downs of the turbulent relationship Gladstone had with the Australian Colonies over his long career, as he influenced Australian history both directly through the policies he implemented and indirectly as an inspiration for local politicians. It concludes that although Gladstone repeatedly aggravated Australian opinion both through his time at the Colonial Office and the ‘soft’ foreign policy he pursued as Prime Minister, his domestic popularity as a successful liberal and democratic figure was enough to make him a hero in colonial eyes. This conclusion shows how ‘British World’ popular sentiment was able to trump nominal local interests. This demonstrates not only the predominance of Britishness in Australian identity during this time period, but also how as a simultaneously separate yet intimately linked part of the Empire, Australians abstracted their own significance and meaning from domestic British politics.