Cosmopolitanism

The manifest cosmopolitanism of this book is one of its most compelling features. Starting with the editors themselves, its 35 contributors hail from a wide range of scholarly and linguistic traditions, including Spanish, Italian, German, Francophone, Scandinavian and Latin American, and, for about one-third, British and North American. These contributors, both established and emerging scholars, provide in their 38 chapters a range of updated and extensively referenced overviews on their allocated topics, as well as focused case studies and more original developments. These chapters are organised into seven mostly coherent parts, concerned respectively with ‘Methodology and theory’, ‘Archaeology and its practice’, ‘Objects, networks and museums’, ‘Diverse archaeologies’, ‘Institutions and legislation’, ‘Ideologies and political contexts’ and ‘Archaeology and society’. The inevitable overlaps across some chapters and the sheer diversity of the ensemble result at times in interesting divergences in outlook and interpretations. These could have been better acknowledged and made use of, especially because different alignments of the book’s chapters can provide new perspectives and contrasting narratives.

Issues of interdisciplinarity, margins, influences and contact zones deserve particular mention, in view of the editors’ long-standing interests in these questions (see Díaz-Andreu & Coltofean-Arizancu Reference Díaz-Andreu and Coltofean-Arizancu2020). In the consecutive chapters by Kristian Kristiansen and Géraldine Delley, for example, the former’s far-reaching propositions regarding ‘Three science revolutions’ meet the latter’s illuminating in-depth discussions of ‘Interactions with the hard sciences’—and two distinct impressions emerge. First, further attention needs to be paid to the pragmatics and politics of interdisciplinarity, from its Renaissance polymathic origins to its current neo-liberal deployment as a managerial-cum-academic panacea. Next, beyond the so-called ‘hard’ or ‘natural’ (earth and life) sciences, it is crucial to recognise the sustained interactions evidenced all through the history of antiquarianism and archaeology with such cultural or humanistic disciplines as history, anthropology, philology and art history, each with their constitutive techniques of erudition and of knowledge management, from the fiche and the sketch to the photogrammetric cloud. Suggested links with the fields of architecture (in the chapter by Massimo Tarantini on stratigraphy), with biological anthropology (Nélia Dias on human remains), with image repositories (Lucila Mallart) and with museum sciences (Miruna Achim, Ana Cristina Martins and others) all go in this direction, but there is clearly scope for further exploring these theoretical and methodological affinities.

Empathic internalism

These interdisciplinary variations can lead us to reconsider one of the founding tenets of the ‘new’ history of archaeology, namely the distinction between ‘internalist’ and ‘externalist’ approaches. In its transition from science studies to archaeology, this demarcation has come to entail a (mostly implicit) judgement of value and of pertinence. ‘Internalist’ accounts are concerned with the in-house dispositions of science, as it were, the practical and theoretical mechanisms (presumably including interdisciplinarity itself) by which archaeological facts are established and debated. ‘Externalist’ histories for their part reach towards the broader stakes and settings in which archaeology unfolds and gains its meaning, ultimately attaining their constitutive colonialist, imperialist and nationalist contexts (on which more below). Much as these expanding horizons have encouraged new and productive research avenues since the 1980s, it may be timely to assess anew this distinction and its implications. Indeed, what if ‘externalist’ approaches have ended up rhyming with remote, detached and a priori, whereas ‘internalist’ investigations actually resonate with intimate, fine-grained and empathetic?

