Advertisement

The Ethics of Visibility: Archaeology, Conservation and Memories of Settler Colonialism

  • Tracy IrelandEmail author
Chapter
First Online:
Part of the Ethical Archaeologies: The Politics of Social Justice book series (ETHARCHAEOL, volume 4)

Abstract

The visibility created by archaeology and heritage conservation brings ethical responsibilities derived from how visibility provides the ‘condition of possibility’ for strategies of power and control. But through their material endurance, heritage places also provide opportunities for strategies of resistance and for individuals and groups to seek ethical experiences of reconciliation, recognition and respect in terms of their own particular social justice concerns and identity politics. In settler societies, colonial archaeological remains can be approached as ‘imperial debris’—locations where we can examine the ‘the longevity of structures of dominance and the uneven pace with which people can extricate themselves from the colonial order of things’.

Keywords

Archaeological Site Historical Archaeology National Park Service Archaeological Remains Heritage Management 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in to check access.

References

  1. Beaudry, M. (2009). Ethical issues in historical archaeology. In D. Gaimster & T. Majewski (Eds.), International handbook of historical archaeology (pp. 17–29). New York: Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  2. Bedford, S. (1996). Post-contact Maori: The ignored component in New Zealand archaeology. The Journal of the Polynesian Society, 105(4), 411–439.Google Scholar
  3. Blair, C., Dickinson, G., & Ott, B. L. (2010). Introduction: Rhetoric/memory/place. In G. Dickinson, C. Blair, & B. L. Ott (Eds.), Places of public memory The rhetoric of museums and memorials (pp. 1–54). Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press.Google Scholar
  4. Byrne, D. (1996). Deep nation: Australia’s acquisition of an indigenous past. Aboriginal History, 20, 82–107.Google Scholar
  5. Byrne, D. (2003). Nervous landscapes: Race and space in Australia. Journal of Social Archaeology, 3(2), 169–193.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  6. Byrne, D. (2009). A critique of unfeeling heritage. In L. Smith & N. Akagawa (Eds.), Intangible heritage (pp. 229–252). London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
  7. Cameron, E. (2008). Indigenous spectrality and the politics of postcolonial ghost stories. Cultural Geographies, 15, 383–393.Google Scholar
  8. Carman, J. (2011). Stories we tell: Myths at the heart of ‘community archaeology’. Archaeologies, 7(3), 490–501.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  9. Colley, S., & Bickford, A. (1996). ‘Real’ aborigines and ‘Real’ Archaeology: Aboriginal places and Australian historical archaeology. World Archaeological Bulletin, 7, 5–21.Google Scholar
  10. Dawdy, S. L. (2009). Millennial archaeology. Locating the discipline in the age of insecurity. Archaeological Dialogues, 16(2), 131–142.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  11. Dawdy, S. L. (2010). Clockpunk anthropology and the ruins of modernity. Current Anthropology, 51(6), 761–93. Google Scholar
  12. de Certeau, M. (1984). The practice of everyday life (S. Rendall, Trans). Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
  13. Edensor, T. (2008). Mundane hauntings: Commuting through the phantasmagoric working-class spaces of Manchester, England. Cultural Geographies, 15, 313–333.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  14. Edmonds, P. (2010). Unpacking settler colonialism’s urban strategies: Indigenous peoples in Victoria, British Columbia, and the transition to a settler-colonial city. Urban History Review, 38(2), 4–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  15. Foucault, M. (1986). Kant on revolution and enlightenment. Economy and Society, 15(1), 88–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  16. Gelder, K., & Jacobs, J. (1998). Uncanny Australia: Sacredness and identity in a postcolonial nation. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press.Google Scholar
  17. Glassie, H. (1977). Archaeology and folklore: Common anxieties, common hopes. In L. Ferguson (Ed.), Archaeology and the importance of material things (pp. 23–35). Society for Historical Archaeology.Google Scholar
  18. Gordon, N. (2002). On visibility and power: An Arendtian corrective of foucault. Human Studies, 25, 125–145.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  19. Graham, B., & Howard, P. (Eds.). (2008). The Ashgate research companion to heritage and identity. Farnham, Surrey, England: Ashgate.Google Scholar
  20. Hall, M. (2006). Identity, memory and counter memory: The archaeology of an urban landscape. Journal of Material Culture, 11(1/2), 189–209.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  21. Hamilakis, Y. (2007). The nation and its ruins: Antiquity, archaeology, and national imagination in Greece. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
  22. Hamilakis, Y. (2011). Archaeological ethnography: a multitemporal meeting ground for archaeology and anthropology. Annual Review of Anthropology, 40, 399–414.Google Scholar
  23. Harrison, R. (2013). Forgetting to remember, remembering to forget: late modern heritage practices, sustainability, and the ‘crisis’ of accumulation of the past’. International Journal of Heritage Studies, 19(6), 579–595.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  24. Herzfeld, M. (2006). Spatial cleansing: Monumental vacuity and the idea of the West. Journal of Material Culture, 11(1/2), 127–149.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  25. Hetherington, K. (2010). The ruin revisited. In G. Pye & S. Schroth (Eds.), Trash culture: Objects and obsolescence in cultural perspective (pp. 27–49). Oxford, New York: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
