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Title: Radical Archaeology as Dissent Author: Theresa Kintz Language: en Topics: academy, anthropology, ecology, technology Source: Retrieved on January 27, 2010 from http://green-anarchy.wikidot.com/radical-archaelogy-as-dissent
Radical — Departing markedly from the usual or customary; extreme;
Favoring or effecting fundamental or revolutionary changes in current
practices, conditions, or institutions.
Archaeology — The systematic recovery and study of material evidence,
such as graves, buildings, tools, and pottery, remaining from past human
life and culture.
Government-Mandated, Taxpayer-Supported Social Science
In 1966 the United States congress passed the National Historic
Preservation Act (NHPA). This federal mandate requires potential impacts
to significant historic properties and archaeological sites must be
considered during federal project planning and execution. As a result
professional, academically trained archaeologists conduct intensive
field investigations ahead of all new road construction; survey all gas
pipeline right-of-ways; check ahead every dam or dike built by the Army
Corps of Engineers and before any construction project in a National
Park or National Forest can proceed.
A Cultural Resources Management (CRM) archaeological report prepared for
compliance with NHPA will attempt to describe the adverse effects a
project will have on “cultural resources” in the same way the related
Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) will address the potential impacts
on “natural resources”. Literally hundreds of archaeological
investigations are taking place simultaneously across the country all
year round. Archaeologists will write copiously about the history and
prehistory of each project area and every single artifact recovered is
destined to be perpetually preserved in a curation facility.
Even though this social science research is directly paid for by
taxpayers or ultimately absorbed into the costs charged consumers by the
private industries required to contract for archaeological services,
these reports rarely make it into the hands of the local public. Most
people will never learn what the archaeologists had to say about the
history of their community and the excuse most often cited for this lack
of widespread public dissemination of research is cost.
Resource:
a. resources. The total means available for economic and political
development, such as mineral wealth, labor force, and armaments.
b. resources. The total means available to a company for increasing
production or profit, including plant, labor, and raw material; assets.
c. Such means considered individually.
The codification of this idealistic federal mandate to preserve the past
for the future and the subsequent rise of the cultural resource
management “industry” has meant archaeology is no longer merely a
scholarly pursuit, it is a business. Like the environment, the tangible
cultural heritage of all the people who have ever lived in North America
is now legally considered a commodity — a “resource” to be managed by
bureaucratic agencies, exploited for gain and indiscriminately destroyed
by development. A discussion is now emerging within the radical
archaeology movement that attempts understand how this may be
influencing the conduct, scholarly direction, research questions and
class dimensions of conte mporary archaeological research.
The term stone age applies to that period in human prehistory when
people accomplished all of the tasks they needed to accomplish in their
daily lives using a stone/bone/wood tool technology. In this part of
North America, the stone age lasted until Europeans made contact with
Native Americans only a few hundred years ago. Now planes fly overhead,
we drive to work in cars and return to our electrified homes at night to
check our email on computers and watch satellite TV reports on cloning.
Human material culture, social organization and resource distribution
has become so complicated in the last few centuries that scholars in any
field of study would be hard pressed to make sense of the root causes or
potential effects. But should this preclude the
anthropologists/archaeologists who study these categorical constructions
from trying? Especially when so many are beginning to realize that the
science and technologies the emerging global society has so much faith
in may actually be creating some big matter and substance problems for
the planet and every living thing on it, including our own species.
So what do the archaeologists really think all these asphalt roads and
gas pipelines we are helping to build all over the world are going to
look like in 100, 200, 1000, 20,000 years? Petrochemicals are a finite
resource after all — and what about all the cities with their requisite
malls? airports? nuclear power generators? dams? etc.? It appears that
most people operate under the mistaken impression that these things we
are so busy making are going to be functioning “forever”, or at least a
modified version of them will be. Archaeologists know that’s not likely
to be true — they are forced to confront the enormity of this
realization every day.
One thing archaeology demonstrates beyond a reasonable doubt is that
there is no such thing as “away” when one speaks about throwing things
(like arrowheads; broken dishes; nails; glass; spent nuclear fuel;
asphalt; refrigerators; autos; computers; diapers) away. The knowledge
gained by doing archaeology provides some insight into what is probably
going to be the fate of all these concrete, plastic, metal, toxic,
complicated, real, material, empirical objects our modern material
culture produces.
In the southern tier of New York, 12,000 years of continuous Native
American occupation left the scant legacy of ephemeral hearth features,
delicate spear points, broken pieces of pottery and graves which
prehistoric archaeologists study. But what do we see here now, after
only a couple of hundred years since European colonization and
industrialization?... things like superfund sites, nuclear warheads,
factory farms, denuded forests, poisoned rivers and dying industrial
towns with already crumbling inner-cities. Archaeologists recognize how
this alteration of matter our society engages in is unprecedented in
terms of the scope of the distribution and essential durability of the
composite materials modern technology is capable of creating. The new
reality is that every generation of humans to come is going to have to
deal with the social and environmental impacts of our complex modern
material culture.
