starzmann - cultural imperialism and armed conflict

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Cultural Imperialism and Heritage Politics

in the Event of Armed Conflict: Prospectsfor an Activist Archaeology

Maria Theresia Starzmann, Department of Anthropology,

Binghamton University (SUNY), PO Box 6000, Binghamton,

NY 13902-6000, USA

E-mail: [email protected]

ABSTRACT________________________________________________________________

The production of archaeological knowledge is embedded in a long-

standing tradition of colonial encounters. This paper asks how political-

economic interests impinge on archaeological work, specifically in the event

of armed conflict. To answer this question I discuss commodification of

cultural heritage and analyze it as a form of structural violence. I argue that

the attitude that allows treatment of archaeological artifacts as saleableitems with international owners is part of a strategy of global cultural

imperialism. Exemplified by the case of the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003,

this paper shows how the clash of global heritage politics with local

practices of memorializing the past results in a tension: because capitalist

governments consider the locales whose glorious pasts are studied by

archaeologists to be culturally inferior, the nexus between (trans-)national

actors and local communities is an asymmetrical one. In order to overcome

the hegemonic role of archaeology within these dynamics, I propose an

activist archaeology that enables a political activism grounded inrecursivity.________________________________________________________________

Resume:La production de la connaissance archeologique est ancree dans

une longue tradition des occurrences du colonialisme. Cet article montre

comment les interets politico-economiques empietent sur le travail

archeologique, tout particulierement en cas de guerre. Pour repondre acette

question je discute de la marchandisation de lheritage culturel et je lanalyse

en tant que forme de violence structurelle. Je montre que lattitude qui

permet le traitement dobjets archeologiques en tant quarticles

commercialisable par des proprietaires internationaux fait partie dune

strategie dimperialisme culturel mondial. Exemplifiedans le cas de linvasion

americaine de lIrak en 2003, cet article montre comment laffrontement de

politiques dheritage mondial avec les pratiques locales dimmortalisation

REVIEW

ARCHAEOLO

GIESVolume4

Number3

December2008

368 2008 World Archaeological Congress

Archaeologies: Journal of the World Archaeological Congress ( 2008)

DOI 10.1007/s11759-008-9083-7


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du passe resulte en une tension: parce que les gouvernements capitalistes

considerent les lieux dont le passe glorieux etudie par les archeologuescomme inferieur du point de vue culturel, la connexion entre les acteurs

nationaux et internationaux et les communautes locales est de nature

asymetrique. De facon a surmonter le role hegemonique de larcheologie

dans le cadre de ces dynamiques, je propose un archeologie activiste qui

permette un activisme politique se fondant sur la recursivite.________________________________________________________________

Resumen:La adquisicion de conocimientos arqueologicos se enmarca

dentro una larga tradicion de encuentros coloniales. En este trabajo busco

conocer hasta que punto los intereses polticos y economicos afectan al

trabajo arqueologico, sobre todo en el caso de conflictos armados. Para

responder a este interrogante, analizo la comercializacion del patrimonio

cultural en forma de violencia estructural. Argumento que la actitud que

permite tratar los objetos arqueologicos como artculos comerciales con

propietarios internacionales es parte de una estrategia de imperialismo

cultural global. Tomando como ejemplo la invasion estadounidense de Irak

en 2003, este trabajo demuestra que la poltica de patrimonio mundial y las

practicas locales de recordar el pasado provoca un choque no exento de

tension: dado que los gobiernos capitalistas consideran a los lugarenos

cuyo glorioso pasado esta siendo estudiado por los arqueologosinferiores

culturalmente, el nexo entre los actores (trans)nacionales y las comunidades

locales es bastante asimetrico. Para superar el papel hegemonico de la

arqueologica dentro de esta dinamica, propongo una arqueologa activista

que permita un activismo poltico basado en la recursividad._______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

KEYWORDS

Cultural imperialism, Structural violence, Political archaeology, Colonialism,

Material culture,Heritage,Globalization_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The Non-possibility of Innocence

With an intensification of armed conflicts worldwide, war today hasbecome a foundational element of politics (Hardt and Negri 2004:67).