These questions prove to be in tune with the latest practical resources now available to historians of archaeology. As amply demonstrated across the OH-HA volume, the judicious use of such sources as archival holdings (including correspondence, drafts of manuscript papers and publications, various shades of grey literature, etc.), recorded oral histories, investigations of museum material collections and photographic repositories, as well as biographies and auto-biographies, all prove to be quite compatible with bottom-up, ‘internalist’ perspectives. Moreover, such focused, empirically grounded and meticulously documented historical investigations are not doomed to remain mired in ‘neo-Rankian’ political abstinence (as aptly put by Ulrike Sommer). Given the proximity between microhistorical and ethnographic approaches, the key anthropological notions of ‘emic’ and ‘etic’ gain relevance here. The overarching ‘etic’ gaze of the observers is counterpoised with the ‘emic’ view of the natives themselves—the archaeologists at work—with their own motivations, rationalisations and cosmologies. Those who connect their science to ‘internalist’ factors alone may of course be mistaken or partial, but theirs is an assumption that provides them with purpose, and one furthermore that can be assessed on a case-by-case basis. Similarly, historians and sociologists of science have long recognised the utility of following ‘science in action’ across its practices and productions, its nodes, networks and centres of calculations (in the wake of Latour Reference Latour1987). Such down-to-earth constructivist attentions readily converge with fine-grained ethnomethodological or interactionist investigations of archaeological empirical and discursive fact-making. They also resonate, at an admittedly different pitch, with currently en vogue phenomenological and ontological turns that foreground recursively the agentivity and sensibilities of the actors concerned. None of this is to obviate or belittle the valuable differences between ‘externalist’ and ‘internalist’ approaches, when they are deployed in function of specific historical questions, scales of analysis and scientific traditions. It can nonetheless be suggested, as a matter of principle or methodological precept, that ‘externalist’ stances should strive to take account of—or at least not disregard or dispense with—archaeological actors and achievements.

CIN-full archaeologies

Yet it is precisely such disparagement that seems to permeate many ‘externalist’ pronouncements in the current literature, dominated as they are with the three over-riding leitmotifs of colonialism, imperialism and nationalism—or, if this phonetic facetiousness may be permitted, ‘CIN-full archaeologies’. Reaching well beyond the original intentions of Bruce Trigger’s (Reference Trigger1984) founding statement on ‘Alternative archaeologies’—which were to unpack and scrutinise the articulations of archaeological practices and interpretations within their constitutive political and ideological settings—many such CIN-full accounts have ended up as self-explanatory labels and indeed ‘prime movers’, readily brandished to account for the past conditions of the discipline and, especially when enlisted within ‘heritage studies’, to specify its current malaise and future prospects.

Several contributors to the OH-HA volume find it convenient to reprise these generalisations (granting nonetheless that they are not always at the core of their arguments). This is the case with the proposition that “in colonial contexts [the agenda] was to justify occupation by ‘civilized’ colonisers who deprived the native inhabitants of any claims to their own past” (Carman p.629), or again the idea that “the emergence and development of these fields was based on colonialist and nationalist perspectives that not only excluded communities from heritage, archaeological and museum research and work through their top-down approaches, but also appropriated the material culture and intellectual property of the local and Indigenous communities” (Apaydin p.909). Others seek to engage with, challenge or confirm anew these CIN-full convictions. In their respective chapters on ‘Fakes’ and on ‘Amateurs’, Irina Podgorny and Nathalie Richard relate the nineteenth-century emergence of archaeology in Latin America and in rural France to a range of social and cultural factors alongside or other than ‘nationalism’ per se. Likewise, Sommer confirms through the ‘History of international archaeological congresses’ the interplay of social stratifications and scientific tensions manifest at local, national and international levels. On the southern shores of the Mediterranean, Alice Stevenson shows that the phenomenon of ‘Artefact distribution networks’ prevailing during the golden years of Egyptology is intelligible beyond the ‘colonialist’ label or condition. Even more pertinent is Suzanne Marchand’s reassessment of ‘Archaeology and orientalism’. While evidently pointing at a range of European misdeeds, she calls for less global and undifferentiated studies of the topic: defining archaeological or orientalist endeavours solely in terms of Empire-building risks excluding from consideration such factors as aesthetics, religious ideas, money and personal charisma. From these chapters and other studies on European archaeology abroad (see Van der Linde et al. Reference Van der Linde, Schlanger, Van den Dries and Slappendel2013) emerge some fairly chaotic and haphazard processes of translocation, with numerous initiatives, both private and public, having to reconcile the quest for knowledge and the lure of the antique with innovative but often ineffectual protective measures—the whole unfolding in a shifting context of political, diplomatic and financial dispositions at a global scale, especially once the high imperialism of conquest has given way to capitalist and cultural appropriations.

