Archeologists Are Too Colonial, Says Anthropologist

[Judi Lynn]

By News Staff | June 3rd 2019 06:33 AM

In a recent paper, Lehigh University anthropologist Professor Allison Mickel says archaeological excavations are often led by foreigners from the West while dependent on the labor of people from the local community, a relic of Western colonial and imperial pursuits.

Examining some of this history specifically in the context archaeological excavations undertaken in the Middle East, Mickel wrote: "Even well into the 20th century, locally hired excavation workers continued to benefit little from working on archaeological projects, still predominantly directed by European and American researchers who paid extremely low wages and did not share their purpose, progress, hypotheses, or conclusions with local community members."

Archaeologists are exploitative?

Mickel argues that the framework established by the German economist Karl Marx of the capitalist mode of production can be seen in 19th century archaeological work in the Middle East and dutifully quotes the communist proponent; "...the capitalist mode of production leads to workers experiencing a sense of powerlessness and an inability to fulfill the potential of their own skills, expertise, and abilities."

She criticizes Italian archaeologist Giovanni Battista Belzoni's approach to securing and retaining local laborers for his work in Egypt, which began in 1816 and exemplified the conditions of modes of production that led to his workers' "...alienation in the Marxist sense," beginning with how much he paid them. "Monetarily devaluing the archaeological work of native Egyptians in this way engenders an understanding that archaeological labor is quite literally of little worth--one that in Marx's view deeply impacts the self-image of the workers in a production process. Not only were the workers paid next to nothing for performing the manual labor of Belzoni's endeavors, they were also not involved in the conceptualization of the project. In the end, the antiquities were subsequently shipped thousands of miles away, challenging both ideologically and spatially any relationship between the workers and the archaeological objects being unearthed through excavation, as well as the knowledge gleaned from them."

More:
https://www.science20.com/news_staff/archeologists_are_too_colonial_says_anthropologist-238434