The Conceptual and Ethical Limits of Heritage in Archaeology

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.