For and Why?
Under NHPA, corporately or privately owned and managed CRM firms staffed
by professional archaeologists are hired by developers to conduct
archaeological investigations ahead of construction projects.The project
may be a gas pipeline, a new road, a housing development or a dike, but
by looking for the sites and then digging them up, archaeologists are
sending the inherently political message: “This development project is
OK if we can do our work first”.
However, there may be a few hundred rural residents whose family
homesteads are due to be razed because local politicians and the DOT
have determined a road needs to be widened so throngs of sports fans can
make their way to a local college football stadium at a higher rate of
speed. Those folks in the way may disagree with such a value judgment.
Valid concerns may also be raised by ecologists regarding the impacts
the same project will have in terms of wetlands destruction, habitat
loss for native animal and plant species and the effects of the added
pollution on the local environment. These groups will be opposed to the
development.
So whose interests/political agenda are the CRM archaeologists serving
in a case like this? Who really benefits from these projects? What
contemporary environmental and cultural impacts will they have? Does the
development truly represent what is in the public’s best long-term
interests as far as we know? Do the archaeologists have a responsibility
to consider these issues ... to contradict a development project they
consider unwise — or were they co-opted by the political forces whose
funding they rely on as soon as the contract was signed?
Through their actions on behalf of the developers, CRM archaeologists
are taking a very public pro-development political stance, even though
it is possible to construct some very cogent arguments against
unsustainable development using worldwide archaeological research as
evidence. By focusing on certain issues addressed in modern
archaeological theory like the effects of over-exploitation of resources
surrounding human habitations; the outcomes of increasing social
stratification; the consequences of proliferating complexity in material
culture and resource distribution; the potential for conflicts as a
result of scarcity; etc... one can come to some very different
conclusions about the wisdom of the pro-development agenda the dominant
forces in western culture have deemed progressive and in the global
society’s best interest. Archaeologically derived knowledge of the past
does provide a scientifically legitimate theoretical starting point for
evaluating contemporary ideologies. But can alternative interpretations
of the meaning of “progress” find expression in an atmosphere where even
addressing such a proposition means a scholar would be biting hand that
feeds him?
The interdependent relationship that has evolved between anthropology
and development compromises the discipline’s intellectual integrity and
autonomy. By funding the majority of archaeological research conducted
in the US, developers assure the content of scholar’s work will never
contradict the policies or conflict with the interests of those
political and economic forces who are promoting the development. Is it
intellectually honest or ethical for American Archaeology to be involved
in condoning an unsustainable pro-development agenda, thereby helping
certain ideological forces in western society to lead the “developing”
world down this materially complicated path? Archaeologists/social
scientists in the United States of America at the end of the millennium
have accepted responsibility for engendering the epistemology used to
interpret the past of our incredibly globally-influential society.Some
would argue we therefore have an obligation to apply ourselves and
engage in a little prognostication about what our peculiar kind of
political, technological, economic adaptation may mean to the future. In
practice, federally mandated archaeology supports a political agenda
some scholars may reasonably conclude is at best ill-considered, at
worst socially destructive, but a critique of development can never be
advanced under the current circumstances. Rather than acknowledging the
intellectually compromising nature of this arrangement, most CRM
archaeologists are content to view their primary role in society to be
that of assisting their clients in jumping through regulatory hoops in
exchange for money — becoming willing partners in the commodification of
knowledge and the destruction of archaeological sites while enhancing
their own careers by reporting on their “significant finds” for a
limited audience of other archaeologists.
It is ironic that almost everyone in the field would freely admit that
ideally it is the public’s interests which should be served by our
national commitments to archaeology. Students trained in anthropology
departments across the country (including here at SUNY Binghamton)
acquire an in-depth and distinctive understanding of global prehistory,
history and contemporary culture. Theoretically, this educational
experience teaches them to speak about the world we all live in with a
legitimacy few others can command. Philosophically profound and
politically powerful research questions about the past and the future of
the global society could be asked and possibly answered if
anthropologists were as committed to participating as citizens in
contemporary communicative action as they are in earning a comfortable
living as reclusive intellectual elites. Studying the politics of the
past should inspire anthropologists to contemplate and comment on the
politics of what they are doing here now .
Archaeologists ultimately make a choice, as Temple University
anthropology professor Tom Patterson said at a recent lecture on campus,
to be “boosters of civilization, or critics of civilization”.
