Whose Rights to Which Past? Archaeologists, Anthropologists, and the Ethics and Aesthetics of Heritage in the Global Hierarchy of Value

Abstract

The slightest engagement with the archaeology of Greece is fraught with political sensitivities, as many archaeologists—several of them Greek—have come to realize. Social anthropology and archaeology are discovering common ground of a relatively novel kind. The slave traders of Africa responded to the increasingly exigent colonial demand for free labor; antiquities trade is sustained economically by the wealthiest members of the very societies that institutionally condemn tomb robbers and antiquities dealers to opprobrium and punishment for desecrating the sacred heritage. Sometimes politicians are more determined to reify certain monuments, and to isolate them from the common people whose heritage they supposedly represent, than are even the scholar-practitioners charged with their preservation. Far-right movements are quick to take advantage of discontent with national governments by cultivating especially hateful forms of racism on the grounds of preserving authenticity, indigeneity, and local heritage.

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