Other vistas: religion, legislation and economy too

The methodological scepticism towards CIN-full archaeologies suggested here, leads us to identify other conceptual and empirical themes of comparable scope. One such avenue, following Bonnie Effros’s chapter on ‘Sacred archaeology’ in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, concerns the topic of religion and religiosity. Here the focus is on those edifices and vestiges in the Holy Land and adjacent areas considered by their explorers to be ‘religious’; sites of revelations, miracles or martyrdoms, as narrated in the Judeo-Christian scriptures. Some pragmatic questions can be raised here about the ‘Archaeology of cult’ (as notably pursued by Colin Renfrew since the 1970s) including the need to devise operational and objective criteria for identifying material remains and symbolic expressions which might be securely associated with conjectured ‘ritual’, ‘cultic’ or ‘non-utilitarian’ behaviours. More broadly, alongside its manifestly imperialist and orientalist undertones, this topic also bears on the supposedly self-evident standing of modern archaeology as a positive, rational and fundamentally secular and ‘enlightened’ undertaking. Though often overlooked, such tensions between science and faith come to the fore around the evolutionary history of Palaeolithic humankind, for example, where spiritualist priests and die-hard materialists have each enlisted ancient stone tools and supposed artistic expressions to their cause. We would moreover be mistaken—or naively optimistic—to imagine that such disputes, mired as they frequently are in obscurantist and proselytising intentions, have necessarily subsided in the various religious or ideological settings where remains of the past constitute a material consideration. This is often the case with Islam, Hinduism or Shintoism and with various polytheistic or animist creeds, and the same goes for semi-organised belief systems of ‘new age’ revivals—an observation that deliberately evokes, and potential collides with, various ‘public’ and ‘community’-based heritage claims (as discussed by Moshenska and Apaydin in their chapters).

Moving from the realms of the gods to that of legislation, the OH-HA volume again proves its versatility. In his chapter ‘Governed by legislation: what laws do to archaeology’ John Carman provides a comparative overview on the increasing adoption of protective legislations at a global scale. While this process is mainly related here to heritage (see below), other factors need to be considered. At a generic scientific level, archaeologists abide by established deontological norms of copyright, authorship laws and statements of conflict of interest, as well as provenience authentications and authorisations by ‘stakeholders’ (as mentioned by Francesca di Tomasi in ‘The fight against antiquities trade’ and by Dias in ‘Human remains’). In addition, the ‘legislative overload’ characteristic of archaeology is mostly due to the notorious fragility and non-renewability of the material past itself, which therefore requires specific and highly skilled measures for its recording, recovery and protection. From this follows an epistemological and deontological concern with ‘the administration of proof’ through dedicated protocols by which scientific evidence is produced, traced and documented—evidence whose acceptance is not intended to bring closure (as in a court of law) but on the contrary to generate further research (see Négri & Schlanger Reference Négri, Schlanger, Négri and Schlanger2024). Such concerns transpire in the sampling strategies, materials analysis and context-based investigations undertaken throughout the history of archaeology, as highlighted in the chapters on ‘Methods of archaeological excavations’, ‘Stratigraphy’ and ‘Hard sciences’ (Gisela Eberhardt, Tarantini, Delley), as well as those dealing with interdisciplinarity, with museums, archaeological collections and indeed with fakes.

