Heritage’s future

Ethics is not the right trench to be digging in. There are not ethical solutions to the difficulties archaeology must address in responding to the rising public clamor of ‘heritage for all!’ Ethical measures, such as the professional codes of organizations, are admirable steps for conducting an archaeology that is more responsive, and more responsible, to the stakeholders of world heritage. These measures will create greater discussion between stakeholders and archaeologists concerning the goals for heritage sites and archaeological activity. As is already indicated by a few prescient scholars in the trenches of these debates, discussions facilitated by ethics will necessarily involve epistemology. This ‘trickle-down’ effect may take several more years before it cascades with more force. The intrinsic connection between ethical principles and epistemology will inexorably raise, much as it did in the explicit example of the Mason-Echo-Hawk debate, the specter of relativism for the discipline. While internal developments in archaeology have previously prompted the discussions of how archaeologists reason, what evidence is brought to bear and how are knowledge claims evaluated, external mandates uplift these introspective questions anew. I would urge that however unpleasant (or tiresome) such disciplinary introspection is, it is necessary in order to plan a future for heritage management.

Such a future strategy involves the thoroughgoing examination of archaeological epistemology in conjunction with better elucidating the goals and values of heritage on part of the public. To examine both simultaneously may prove helpful in identifying commonalities which, I will argue, have been overlooked. Despite flaws of the WHS listing process and the management policies of the WHC, the international organization’s acknowledgement of the shortcomings in their planning of public collaboration relates to a lack of information on visitors and local stakeholders. Why do individuals visit, what are their backgrounds, what associations do they bring to site of public heritage? Obtaining such data forms the priority for World Heritage future projects (Hall 2006:31). An examination of a case study of contemporary associations with Teotihuacan will be the subject of chapters 5-6. However, examination of one side of the coin, of solely the ‘subjective’ goals of stakeholders and a tracing of their associations with sites of heritage, is not sufficient. As the literature presented above indicates, this ‘expository’ tactic has been undertaken in many contexts. An evaluation of the modernist thought in archaeology is also necessary as this tradition gives rise both to neo-liberal ethical values and to the correspondence epistemology which figure so prominently in the debates over heritage.

This is archaeology’s heritage. Archaeology has developed a specific epistemological tradition. It rests upon representational correspondence. Getting around the dichotomous options offered by a deeply ingrained modernist legacy may aid in recognizing that the impasse between epistemology and non-specialist participation is not really an issue of relativism versus objectivism. These conventional descriptions of archaeological epistemology and practice – along with ethical conduct – may not be entirely accurate. A way forward for heritage management may be seen from an altogether different vantage point. A reconfiguration, a re-description of some of archaeology’s basic operating principles may offer a novel visualization of the problems. Indeed, it may illumine that the fundamental epistemology of correspondence upon which such intractable options rest is itself defunct. This is not to ‘open’ archaeology to the subjective whims of stakeholders. Nor is it the suggestion to patronizingly educate stakeholders in the objective standards of archaeology. We need to likewise excavate beneath the apparent choices offered by ethics. The outright dismissals of inclusion and politically-correct requests for dialogue and circumscribed public participation. I will argue in the next chapters that these dichotomous options are just that, ‘options’. That there are others ways forward which do not depend upon the possibilities offered by the impoverished thought of modernity. That perhaps there are similarities in the goals and evaluative procedures of stakeholders and archaeologists. Following Latour’s (1993) reconfiguration of scientific activity, I suggest that archaeologists have much to gain and only a burdensome dilemma to lose in disinvesting themselves of their modernist heritage.

Forward to Chapter 2: The Spell of Representation in Archaeological Reasoning

Containments

Return to Heritage: epistemology not ethics