Ethics in Archaeology?

So I was planning on doing a blog entry about ethics and these last two classes have fit in really well with what I was planning on saying. Ethics in archaeology is something that really concerns me; none more so than with the handling and treatment of human remains. In one of our required reading articles, Who Owns the Past? by V. Morell, I was quite shocked and upset by what I was reading. I know that repatriation and the treatment of human remain is a contentious issue in archaeology and bioarchaeology and really any discipline which has to deal with them and I also know that I have some very strong feelings about what I consider to be right and wrong surrounding this issue. First of all, in this article what I notice is a bunch of archaeologists being way too melodramatic; just because the study of human remains could be limited does not mean “The end of anthropology” (p.1424). These people are very limited in their scope of the discipline if they think that the only thing any anthropologist is concerned about is human bones. I do agree though, that the study of human remains is immensely important and can shed light on past practices, migrations and lifeway’s in the way that little other evidence can. But I also think that descendent groups deserve the right to approve or disapprove any research being conducted on their ancestors. “Across the globe, archaeologists and anthropologists are making the unhappy discovery that governments are giving cultural traditions and religious beliefs higher priority than scientific inquiry.” (Morell, 1995:1424). This quote from the article gave me shivers; in the case of archaeology when working with descendent groups, I personally believe that ‘cultural traditions’ damn well have every right over ‘scientific inquiry’ according to an archaeologist. For the most part, I find, that archaeologists are not members of the indigenous community where they are working and so when they put their own research above the feelings and traditions of those groups they do so without acknowledging what it may mean to those people. Scientific study and its importance is something which has been made up by modern Western scholars and, although I believe full heartedly in science, I do not think it has any precedence over any other cultural tradition.

In the case of Australia, the indigenous aboriginal inhabitants have long faced many struggles with the colonizing governments, much the same way as the first peoples of Canada have, and so when I see articles like the ones we had to read it makes me cringe a little. These people have undergone immense hardships and disrespect, not only at the hands of the government, but also from those early looters who called themselves ‘archaeologists’ and seeing things like those articles is not going to make indigenous groups any more eager to work with archaeologists in the future. And that is where I think we can sort all this out; by establishing proper respectful, working relationships with the peoples whose history we’re researching because if we aren’t then I really don’t see any point. The reason I went to school to become an archaeologist is because I think the past is important to people and can benefit them in term of cultural maintenance and land rights issues and that is why I will do whatever job it is I hopefully one day get (fingers crossed). If archaeology is not accessible to the public, most importantly those member of the public who the research directly connects with, then what is the point? So a bunch of academics can get together and brag about what new thing they found that no one in the public will hear about, let alone be able to decipher through all the scholarly jargon we use. That just doesn’t seem worth it to me, public dissemination should be a major part of any archaeological research, not just the ones dealing with human remains and indigenous groups should be consulted from the very beginning. Maybe this is me being sentimental because the thought of some rude archaeologist digging up my bones, studying me under a cold light and then packing me away in some dark museum basement gives me the creeps but I think it’s also just a matter of what I think is right and fair when dealing with sensitive material and the people to whom this material rightly belongs.

Morell, Virginia

      1995 Who Owns the Past? Science, New Series 268(5216):1424-1426.

       In a paper for another class I’m looking into the origins of burial, which I thought would apply here pretty nicely. I posted about a site a while ago; Sima De Los Huesos in Spain, a cave site all full of youngish hominins possibly Neandertals possibly H. habilis. All these poor guys are basically piled in a sector of this cave and so people are thinking that this is an example of symbolic funerary behaviour. Now from my point of view I think I would be hesitant to chuck Great Uncle Joe and the other 40 people who died that day into a giant hole underground…seems a bit odd to me, but I was brought up in a culture with very strict, very formal, very ritualized funerary practices. And really whos to know what those ancient hominins who aren’t event he same species were thinking about their dead. I think it is pretty widely accepted that Neandertals had culture in one form or another, especially in the later periods of their existence. It is also accepted that they had formal burials for at least some of their people. Neandertals utilized the same tools as modern humans, exhibited complex thought patterns, most likely had speech and fashioned personal ornaments. Now when I look at all these qualifications of the Neandertals I think why not could they have had ritualized burials, I’m sure they were capable of it. But then again I’m capable of running down my street in a clown suit singing the national anthem…but I’m not going to. So, I think we need to be very careful when attempting to subscribe modern human behaviours to these ancient beings. The literature seems to vary between being very cautious about ascribing any kind of ritual behaviour to the ones who seem to be certain that Neandertals were very much like us and practised all sorts of fun symbolic things.

       What I have found is that pretty much all of the super interesting sites which would represent cool symbolic behaviour have been proved to be false. Take the Neandertal cave bear cult of Drachenloch Cave with all the stone structures full of cave bear skulls. Now this would have been an amazing find and truly attest to a ritualistic even spiritual aspect to the Neandertals. But again this site has been discredited by shoddy excavation, badly kept records and contradictory statements about the site by the principle investigator. In addition modern archaeologists have found that taphonomy could be responsible for pretty much all of the ‘ritually’ placed cave bear skulls and so called stone structures. So from this we can see how easily one might mistake natural processes for human produced ones. I think that the origins of burial probably will remain pretty cloudy until more conclusive sites are found or the time machine is invented…which would be awesome. 

Did we invent cannabalism?

Today I was working on a discussion for my Neandertal class about whether Neandertals were engaging in cannibalism and while I'm pretty sick of picturing people going at each other for dinner I thought it would make a relevant blog post. Finding a practice such as cannibalism in the archaeological record is tough, I think this is evidenced by the fact that there is no unequivocal example of cannibalism in the archaeological record. There are tons of papers on it though, either claiming to have a site with evidence of it or telling these people that they're wrong. I'm not exactly sure why it seems we want to find this in our past so bad; for obvious reasons cannibalism is usually looked at in a negative light. In the case of the Caribs of the Caribbean region, Europeans used accusations of cannibalism in order to justify the murder and exploitation of these people...who were never really cannibals at all. Which is why I find it fascinating that people find cannibalism so fascinating. While trying to track down the articles I had to read for my discussion, I came across many, many others talking about cannibalism in an archaeological light. As I've mentioned for almost all of these papers there is another to criticize it and give alternative, just as likely, explanations for the assemblages. People look at things like; cut marks, burning, disassociation of bones among many other lines of evidence to distinguish 'cannibalistic' remains; though cannibalism has never been a completely accepted practice.
In almost all societies there is a taboo against cannibalism, this is most likely a result of the obvious health issues involved, there is no way I'd eat something as disgusting as a human being, and when it is practised is is usually the result of either survival practices or some sort of ritual practice which is partaken of only at specific times, often only by specific people (ex. warriors, shaman, ect.). And because archaeologists are so keen on using modern ethnographic comparisons to project onto past populations, sometimes of a different species ie Neandertals, it is again curious to me that with the lack of evidence for cannibalism among modern populations, researchers insist on trying to find evidence of this in the archaeological record. I almost think its like the train wreck that you can't look away from; cannibalism is something terrible and so against what our society thinks is 'right' or 'moral' that people find it so intriguing and want to find out who and why someone would engage in this type of activity. Overall I find it pretty gross and would be perfectly happy to think that it doesn't exist at all but with all things in archaeology you never really know and cannot project ideals of our present ideas of what is normal behaviour or what should be.