Archaeological work is not immune to such politics. In many cases, archae-

ologists risk ethical compromise in their decisions to begin, continue, orterminate their work in countries involved in civil or international wars.Yet, archaeologists often treat humanitarian and political crises as second-

ary to archaeological concerns (Bernbeck 2004; Steele 2005). As a result it

remains controversial to what degree, for example, issues of human rights

Cultural Imperialism and Heritage Politics in the Event of Armed Conflict 369


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should be considered in the work of archaeologists; it is unclear how ethi-

cal dilemmas get solved by archaeologists working in places disrupted bywar; and it is debated whether political activism in archaeological scholar-

ship is acceptable. For many archaeologists, a convenient circumvention of

these dilemmas is to claim an agenda-free position from where it isargued that the destruction of cultural heritage in the event of armed con-

flict is simply a preservationist problem of either preventing or document-

ing the damages that have occurred, rather than a political-economic

strategy employed by imperialist governments. However, the notion of anagenda-free or neutral academic scholar has always been a nave one

(Habermas 1960). Archaeologists produce knowledge that is not only inti-mately intertwined with their own social positions, but also politically

charged (Trigger1984). As a practice that is rooted within the broader fieldof past and present colonialism, the intellectual dissemination and repre-

sentation of archaeological knowledge inevitably involve political decisions

that may feed into political processes of domination. Innocence is not apossibility (Said1989).

It is only through critical reflexivity that archaeologists can question

their very practices of knowledge production. Such questioning must first

and foremost include the analysis of power relations between archaeologistsand the different stakeholdersdescendant communities, local govern-

ments, academic institutions, private investors, land owners, workers,etc.with which they engage (Pels 1997). It is, however, most important

to note that any analysis must fail if it remains on a purely discursive level

or is merely applied to the individual researcher. In order to undo the

hegemony of academic discourses, it is not enough to talk about a politics

of location where we position ourselves in relation to the knowledge weproduce as scholars. This kind of reflexivity needs to be recast into recur-

sivity and practiced as such. Reflexivity asks what constitutes the [anthro-

pologist] as a speaking subject. Recursivity asks what interrupts her anddemands a reply (Fortun 2001:23).1 As archaeologists we must take a

position amidst competing calls for response, thereby weighting the inter-

ests of the least represented stakeholder groupsthe disenfranchised

(Scham2001)over those of powerful capitalist institutions, military units,or individuals with business concerns. To really decenter the places from

where the anthropological objects of study are produced, it is necessary

that we hold ourselves accountable to the subjects of our studies byacknowledging their politicized subjectivities, allowing for politicization for

itself rather than in itself (Franklin 1995; Marcus 1998; Marx and Engels1939 [1845]; Myers 1988; Yanagisako and Delaney1995). The goal for thedisenfranchised, however, is not enfranchisementand consequentially,

participation in the political life of the statebut their liberation and the

consequential abolition of the disenfranchising system itself.

370 MARIA THERESIA STARZMANN


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In this paper I want to situate the production of archaeological knowl-

edge within the larger frame of (neo-)colonialist and (neo-)imperialist poli-tics world-wide. Following Meskell (2005:127), I will show how the

creation of sites of cultural heritage by both heritage consultants and

archaeologists is a culturally generative act that is intrinsically political.In this context, I will focus on discussing how the preservation of some

and the simultaneous neglect of other sites of cultural heritage go hand-in-

hand with the hegemonic claims of a universalistic reading (and writing)

of history as global heritage.2

Hegemonic Readings (and Writings) of History

UNESCOs concept of world heritage, materialized in the world heritage

list, is a prime example of a universalistic, yet object-centric reading of his-

tory. The practice of treating cultural heritage as specifically materialrevolves around three legal constructs of rights of ownership, rights of

access, and rights of inheritance (Meskell 2005:127), which are deeply

rooted in (neo-)liberal values. In the secular ethics of the capitalist state,

these juridical categories are blended with ethical ideas and hence appearas moral standards of modernity (see also Ticktin 2006).3 The result is a

universalizing language that elevates the legalmoral categories of owner-ship, access, and inheritance to global values, while cultural heritage itself

becomes a common good belonging to all of humanity (Pollock 2003,

2005; Pollock and Lutz 1994). The UNESCO world heritage list includes

851 properties forming part of the cultural and natural heritage which the

World Heritage Committee considers as having outstanding universalvalue (http://whc.unesco.org/en/list, retrieved Feb. 11, 2008, emphasis

mine).