This evidential excursus can help us better grasp the ‘heritage’ dimensions of archaeological legislation, where questions of knowledge and expertise seem to make way for concerns with ownership, values and identity. Regarding property and its exercise, it actually proves challenging to distinguish between, on the one hand, a gamut of looting, lucrative spoliation and traffic in antiquities and, on the other, more benign and frequently well (or at least better)-intentioned practices of exchanges, circulation and trade. These variations appear in the chapters on ‘Collecting antiquities’ (Achim), ‘Museums of archaeology’ (Martins), ‘Objects in transit’ (Fedra Pizzato) and ‘The fight against antiquities trade’ (di Tomasi). When we recall the zeal with which archaeological finds have been extracted from European soil, commercialised and dispersed worldwide well into the twentieth century (think of so-called ‘Etruscan’ vases, or prehistoric relics from the Dordogne), the observation that many principles of protective archaeological legislation were first worked out in colonial settings makes better sense. There, unlike on home grounds, the ruling authorities have granted themselves far greater scope to curb or even bypass the sacrosanctity of private ownership in favour of other over-riding principles. Alongside an abundance of uncompensated land expropriations, labour exploitation and heavy-handed partage of finds, concerns with the safeguarding of antiquities threatened by development and building works have also brought about legislative and operational measures, including the earliest structured campaigns of ‘preventive archaeology’. Starting with the early-twentieth-century campaign following large-scale dam constructions in the British-governed Nile valley, the involvement of states and public bodies in such ‘programmed salvages’ have only increased, with for example the Soviet five-year New Economic Plans and the Tennessee Valley Authority projects of the 1930s. Following the destruction of sites during the Second World War and the subsequent reconstruction, social pressures to ‘Rescue’ and make accessible the past have gradually reinforced legal controls over the untrammelled exercise of ownership, in the name of the common good—this being, after all, what the protection and study of archaeological remains are essentially about.

These socially instigated and legally grounded requirements of protection and research proved to be, both historically and conceptually, central to current archaeological management: “Without legislative underpinning”—so notes Kenneth Aitchison in his chapter on the ‘History of commercial archaeology’—“no one would be paying for archaeological remains to be investigated” (p.470). Given the social, cultural and environmental foundations of this legislation, it seems difficult to subscribe to this chapter’s opening statement whereby “The transition to commercial archaeology has been the most significant change in the history of archaeology” (p.466). Commercial archaeology, in which professional entities compete with each other to be chosen by clients (essentially on criteria of costs and availability) to provide compulsory mitigation services prior to building works, is in fact one among several possible ‘models of delivery’. It is, moreover, a model that latches on the financial opportunities provided by the late twentieth century generalisation of the polluter/payer principle, and that relies on the availability of generic methods and (hu)manpower for hire. Such a generic technicity actually brings to mind the characterisation of communist archaeology provided by Ludomir Lozny (in his chapter on ‘The political ecology of archaeology under communism’), as being at once a-theoretical and ideologically driven.

In any case, appreciating the complex historical relations between archaeological practice, legislation and economy is now more pertinent than ever, given the objections springing worldwide against supposed ‘red tape’ and regulatory encumbrances. With its policy of academic repression, budgetary slashes and staff termination, the USA administration’s newly created ‘Department of government efficiency’ has been cutting on both archaeological research and heritage management in museums and federal agencies, threatening the implementation and oversight of essential protective legislation. In France, alongside budgetary restrictions, legislation has recently been proposed to exempt ‘national priority’ development projects from prior archaeological assessments (as required by the national heritage code and both Council of Europe conventions and EU directives). This would put at risk not only as-yet undetected archaeological remains, but also the builders themselves, who remain under penal obligation to report on and to protect fortuitous finds.

To end with heritage

That archaeology costs is undeniable, but what sort of values does it generate? Its economic worth has proven quite elusive, also for profit-making ‘self-regarding’ agents. In his chapter on ‘The History of the influence of free market economics on archaeology’, Peter Tomlinson concedes that most specialists do not regard heritage goods as ‘tradable commodities’ whose values can be adequately set by the competitive market. These are, instead, public goods, and the conservation, research and outreach actions which they necessitate should be provided for by governments through taxation. Nevertheless, for Tomlinson, this public-goods concept leaves unresolved the “free rider problem, which is the fact that [heritage goods] can be enjoyed by everyone, even if some individuals avoid paying the costs associated with providing and maintaining them” (p.893). Those drivers stuck in traffic on the A303 with Stonehenge in sight will no doubt cherish their ‘free rider’ opportunities, as will anyone, anywhere, local inhabitants or visiting tourists, wishing to enjoy without restrictions their surrounding cultural landscapes and monuments.

