Therefore the fear expressed by Israel Antiquities Authority director Shuka Dorfman regarding the commodification of archaeology, in response to an interesting proposal to sell surplus sherds, is entirely correct and entirely besides the point. In the real world money makes everything go, and commodification has been there all along; archaeology could not exist without it, since at the very least we sell an image of ourselves as romantic explorers or dispassionate scientists to an unsuspecting public and expect them to pony up their gift or even tax dollars. Commodification is a means of disseminating the real, and what could be more real than a body sherd in lucite. Reality could thus be disseminated in bite sized pieces. If we don�t entertain such notions seriously, then we become much like ancient Egyptian mortuary temples, or the modern European social welfare system, condemning future generations to care in perpetuity for body sherds that we excavated without a clue as to how or why.
For those who pronounce categorically on the problem, to the effect that sales are anathema, a small comparison might be in order. In one season at Megiddo I would reluctantly throw away more Early Bronze Age sherds from bad contexts than have been collected in 150 years of New York State archaeology, sherds numbering in the thousands or tens of thousands. There was no place to put them, nothing to do with them, and it pained me to do it. In the New York State Museum, however, every prehistoric sherd has its own custom fitted foam slot in custom made metal shelving, and to examine these sherds one must run a gauntlet of curators and don white cotton gloves in the presence of watchful minders . Now, there is not enough shelving in the known world to hold even one season�s sherds from one decent sized site in Israel, much less a sherd hell like Rome. And there are not enough graduate students in this quadrant of the galaxy to lock in basements with orders to analyze even the sherds from good contexts.
We should therefore be realistic about our embarrassment of riches. A legalized lucite sherd paperweight trade would share the wealth, provided that the absurd fiction of a legalized market in complete items were eliminated, at the pinnacle of which are the beautiful, the rare, and the fake, things seen only by collectors, their fences, and compliant scholars. Opening up the bottom would only work if the top were shut down, something that might be a political impossibility. In that case the entire market should be shut down. That too is an impossibility, given political realities, not least of which being that Israel is an open rather than a closed society like its neighbors. But professionals must realize that by making idealistically sweeping and categorical judgments such as these, that have no bearing on the real politics much less the economics of things, our viewpoints are going to be immediately dismissed.
If the only choices we can come up with for our excess body sherds are for them to be recycled as road fill, reburied in the manner of sacred objects, or treated like drugs � pick up a sherd, go to jail - then we have reached a laughable point. If we can�t even figure out what to do with the real stuff, then we should stop excavating so damn much of it and worry about the fake stuff later. If cannot even slow the destruction of archaeological sites, most supremely the continuing evisceration of the Temple Mount/Haram el-Sharif in Jerusalem by the Waqf, then we should not waste what energy we have kvetching about fakes. The 21st century will see an unprecedented global archaeological extinction event, especially in the Middle East. In the real world, fakes are a red herring.
[...]
Archaeology, particularly in the Near East, has no moral standing because of its wretched record of tolerating and embracing genocide and totalitarianism in the present, from Sudan to Syria, and most lately in the form of Saddam Hussein, as a means of facilitating its own petty prerogatives. We should not happy about having benefited from the more dreadful consequences of colonialism, which in a few places included mass murder. But that was then and this is now. Our present complicity in the murder of between 300,000 and 1.3 million Iraqis taints, or should taint, any claims to moral standing and practical funding made by the profession as a whole, on questions of funding, looting, markets, fakes, and to be sure, culture, society and politics at large. Not a peep of protest, indeed, the most shameful excuses and justifications were offered, CNN-like contortions were employed to maintain or regain access, and the global profession looked the other way as people were slaughtered.
[...]
The other, "Museum Madness in Iraq," was published in the spring issue of the Middle East Quarterly. It concludes:
Ethical Lapse
Western archaeologists speak the language of scholarly authority, pacifism, and universalism. Stone's statement revealed an underlying truth: the profession only values high culture in its most rarified form and is entirely possessed with its role of mediating the meaning of objects to a high-brow Western audience.
Working in a wretched totalitarian country was a conscious choice for archaeologists as it was for businessmen. Iraq purchased most of its weapons from Russia and France, sophisticated electronics from the United States, and germ samples from all over the world. Profit is its own excuse, and those who armed and supported Iraq have much for which to answer. But archaeologists submitted paperwork to the Iraqi State Board of Antiquities and Heritage, knowing full well that staff lists would be vetted by Iraqi intelligence. European and American Jews, among the pioneers of Mesopotamian archaeology during the first half of the twentieth century, were systematically excluded from participation, as they still are in Syria and Saudi Arabia. No one protested.
The teams did their fieldwork under the watchful eye of government minders, came back, kept their mouths shut about whatever they might have seen or heard, and not infrequently sang the praises of Hussein, at least his treatment of archaeology. Access was everything. The situation is uncannily similar to that finally admitted by the president of CNN, Eason Jordan. Even the regime's torture of CNN employees was hushed up, lest it jeopardize CNN's access to reporting from Baghdad. John Burns of The New York Times has expanded this indictment, graphically pointing out the mutual lies, collusion, and bribery that kept the Western press working in Iraq.[58]
No such admissions have been forthcoming from archaeologists. Even today, the profession disguises its pursuit of self-interest beneath the language of service to the heritage of humankind or the Iraqi people. Only a small group of German professionals, Archaeologists for Human Rights, have taken the courageous stand of putting the archaeological focus on the calamity of Baathist rule. Their efforts to organize the excavations of mass graves have met with strong support from Kurdish authorities but clumsy indecision from the CPA. Nonetheless, they have touched a nerve, and nearly 300 archaeologists and forensic specialists have volunteered to undertake this mournful research, the only ethical type of archaeology that should be conducted in Iraq at the present time.[59]
But the archaeological establishment is already busy building a new order, which looks surprisingly like the old one. They have recently recommended that archaeology in Iraq be supported directly through the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Army Corps of Engineers, but that it come under the formal supervision of old friends at the Iraqi State Board of Antiquities and Heritage.[60] With the archaeological status quo restored in Iraq, where are the incentives for moral reassessment?
Both articles are a definite Read It All.
Regarding the first, I basically agree with what he says about archaeology and capitalism, but I don't see any very good solutions to the problem. Nor, it seems, does he.
As for the second, I think all I will say is to read it yourself and make up your own mind. It will be interesting to see the response of the people he names. You can read my view on some of the same issues here and here.
I have more things on Iraq in the queue, but I'll leave them for later.
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