At the same time, however, we find hierarchies among these global val-ues that are enacted by practices of exclusion and inclusion: only certain

historic events are selected for the archives of (and for) the privileged and

then naturalized as instances of a global history. Accordingly, while global

hierarchies of value do seem ethical, they in fact only legitimize hegemonythrough an appeal to a universal moral ground (Herzfeld 2004; but see

Heinz, this volume). Humanity itself is a homogenizing and thereby

exclusive category that erases the historical specificity of any possible oth-ers; instead the Others identity becomes a restrictive one that is imposed

from the outside (Trouillot 2003). Or more precisely, the identity of anyOther is constructed by way of inclusion of an outside that isolates thenonhuman within the human: the non-man is produced by the human-

ization of an animal: the man-ape, the enfant sauvage or Homo ferus, but

http://whc.unesco.org/en/listhttp://whc.unesco.org/en/list


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also and above all the slave, the barbarian, and the foreigner, as figures of

an animal in human form (Agamben2004:37).Ancient Mesopotamia, commonly referred to as the cradle of civiliza-

tion, is an oft-cited place that functions as a site of global cultural heritage

and yet remains a highly exclusive space. The trope of the cradle of civili-zation is, of course, not born out of embodied memories of a once shared

past; it results from the production of archives by way of constructing a

historical continuity, a historicized memory (if memory at all), that is

owned by those who define the rules for the production of historical nar-ratives and dominate the global market for their consumption. From early

on it was primarily Western European scholars who formulated a grandnarrative of the Orient, which represented their own as well as their gov-

ernments political interests. When the first Assyriologists located the ori-gins of what was considered a major scientific achievementwritingbut

also certain social and political-economic developments in Ancient Meso-

potamia, they not only pleased an interested lay audience, but essentiallydiscovered the primeval antecedent of the Occident. The use of the phrase

cradle of civilization in popular narratives about Mesopotamia therefore

unerringly highlights the paternalistic and colonialist implications of con-

sidering the nations infancy its crowning achievement. In Orientalist fash-ion, this suggests that these countries of the Middle East have never

surpassed their early glories and that the torch of civilization has sincepassed to Europe (Meskell 2005:139140; cf. Bahrani 1998).4 Global

meta-narratives of this kind serve to privatise ethics and globalise indiffer-

ence (Koerner 2004:211); they also underwrite the asymmetry of the

local-global nexus and as such assist in the cultural dominance of interests

of neo-colonial and neo-imperial countries over other countries and theircitizens.5

Universalizing historical narratives thus feed into colonialist discourses

just as much as they attend to nationalist interests, linking both of them tothe effect of constructing a past that legitimates the present (Trigger 1984;

Fowler 1987; Scham 1998). The universalization of history, or more pre-

cisely of the West-as-History, is thus the paradigm of modernity that

rules in the colonial setting: While global expansion permitted the Westto assert the universality of its reason despite its particularity, the colonized

were denied this privilege []. Their historical fate was to assert the

autonomy and universality of their culture in the domain of the nation(Prakash 2002:36). It is through the engendering of patriotic sentiments

that colonized peoples assert not only their cultural autonomy, but alsotheir political authority. And yet, such use of history is not restricted topoliticians, but archaeologists, too, by way of writing history, make

politics: they themselves often contribute to or follow the grand historical

narratives, while alternative histories are neglected or remain understudied



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as marginal to the disciplines core interests. Any historical continuities

are obviously the results of efforts to re/construct a long gone past thatgets idealized by cutting out those moments that are less attractive to the

most favored narrative (Connerton1989).

The Horror Vacui of the Imperial Map

At the same time, and ironically so, there is the almost obsessive urge ofhistorians, archaeologists, and collectors alike to fill the gaps in their

archives, and the horror vacui of so many ethnographic and archaeologicalmuseums (Corbey2000; cf. Penny2002). The institutionalized re/construc-

tion of a historicized memory by way of material traces, which usually doesnot allow for contested histories or historical errors (but see Kreps 2003),

is then the testimony for the fundamental collapse of memory (Nora

1989:7); where the archiving of historical truths according to empiricistlogic causes the alienation of descendant communities from their cultural

heritage in a globalized world (Yahya2005).

Certainly the removal of objects from their original contexts and their

management in museum collections play a crucial role here that is part ofthe political project of modernity: once pulled out from their life worlds

by collectors, objects come to contain an essential meaning that holds itsplace within the universal hierarchy of values; and the historical narratives

displayed in museums are really only productions of the museum itself

(Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 2006). Simultaneously, a basic form of identifica-

tion and agency is lost on the level of the local actors who have been

deprived of what they may consider their very own heritage objects. Thecirculation of ethnographic or archaeological artifacts is instead utilized in

colonialist (and capitalist) practices for making as well as for controlling

subjects (Comaroff and Comaroff 1997). It is, however, not the making ofsubjects through objects as such that is specific to capitalism, but the par-

ticular mechanism that fetishizes commodities based on a belief in the

monetary exchange value of any object and the drenching of life with

material consumption.

