The Conceptual and Ethical Limits of Heritage in Archaeology
Part of: Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)
This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "The Conceptual and Ethical Limits of Heritage in Archaeology" at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.
The papers in this panel will push the theoretical discussion about the material, economic, and legal aspects of archaeological sites and artifacts. Though a large literature focuses on the best practices and politics of heritage management, this has placed an overwhelming focus on how different academic, national, and local stakeholders create narratives around heritage objects. The goal here is to move the discussion beyond the politics of telling stories around heritage to examine the legal, technical, and ethical limits of how those sites are physically transformed and financially exploited. At stake is the need to create legally consistent and intellectually rigorous notions of heritage management that can help manage archaeological sites without reproducing hierarchies that have deep roots in the history of academic and museological institutions.
Other Keywords
Cultural Resources and Heritage Management •
Historic •
Cultural Heritage and Preservation •
Power Relations and Inequality •
Museums, Collections, and Repatriation •
COVID19 •
critical heritage; substantive heritage •
Theories of Heritage
Geographic Keywords
Multi-regional/comparative •
Mesoamerica •
United Mexican States (Country) •
Republic of El Salvador (Country) •
Belize (Country) •
Republic of Guatemala (Country) •
North America (Continent) •
Worldwide
Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-4 of 4)
- Documents (4)
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From Critical to Substantive Heritage Practice (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "The Conceptual and Ethical Limits of Heritage in Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Over the past two decades, the Critical Heritage Studies Movement (CHSM) has spurred a sea change in archaeological, anthropological, and historical approaches to the study of heritage. CHSM scholars interrogated the underlying assumptions of the growing heritage industry, including how places and objects designated as...
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Healing Trauma through Heritage Making: Perspectives from COVID-19 (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "The Conceptual and Ethical Limits of Heritage in Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Through a contemporary archaeology of the COVID-19 pandemic, we attempt to dissect practices of commemoration, remembrance, and memory, which are linked to the process of heritage making through anthropological archaeology methodologies. The global pandemic poses some opportunities and challenges to archaeologists. On the one...
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Politicizing Heritage: How Government Protections Use Heritage Assets to Control the Maya Past (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "The Conceptual and Ethical Limits of Heritage in Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Political involvement in the protection of historic resources often places a façade on historic narratives that creates a distance between communities and their heritage. Often, this control reflects leftover colonial legacies, creating structures of power that do not allow communities to advance economically, socially, or...
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What Happens When Objects Become Artifacts? (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "The Conceptual and Ethical Limits of Heritage in Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The term “artifactual surface” refers to a particular confluence of law and materiality. Protections that are afforded to objects of tangible cultural heritage assume that these objects should indefinitely retain the same physical form that they possessed at the time that that came under official protection. This assumption...