Archaeologists, Treasure Hunters, and the UNESCO Convention for the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage: a personal viewpoint (original) (raw)
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Introduction: the Public Archaeology of Treasure
The Public Archaeology of Treasure, 2022
Setting the stage for The Public Archaeology of Treasure, this chapter presents the complex intersections of 'treasure' in archaeological teaching and research and archaeology's interactions with a range of different publics on local, regional, national and international scales. The chapter also identifies the global issues in heritage conservation, management and interpretation as well as the looting of archaeological sites and the illicit trade in antiquities relating to 'treasure(s)' as legally defined, popularly perceived and metaphorically articulated. Having introduced the breadth and complexity of 'treasure(s)', we survey the 2020 student conference from whence this project derived before reviewing the span and foci of the book itself.
in An Integrated Approach for an Archaeological and Environmental Park in South-Eastern Turkey: Tilmen Höyük, Cham, Springer, pp. 11 – 42, 2020
At Tilmen Höyük we carried out an experience in Inclusive Archaeology, which describes an approach based on an integration of views, techniques and methods. Multidisciplinarity, interdisciplinarity and hybridization become part of an anthropological perspective in which archaeology is seen as fully integrated within the broader frame of social sciences. Inclusive Archaeology is based on openness, towards local and regional communities (science does not live in isolation but has an impact on and needs feedback from those communities), towards the scientific community (dissemination of newly produced data is the core mission of scientists), towards the global community (digital technologies must be used to build new forms of integrated datasets which may be used freely through the web). The Turco-Italian Archaeological Expedition at Tilmen Höyük tried this approach when several technologies were still in their infancy (digitally speaking) and can now offer after several years a rare follow-up of the results obtained at the time and managed since. Reporting after a dozen years since an experience in public archaeology allows at least two main advantages: a meditated assessment on the faults and gains of the thenselected approach and how it stood the test of time in terms of material durability and social interaction. The conclusions which I present here, and which are detailed by the authors of this volume, concern diverse scientific communities as well as decisionmakers and the public in general. One basic assumption stemming from my own experience-one which may certainly be challenged-is that field archaeologists must lead, or at least be strongly involved into the process of turning an archaeological excavation into a public area equipped for visitors: this must be so because, I believe, the ultimate vision is embedded in the very excavation strategy which at times must be changed to accommodate concerns stemming from the project of public archaeology (as I argued elsewhere, Marchetti 2008e), and which interweaves with conservation.
Why Archaeologists Misrepresent Their Practice
Journal of Contemporary Archaeology, 2015
The statement “we are all archaeologists now” is an assertion of archaeology’s democratization thus goodness. It is also a gross misrepresentation of how archaeology is practiced daily, especially in colonized settings like the United States and Canada. Archaeology is today—as it has always been—an elite undertaking that serves elite class interests. Since 1950, archaeology has become increasingly bureaucratized and corporatized, and today the vast majority of archaeology is state-sanctioned but highly privatized cultural resource management. As a technology of government designed to control living Indigenous people and their resources, we suggest archaeology is becoming radically less democratic, not more, and ask why archaeologists so routinely misrepresent their profession.