Spatialized Time

Archaeology contributes to these processes through techniques of object

manipulation (such as establishing typologies and taxonomies), where notonly the relationships between objects and subjects, but also those between

past and present get defined (Pels 1997; Dietler 2005). Creating authorita-tive historical truths by way of managing objects, archaeological knowledge



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can assist in mapping out the cultures of the world in a fashion that makes

them understandable to and controllable by the metropolis. In manyinstances this knowledge is employed by powerful governments as an

instrument of colonialism (Dietler2005:65) and motivation for imperial

expansion (Barringer and Flynn1998; Corbey2000).Characteristic of archaeological techniques of object manipulation is that

the meaning of objects is regulated according to a normative order that

operates on the basis of similarity and difference. Rather than being per-

ceived as things in motion that have a social life or cultural biographies(Appadurai 1986; Kopytoff1986), archaeological artifacts are placed within

a nearly unalterable hierarchy of values. Consequently, anthropologistslearned to read the materiality of objects as unambiguous and ever lasting

expressions of human cultural behavior that can be captured in amuseum showcase. Such a reified understanding of objectsas well as a

notion that the museum showcase is notpart of an objects life cyclenot

only render human cultural practices, but culture itself static, with stablenotions of author and subject (Said 1989). This view eventually allows for

the production of a quintessential Other whose indispensable qualities are

circumscribed by the boundaries of a Culture. According to Fabian

(1983), constructing the Other as such requires the introduction of anevolutionary notion of spatialized time where the spatial separation of for-

eign (often primitive) people and their (usually exotic) cultures directlyreflects a distance in time. Ultimately, spatialized time allows neither for

coevalness nor for history, or historicity, of the Other (Fabian 1983; cf.

Trouillot 1995, 2002; Wolf 1982). Thus removed from modernity, the

primitiveness of other people becomes the factor that is used to justify

the colonialist encounter (Trigger1984:362363):

During the colonial period, archaeologists and ethnologists regarded the so-

called tribal cultures of sub-Saharan Africa as a living but largely staticmuseum of the past [] The role that was assigned to prehistoric Hamitic

peoples in transmitting to sub-Saharan Africa a smattering of more advanced

traits that were assumed to be ultimately of Near Eastern origin bore a strik-

ing resemblance of the civilizing missions that European colonists were

claiming for themselves. And as the evolutionary concept of spatialized time

gets applied to the archaeological past, here too past cultures and people

come to be perceived as fixed in timepassive (Arnold1999).

Appropriated History

Museum collections contribute to this essentialized understanding of cul-

ture, where objects (as well as people!6) are not only removed from their



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original contexts, but their meanings undergo radical changes (Thomas

2004). As institutional frameworks of colonialism and imperialism, therepresentations of ethnographic as well as archaeological objects they con-

tain must therefore be understood as a form of appropriation of cul-

tural others (Corbey 2000:12; cf. Liverani 2005). The 1882 exhibition byPitt Rivers in Oxford serves as a case in point: here objects wereas

decontextualized artifactspressed into a typological scheme within

which the exotic curiosities of the collection could entirely be inter-

preted in compliance with the universe of Western Man (Dias, quotedin Bereau 2004:94).7 Rather than by geographic or cultural origin, for

example, Pitt Rivers ordered objects according to form and functionresulting in a list of artifact classes that reads like this: agriculture, ani-

malia, animal gear, archery weapon, armour weapon, bag, barkcloth, bas-ketry, bead, body art, box, carving, ceremonial, children, clothing,

clothing textile, clothing footgear, clothing handgear, clothing headgear,

clothing underwear [].8

A prerequisite for the establishment of museums is, however, not only

the appropriation of ethnographic or archaeological objects, but also their

world-wide circulation. It is the movement of goods across borders that

stimulates the expansion of empires on a global scale and the multiplica-tion of the metropolis tentacles into the remotest locales. Therefore, in

times of economic globalization cultural heritage and its materialobjectsarchaeological artifacts in particularbecome part of the global

flow of capital and people, and ultimately are treated as economic

resources with international owners (Kammeier 2003; Pollock and Lutz

1994). Collectors and dealers of antiquities, in particular, often reason

that antiquities belong wherever the market distributes them, suggestingthat strong export controls would rather foster black markets (MacKenzie