Archaeologists could become very effective social critics of rampant
technological change, corporate domination, hierarchical class systems
and unsustainable development if they chose to interpret the “evidence”
they study in a different light. The federal mandate that bestows the
responsibility of interpreting the past for the public on the CRM
archaeologists provides the discipline with a powerful rhetorical
platform which could be used to foster debates about the present wisdom
and potential consequences of unsustainable development. Unfortunately,
such a debate is unlikely to be encouraged as long as the archaeologists
are on the developer’s payroll.
Another outcome of this federal mandate and the subsequent rise of the
CRM industry is that now the social science of archaeology has a
“laborer class” numbering in the thousands. The nature of the business
relationship between archaeology and development has had both
disillusioning and economically detrimental effects on this growing
underclass within the archaeological community.
The archaeologists who are typically hired on a per project basis to
execute the fieldwork are expected to have a BA anthropology with
training in archaeological field methods. These folks will find
employment in the CRM industry soon after graduation, entering the
workforce with the reasonable expectation of being able to make a living
(and begin paying off their student loans and credit card bills) once
they have completed their degree. The labor market is swamped with a new
group of these young people every spring thanks to professors who
encouragingly post job notices on anthro department bulletin boards.
But what these idealistic recent anthropology grads find once they are
out in the field is a well-educated, apparently uncaring archaeological
establishment that not only wants to deny them any professional status,
undervalues their contribution to the research and views them as
disposable employees — but also wants to pay them less than a McDonalds
worker in Manhattan with no benefits!
Contracts for archaeological services are awarded through a competitive
bidding process with the lowest bid usually receiving the contract. The
professional archaeologists who comprise the CRM management class have
found one of the most effective ways to keep bids low and increase their
firm’s profit margin is to pay their workers lower wages than
competitors. The result of this low-down approach has meant that wages
for professional field archaeologists have stayed around the $8.00 an
hour range since the 1980’s (including here at the SUNY-Bing run CRM
firm PAF — Public Archaeology Facility — which is one of the top 5 money
generating institutions at the university and competes with private
industry) CRM management salaries are typically $26,000-$45,000+ per
year with benefits. The much larger class of field archaeologists will
earn tops $11,000-$16,000 per year and never receive any benefits from
their employers.
This lack of respect and under compensation for the labor of field
archaeologists is endemic in the CRM industry and within the past 5
years a fledgling labor movement gained ground within the work force.
The aim of the United Archaeological Field Technicians (UAFT) is to
address the inequality and unionize archaeological field workers.
Management’s response to the organization of the labor union was the
formation of their own trade association — the American Cultural
Resources Association (ACRA). These groups representing two very
different classes within the archaeological community continue to wage
war against one another over wages. When officials from federal agencies
became involved in the negotiations between management and labor in CRM
archaeology, management vehemently argued the current state of affairs
was fine by them.
The union found virtually no support for their initiatives within the
archaeological establishment. Archaeology is a business, but it is also
a social science and its practitioners are assumed to be well-versed in
the history of class struggles and the relationship between economic
security and personal autonomy. Why then would the professional
archaeologists who manage CRM firms feel comfortable with the
exploitation of fieldworkers? After all, it is the field archaeologists
who lay the foundation on which all of the grand theories based on
archaeological evidence are built. Their contribution is both essential
and valuable. Their perspective is unique. Maybe this situation exists
precisely because archaeology is a business now and, as happens in most
businesses, the bottom line becomes more important to these
archaeologists than nurturing the careers of their laborer class
colleagues.
As students we learn the theoretical underpinnings of archaeological
thought and receive an introduction to the methods and goals of the
discipline. However, once we get out in the field we soon find out that
the knowledge, skills and abilities essential to conducting
archaeological fieldwork must be learned through apprenticeship and
mastered by the continuous application and situational modification of
the techniques we have learned. Fieldwork merges theory and practice.
The kind of expertise a “dirt” archaeologist develops can be compared to
the kind of expertise the ethnographer in cultural anthropology
cultivates. She understands how sustained exposure to the sights,
sounds, smells, climate, physical setting, and material objects used by
the living culture which is the object of study amplifies the level of
insight achieved by the observer. The same is true of field archaeology.
As we personally encounter on a daily basis the objects of
interpretation — the artifacts and site environments, the communities as
they are now and the evidence of what they were like thousands of years
ago — the field archaeologist gains knowledge and perfects perception
through practical experience of the real world. This is truly one of the
most rewarding aspects of being a field archaeologist and it incites
many of us to dissent.
Dissent
1. To differ in opinion or feeling; disagree.
2. To withhold assent or approval.
Theresa Kintz, New York — field archaeologist and dissenter.