Format: Standard Paper Session
Organisers: Kristen A. Hopper (Durham University) & Bill Finlayson (University of Oxford)
Contact: k.a.hopper@durham.ac.uk; bill.finlayson@arch.ox.ac.uk
The archaeology and cultural heritage of Southwest Asia has been a highly colonial environment for those who studied it or collected its material. Childe placed the dawn of European civilisation and his Neolithic revolution here, ideas that emphasise the region’s role in the development of western ‘civilisation’, but disconnect it from local communities and histories, casting it as a modern backwater. Such orientalist tropes continue in grant applications, research contexts, impact assessments, and now increasingly in calls for emergency cultural heritage protection. Imbalances in power relationships between western and national archaeologists, based on access to resources (especially funding), control of the institutions awarding higher degrees, control of international academic publishing and its languages, freedom of movement, and the ability to deploy diplomatic leverage encourages colonial behaviours, conscious or otherwise, and influences where ‘expertise’ is seen to lie.
Archaeologists have always had to work within highly regulated systems operated by states that are themselves colonial constructs, often appearing as at least tacit supporters of regimes that we might otherwise criticise. The development-related funding now available to western archaeologists overtly links us with soft power initiatives, while a naïve view of capacity building as “a good thing” rather than concern at its use as international intervention, tips us deeper into post-colonial game playing.
We seek papers that critically address these issues, discuss ways to decolonise this archaeology that go beyond establishing partnerships, and actively advocate for new models of collaboration with a clear awareness of the impact of colonial pasts and presents.
TAG Edinburgh 2022 