2002; but see Yahya, this volume). As a result, cultural heritage becomes

reduced to and reified in saleable material objects that belong to thosewho can afford to pay for them. Through the notion of ownership of

material culture, heritage and identity are now linked to ideas of private

property and assigned a place in the global hierarchies of value (Kirs-

henblatt-Gimblett 2006; Pollock 2003; Posey 1998). The commodified andfetishized objects of cultural heritage are converted into physical correlates

for dominant historical narratives, so that any archaeological commodity

may at this point be appropriated to serve the expression of identityclaims. In stark contrast to this capitalist understanding of cultural heri-

tage, the role archaeological objects might play in the memories and lifeworlds of indigenous groups without having been assigned a market valueis neglected by most international collectors (museums and governments

included).



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Cultural Imperialism

In many instances neglect of indigenous peoples identity claims includes

active efforts on the part of the colonizing powers to transform or destroy

the cultural heritage of descendant communities as long as their interestsdo not support the empires political-economic goals (Arnold1999; Corbey

2000).9 As the case of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 demonstrates, the

conscious or deliberate neglect and destruction of heritage serves a geopo-

litical strategy of cultural imperialism (cf. Bernbeck and Pollock 2004),which is characterized both by the exercise of military power and the per-

petuation of notions of civilization, progress, democracy, and order asmodernization (Slater2004; Stoler2006).

US cultural imperialism is really a form of neo-imperialism, because notonly in the Middle East, but also in Central and Latin America, as well as

in Africa and Asia, the United States has replaced the great earlier empiresas the dominant outside force (Said 1989:215, emphasis in the origina-

l)and has for itself created empire as a way of life (ibid.; see also Lutz

2006). Despite its name, this form of imperialism has not first and fore-

most a cultural motivation, but an economic one that plays out in cultural

terms: modernization, on the one hand, is measured in terms of eco-nomic development; while deep time,10 on the other hand, is materialized

in artifacts and monuments that have ascribed monetary value. In this cul-tural economy, which operates on a global level, ownership over the his-

torical narratives and their material correlates becomes a tool for

demonstrating and realizing economic claims (Hamm2005; Waters1995).

The Antiquities Black Market

In the case of the war in Iraq, the damaging of numerous archaeologicalsites as well as the looting of artifacts by both military personnel and local

populations have occurred and are often still ongoing. Due to the fact that

governmental as well as non-governmental institutions world-wide turn ablind eye to, or even participate in these events, the illicit trade in antiqui-

ties has grown enormously after the latest invasion of Iraq. The phenome-non of the antiquities black market not only further facilitates the

commodification and globalization of cultural heritage, but it epitomizes

one facet of cultural imperialismthe structural violence that causes the

disempowerment of local communities by means of a repressive political-economic structure (Galtung2004; see also Bernbeck, this volume).The illicit trade in antiquities is supposed to be one of the largest illegal

businesses in the world, the third-largest type of black market traffickingbehind the illicit drugs and weapons trading, with an estimated profit of



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4 billion US dollars per year (Elich 2004). The profit in trading increases

with each transaction where it is primarily the middleman, as part of aninternational network of dealers, who accrues profit at a rate of over 98%

of the final price (Brodie et al. 2002). Buyers on the Western European

and North American market include auction houses as well as private peo-ple and organizations that acquire looted artifacts. Museums as buyers of

antiquities from Iraq include, for example, the New York Metropolitan

Museum of Art, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Minneapolis Insti-

tute of Arts, the Toledo Museum of Art, the Princeton Fine Arts Museum,and the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles.11

The global flow of antiquities is subject to the teleology of themarketthe new master narrative of Western modernity (Trouillot

2003:48)that contributes to an erasure of social and cultural differenceswhile the commodification of material objects results in unequal access to

cultural heritage. The argument that the illicit trade in antiquities brings

economic benefit to hard-pressed local communities does not hold true.According to Brodie et al. (2000:1314) a fossil turtle bought from its fin-

der in Brazil for $10 fetched $16,000 in Europe []. Once commodified

on the Western market, objects continue to circulate for years, perhaps

centuries, generating money in transaction after transaction. None of thismoney goes to the original finders or owners or their descendants []. A

more recent case has been reported by AFP, according to which a smallMesopotamian figurine of a lion (the Guennol Lioness) was sold for over

57 million US dollars.12 I consider this structural violence because of the

aforementioned repressive and exploitative political-economic structure

that may cause or contribute to alienation of local communities from their

cultural heritage. At the same time this structure does not always appear asrepressive and can very well be couched in terms of education or human-

itarian intervention. It is such humanitarian imperialism (Stoler

2006:129) that justifies the invasion by military and economic power intoevery aspect of daily life, even the most intimate. As is stated most explic-

itly in a report by the US Defense Science Board, The Armed Forces are

no longer engaged solely in warfare. Their missions now include pacifica-

tion, assistance, the battle of ideas, etc. (quoted in Said1989:214).

