Beyond Ethics: Considerations in Problematizing Community Involvement and Outreach in Archaeological Practice

Laurent Dissard (1, 2) , Melissa Rosenzweig (3) , Timothy Matney (4)

1 CETOBaC - Centre d'études turques, ottomanes, balkaniques et centrasiatiques
2 ITEM - Identités, Territoires, Expressions, Mobilités
3 Northwestern University [Evanston]
4 University of Akron

It is important sometimes to break away from traditional methods of scientific and archaeological writing to consider the broader social implications of our research activities. This paper is an attempt to do so by considering not the ancient subjects of our investigations, but rather the living participants of communities in which we labour. In so doing, many of the details of usual concern—site names, dates and periods, precise locations, artefacts, footnotes, and scholarly references—are not particularly important. Rather, what is of significance in considering the ethics (and beyond) of doing fieldwork are the relationships that we forge within the contexts of our scientific teams, local communities, and the broader public. This paper will focus on the second of these three contexts, namely the local community in which we work.

Mots clés: Excavations; Fieldwork; Indigenous; Outreach; Community; Practice; Excavations

Domaines: Anthropologie sociale et ethnologie; Archéologie et Préhistoire; Histoire, Philosophie et Sociologie des sciences; Héritage culturel et muséologie

Laurent Dissard, Melissa Rosenzweig, Timothy Matney. Beyond Ethics: Considerations in Problematizing Community Involvement and Outreach in Archaeological Practice. Archaeological Review from Cambridge, 2011, 26 (2), pp.59-70. ⟨hal-02169142⟩