Advocacy for Archaeology: How Does a 35-Year Effort End Up in Failure and What to Do about It?

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Thirty-five years of very active advocacy of the importance of the archaeological record of Bermuda, England’s second and oldest continuing New World colony, has had little or no effect. Unlike many places in the world, which have embraced the scholarly significance of historical archaeology only within the past two decades, Bermuda continues to ignore what remains of a remarkable terrestrial archaeological heritage. In part the result of a deserved emphasis on underwater archaeology, the lack of preservation of terrestrial archaeological sites reflects a combination of political factors on the island, Chief among these is the continuing conflict between two narratives—that evidence of the first permanent English settlement and it’s surviving World Heritage legacy should be the focus of attention, versus the argument that the importance of heritage should be to illustrate the crippling effects of enslavement on the majority of Bermuda’s population. The single active archaeological project on Bermuda examines the former; there are no projects currently examining the latter. Prior research since 1988, however, has produced much archaeological evidence that can be reanalyzed and productively employed to address this conflict in heritage values on Bermuda and potentially lead to a concerted program of archaeological preservation.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 37342.0