In the Margins of the State

Global business in cultural heritage contradicts most current practices of

heritage management. In most cases, the object heritage is still subject tothe sovereignty of nation-states, and the destruction of cultural heritage is

punished by national law-making and executive practices (Young 2004).What is more, as the trafficking of stolen antiquities tends to transcend



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national boundaries, international agreements exist to prevent this traffick-

ing. However, such agreements usually remain ineffective since they arenot backed by law. Others are never even put into practice, such as those

designed in the Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the

Event of Armed Conflict (The Hague 1954, Art. 4, 3; see also Yahya, thisvolume).13 This Convention, designed to prohibit, protect and [] put a

stop to any form of theft, pillage or misappropriation of [] cultural

property (UNESCO), has neither been ratified by the US nor the United

Kingdom, the main invaders of Iraq (Young2004).14

In the case of Iraq, as in many others, the illicit trade in antiquities

takes place in an in-between space that is located at the margins of thestate (Jeganathan 2004:74; see also Sauders, this volume).15 This space is

disorderly and, especially in times of conflict, only insufficiently covered bylaw. Rather than referring to any physical borders, the margins are a space

that is constantly moving in reference to the places where an illicit action

takes place and is not limited to the frontiers of nation-states: the traffick-ing of antiquities extends past the territorial limits of the nation-state and

onto a transnational level. As such it becomes a global business that

involves people and institutions around the world as clients. Consequen-

tially, this in-between, or third space of the black market can seldom belocalized and now also refers to non-places such as a cyber-space in which

much of the illicit selling of archaeological artifacts takes place. We arethus confronted with a seemingly paradoxical situation of the materiality

of antiquity on the one hand, and the floating post-materiality

(Hamilakis2000:244), so to speak, of the cyber-discourse about antiquity.

Yet, even a cyber-discourse is led by real individuals who tend to live

in specific places and participate in localized communities which have theirown and diverse interpretations of history. It is real individuals who fight

the erasure of principles such as equality, the right to human bodily integ-

rity, or the protection of civilians. Their discourses can be read as a formof resistance to the globalizing trend. It is thus that concepts of collective

identity are not only politically exploited by nation-states in order to create

loyal citizens or imperial subjects but can equally well be employed by

communities that are opposing the state and trying to legitimize claims toalternative forms of loyalty (Meyer and Geschiere1999; cf. Anderson1991;

Hamilakis and Yalouri1996). If we remain ignorant of such forms of agen-

cyforms of agency that usually remain unacknowledged on the nation-state levelarchaeologists will once more find themselves in complicity

with the ideologically and economically powerful where the study of sup-posedly culturally dependent and inferior locales by anthropologists goeshand-in-hand with their imperial domination (McGuire and Navarrete

2005). Rather, we must come to understand that the production of locality

through global discourses can be a powerful counter-hegemonic strategy: it



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prevents the fragmentation of local forms of resistance by creating world-

wide forms of solidarity for local liberation struggles. As archaeologists wecan choose to support those struggles by acknowledging the local dis-

courses as defensive mechanisms rather than as preconditions to enfran-

chisement, which can always only mean enfranchisement within a colonialsystem rather than replacement of that colonial system itself.16

An Activist Archaeology

This paper has attempted to demonstrate how the preservation of so-calledcultural heritage in museums as well as its destruction in the event of

armed conflict may be considered instruments of colonialism and imperial-ism. In both cases the equation is that he who owns the past owns the

present and may make claims to a countrys resources. The past as a narra-

tive is, in the majority of cases, still owned by Western European andNorth American researchers. Through the monopolization of knowledge

about the past by the archaeological discipline, academia (and again first

and foremost its Euro-American branches) is still dominant in the develop-

ment of archaeological theories and the practice of archaeological fieldwork(Bernbeck 2003; Trigger 1984). How to get rid of the archaeologists

involvement in political-economic acts of domination and dependencyshould therefore be a central concern for future archaeological theory and

practice. A radical critique of our own practices of knowledge production,

where our theories as tools to know the past can be directly utilized to act

in the present, goes in the right direction but is not enough.