This may be a particularly acute angle from which to reach the issue of heritage, whose social expectations are caught between economic and scientific considerations. In his chapter on ‘Community approaches to archaeology, heritage, and museums’, Veysel Apaydin appears to bemoan the implementation of ‘heavily neoliberal policies’ that direct management plans to ‘a profit-driven approach towards cultural assets’. Heritage, he contends, is to be considered as a process “where values and the importance of material culture may change through time in parallel to the requirements and the needs of communities … who need to have the authority to manage their own cultural assets” (p.915). Thus, alongside ‘the market’ and ‘the state’, heritage studies aim to make space, with considerable moral and historical justification, for ‘the community’, an actor granted wide-ranging decision-making capacities regarding the management of archaeological assets. While this entity is being increasingly objectified, some lingering versions of ‘communities’ still convey bucolic-cum-nostalgic visions of local shepherds grazing among ancient ruins, or noble hunter-gatherers contemplating their pristine forest. Such representations are for the vast majority far removed from the currently prevailing human condition, urbanised, industrialised and subject to a range of migration processes North and South. Moreover, even if we might be able to distinguish between ‘resident’ and ‘descendant’ communities, we are still left with the possibility that the populations we focus on may have neither the inclination nor the time to indulge in our over-riding passion for the past and its material remains—unless eventually there is in it something ‘neoliberal’ or ‘self-regarding’ for them to gain. As Alfredo González-Ruibal et al. note in their compelling critique of reactionary populism: “Many people seem intent on disappointing archaeologists by behaving in the wrong way: being greedy, patriarchal, xenophobic or uninterested in the past” (Reference González-Ruibal, Alonso González and Criado-Boado2018: 508).

Pending a prospective ‘history of archaeological indifference’ (not to say ‘animosity’), such challenges of intéressement underlie Gabriel Moshenska’s insightful chapter on ‘The history of public archaeology’. Among the avenues for further research indicated, the one concerning the unfolding relations between the production and the transmission of archaeological knowledge appears particularly promising. As Moshenska notes, the history he aims for is frequently also “the history of popular agency, often in the face of opposition from state heritage authorities, property owners, and the archaeologists themselves” (p.457). Upon this, he chooses to follow Nick Merriman and others in considering that the opposite (or opponent) of ‘public’ archaeology is one that is ‘professional’ or ‘professionalised’ (that is, the ‘in-group’ from which ‘the people’ are supposedly excluded). However, from a slightly divergent ideological vantage point, and drawing on different historical or sociological insights, the case can be made that the antithesis of ‘public’ archaeology is surely ‘private’ archaeology—one that is carried out for the benefit of the few who exploit archaeological finds or their settings, be they land-owners, developers or metal-detectorists, indeed an archaeology where the quintessentially anti-public spirited ‘free rider problem’ (Tomlinson above) represents a genuine grievance. Calls for better access to the past for the wider public and its constituent communities—what is often misleadingly called ‘democratisation’—are certainly valid, but do they have to entail systematic aspersions and contempt towards the knowledgeable professionals, the ‘experts’, implicated in the production of this past?

In conclusion, and to confirm the relevance of disciplinary historiographies, we may be well advised not to conflate or subsume ‘archaeology’ and ‘heritage’, without denying their manifold proximities. For one, heritage goods are rightly presented as elements of an ongoing, wide-ranging socially driven process of ‘heritagisation’; archaeological finds, for their part, are essentially non-renewable and finite resources, best dealt with through necessarily restricted and skilled protocols. As well, the proportion of intangible (discursive, opinionated) in heritage is variable, but always greater than in archaeology, so that, in many respects, heritage is to archaeology what memory is to history. This is why, lastly, the ‘authorised discourses’ of heritage and of archaeology markedly differ. As amply demonstrated throughout the OH-HA volume, archaeologists across time and space have been endeavouring, with various degrees of success or dedication, to produce empirically grounded and theoretically sound interpretations of the past. If there is something comparable to an ‘authorised discourse’ in archaeology, neither its contents nor the possible challenges it may face are of the same nature as those of heritage, and nor have they the same consequences regarding our attitudes towards populist alternatives, post-truth statements and expert knowledge. Another useful lesson, so I believe, from the history of archaeology.