I argue for an activist archaeology that involves a lessening of the pow-erful status we occupy as scholars and an opening-up of the discipline to

the requests as well as protests of disenfranchised stakeholder groups (cf.

Sauders, this volume; Yahya, this volume). Such an integration of scholar-ship and political struggle for practical interests is, of course, a value-based

undertaking. As some may argue, it even bears the very real risk of making

sudden turns from a liberationist to a deeply repressive narrative; they may

take, as a case in point, the emergence of the state of Israel where archaeo-logical information about the Jewish past played an important role in

establishing an ultra-nationalist narrative. However, repressive narratives of

this kind are usually not defence mechanisms of disenfranchised groups;rather, they become repressive when the group in question has the power

to make them so. These narratives are in many cases state-sponsored (inthe case of Israel also by the United States of America) or carried by thepowerful members of a populace, and thus they have the potential to

become hegemonic.



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Hegemonic narratives are, however, also furthered by the claim to a

transcendent and objective science, which ignores that as scholars we, too,are swayed by emotion and that our subjectivity is only enveloped in an

objective stance. If we allow ourselves to be doubtful, and our archaeologi-

cal practice to become interruptedwhich sometimes may require us topause in our work, or at other times to completely bring it to a haltethi-

cal principles against violence, inequalities, and exploitation have the

chance to be realized; while at the same time these principles are no uni-

versals and must be recognized as positioned, conflicting, and disagreeing,too. They tend to especially conflict with hegemonic narratives so that it

becomes important to negotiate the principles we hold as political scholarswith those affected by war and violence. For such purpose, anthropologists

need to acknowledge intersubjective relations instead of objectifying theOther; and they must allow and acknowledge reply from others to the

political actions one is willing to take. This promises to make field prac-

tice more complex, since archaeologists will need to be more cognizantand considerate of other parties, specifically local governments and com-

munities []. We will have to consult, collaborate, negotiate, incorporate,

and be willing to forgo our own research agenda (Meskell2005:145146).

We can expect this to be a difficult task to be carried out in situationsmarked by war, violence, and death, by oppression, rebellion, and inhu-

manity. And people in a daily struggle for survival might not be interestedin archaeological work, revolutionary or otherwise. But the case for an

activist archaeology is at the very least a project of educated hope (Bloch

1986) that tries to develop an exchange with those immediately surround-

ing an archaeologists fieldthe local people living in the vicinity of an

archaeological site, the hired workers, the government representatives, etc.An exchange that is both sensitive to transferential displacement and open

to the challenge of the others voice (LaCapra, quoted in Holly1996:13).

In effect this means that our actions must be driven by respect for andsolidarity with the disenfranchised, up to the point of their liberation.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Reinhard Bernbeck and Susan Pollock for inspiring

and impassioned discussions about this paper topic. My participation atthe conference was supported by a travel grant from the Department of

Anthropology at SUNY Binghamton, for which I want to express my grati-tude. I would moreover like to thank Bilge Frat, Archana Mohan, andJames Verinis for critically reading earlier drafts of this paper and provid-

ing me with insightful comments.



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Notes

1. A critical remark about the language used by Fortun (2001): by asking for the what

(instead of who), the notion of recursivity does not actually address another human

subject. As has been laid out by Honneth (2005:4142), such a language can ultimately

not allow for an affirmative acknowledgement (anerkennen) of others but remains at a

level of recognition (erkennen) of the other as object. As such, it might even contrib-

ute to driving anthropology further into neo-empiricism. I wish to thank Reinhard

Bernbeck for discussing this issue with me and drawing my attention to Honneths

work.

2. For an example of such a universalistic claim see in Goode (2007:94).

3. It has been argued by Agamben (2003) that ethics and law are in fact never cotermi-

nous. In the case of Nazi perpetrators like Adolf Eichmann, he demonstrates, anyblending of the two spheres is only used to exempt a person from juridical sentencing

by accepting a moral guilt and ethical responsibility instead.

4. And yet in some of those countries official historiographies the notion of the cradle of

civilization is actively pursued, precisely because of the benefits it produces in the con-

struction of nationalist or ethnic identities. The notion itself is, of course, far older than

19th and 20th century Orientalism and can be traced back to medieval translatio imperii

theories (Le Goff1964).

5. In his explorations of the controversies surrounding the Great Zimbabwe ruins, Trigger

(1984:362363) provides another troubling example of the colonialist mentality opera-

tive in African archaeology (cf. Hall 1990,1995; Kohl1998).

6. Corbey (2000:25) describes how a phenomenon matching the same pattern as colonialand world exhibitions was what the Germans called Volkerschau: the exhibition of exo-

tic peoples from colonies who, with their objects, had to show scenes from their daily

lives. [] Zoos were popular venues for such manifestations, which were set up by

western impresarios. Revealing is, of course, the situating of these shows in a zoo,

thereby delineating once more the image of the civilized human versus the not-yet-

human savage. (For the role of world exhibitions or world fairs in the colonialist

enterprise more generally see also Mitchell1989,1992.)

7. For a de-colonial critique of the universalizing claim of Western thought see Mignolo

(2007); also see Wallerstein (2006).

8. Source at http://www.mda.org.uk/spectrum-terminology/pitt-rivers/class (retrieved Nov.

21, 2007).9. This discussion is further complicated once we look beyond a dualist matrix of colo-

nizer-colonized and also acknowledge competing interests within each group (conflicts

of interests among colonized peoples or within occupied territories have, for example,

been analyzed by Bernbeck 2003; Bernbeck and Pollock 1996; Yahya 2005). For a

detailed discussion of the antagonistic roles of local agents in the production of cultural

heritage, see Starzmann (2007).

10. That is, a concept of long time spans extending back into geologic history and the

related history of life. Also compare the term monumental time used by Hamilakis

and Yalouri (1996) as well as by Herzfeld (1991).

11. Source at http://www.savingantiquities.org/f-culher-museums.php (retrieved Nov. 14,

2005). Note that by the time of completing this article, in several cases looted artifactshad been sent back to Iraq. In other cases, museum personnel were threatened with

prosecution (as in the case of the curator of the J. Paul Getty Museum). Also, in

November 2007 UNESCOs International Coordination Committee for the Safeguard-

ing of Iraqi Cultural Heritage met for the first time and launched an appeal to stop

http://www.mda.org.uk/spectrum-terminology/pitt-rivers/classhttp://www.savingantiquities.org/f-culher-museums.phphttp://www.savingantiquities.org/f-culher-museums.phphttp://www.mda.org.uk/spectrum-terminology/pitt-rivers/class


15/22

illicit trafficking of cultural property from Iraq (see http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php-

URL_ID=41274&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html , retrieved Jan. 15,

2008).

12. Seehttp://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5gMfDoQ_vX7HpjKjVVxJK7NwsMfIw(retrieved

December 28, 2007). Also see the report in Time magazine that basically took this

example to instruct its readers how antiquities are a form of safe investment in an

otherwise volatile market. See http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1693792,

00.html(retrieved February 28, 2008).

13. The complete text of the convention can be found under http://portal.unesco.org/en/

ev.php-URL_ID=13637&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html (retrieved

August 8, 2007).

14. Of course, it can be discussed whether the Convention itself, as a product of Western

heritage politics, would not constitute another form of interventionist politics in its

own terms. I would like to thank James Verinis for this remark.

15. As an other economy, it would be intriguing to compare the illicit trade in antiqui-

ties with the so-called subversive or unruly economies of borderlands as described

by Donnan and Wilson (1999), as well as Wilson and Donnan (2006); see also Nord-

strom (2000).

16. An example is the introduction of the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 where the US

government enacted a series of laws imposing citizenship upon first nation peoples:

BE IT ENACTED by the Senate and house of Representatives of the United States of

America in Congress assembled, That all non citizen Indians born within the territorial

limits of the United States be, and they are hereby, declared to be citizens of the Uni-

ted States: Provided, That the granting of such citizenship shall not in any manner

impair or otherwise affect the right of any Indian to tribal or other property. (Kap-

pler 1929:1165) While these laws enfranchised first nation peoples with (at least in

theory) the same political rights as other citizens, it also destroyed their autonomy

and self-determination. The efforts by the US government were couched in a liberal-

democratic rhetoric of equal rights under the law. In reality, however, the privileges of

citizenship, such as the right to vote, were often denied to Native Americans in the

early 20th century by the colonial nation-state. I would like to thank Andrew Epstein

for talking about this issue with me.

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starzmann - cultural imperialism and armed conflict

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