  26. Ireland, T. (2002). Giving value to the Australian historic past: Archaeology, heritage and nationalism. Australasian Historical Archaeology, 20, 15–25.Google Scholar
  27. Ireland, T. (2012a). Excavating globalisation from the ruins of colonialism: Archaeological heritage management responses to cultural change. In E. Negussie (Ed.), Changing world, changing views of heritage: The impact of global change on cultural heritage. Proceedings of the ICOMOS Scientific Symposium 2010 (pp. 18–29). Paris: ICOMOS.Google Scholar
  28. Ireland, T. (2012b). Grounding identity: Exploring perceptions of urban archaeological sites in Australia and New Zealand. Historic Environment, 24(3), 19–27.Google Scholar
  29. Ireland, T. (2012c). ‘I felt connected to a past world’: A survey of visitors to colonial archaeological sites conserved in situ in Australia and New Zealand. Conservation and Management of Archaeological Sites, 14(1–4), 458–468.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  30. Ireland, T. (2014). Archaeological traces and memory places. In P. Ashton & J. Z. Wilson (Eds.), Silent system: Forgotten Australians and the institutionalization of women and children (pp. 89–102). Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing.Google Scholar
  31. Jeppson, P. (2006). Which Benjamin Franklin: Yours or mine? Examining responses to a new story from the historical archaeology site of Franklin court. Archaeologies, 2(2), 24–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  32. Jeppson, P. (2011). The dynamics of inclusion at the dynamics of inclusion in public archaeology workshop public event. Archaeologies, 7(3), 635–656.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  33. Johnson, M. (1999). Rethinking historical archaeology. In P. Paulo, A. Funari, M. Hall & S. Jones (Eds.), Historical archaeology: Back from the edge (pp. 23–36). London: Routledge.Google Scholar
  34. Jokilehto, J. (2009). Conservation principles in the international context. In A. Richmond & A. Bracker (Eds.), Conservation principles, dilemmas and uncomfortable truths (pp. 73–83). London: Butterworth-Heinemann & Victoria and Albert Museum.Google Scholar
  35. Joyce, R. (2006). The monumental and the trace: Archaeological conservation and the materiality of the past. In N. Agnew & J. Bridgland (Eds.), Of the past, for the future: Integrating archaeology and conservation: Proceedings of the conservation theme at the 5th World Archaeological Congress, Washington, DC, 22–26 June 2003 (pp. 13–18). Los Angeles: Getty Publications.Google Scholar
  36. Karskens, G. (2009). The colony: A history of early Sydney. Sydney: Allen and Unwin.Google Scholar
  37. Keily, J. (2008). Taking the site to the people: Displays of archaeological material in non-museum locations. Conservation and Management of Archaeological Sites, 10(1), 30–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  38. La Roche, C. & M. Blakey (1997). Seizing intellectual power: The dialogue at the New York African burial ground. Historical Archaeology, 31(3), 84–106.Google Scholar
  39. Lefebvre, H. (1991). The production of space. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
  40. Leone, M. (1973). Archaeology as the science of technology: Mormon town plans and fences. In C. Redman (Ed.), Research and theory in current archaeology (pp. 125–150). New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
  41. Leone, M. (2010). Critical historical archaeology. Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press.Google Scholar
  42. Leone, M., & Potter, P. (Eds.). (1999). Historical archaeologies of capitalism. Contributions to global historical archaeology. New York: Plenum.Google Scholar
  43. Levin, J. (2011). Activism leads to excavation: The power of place and the power of the people at the president’s house in Philadelphia. Archaeologies, 7(3), 596–618.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  44. Little, B. (1994). People with history: An update on historical archaeology in the United States. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, 1(1), 5–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  45. Lydon, J. (2005). Driving by: Visiting Australian colonial monuments. Journal of Social Archaeology, 5(1), 108–134.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  46. Lydon, J. (2009). Fantastic dreaming: The archaeology of an aboriginal mission. Lanham: Altamira.Google Scholar
  47. Lydon, J. (2012). The flash of recognition: Photography and the emergence of indigenous rights. Sydney: New South.Google Scholar
  48. Lydon, J., & Rivzi, U. Z. (2010). Handbook of postcolonial archaeology. Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press.Google Scholar
  49. Lyon, J. (2007). The Temple of Mithras: Changing heritage values in the city of London 1954-2006. Conservation and Management of Archaeological Sites, 9(1), 5–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  50. Matero, F. (2000). The conservation of an excavated past. In I. Hodder (Ed.), Towards reflexive method in archaeology: the example of Catalhöyük (BIAA Monograph No. 28, pp. 71–88). Ankara: British Institute of Archaeology.Google Scholar
  51. Matero, F. (2006). Making archaeological sites: Conservation as interpretation of an excavated past. In N. Agnew & J. Bridgland (Eds.), Of the past, for the future: integrating archaeology and conservation: Proceedings of the conservation theme at the 5th World Archaeological Congress, Washington, DC, 22–26 June 2003 (pp. 55–63). Los Angeles, CA: Getty Publications.Google Scholar
  52. Matthews, C. (2006). The idea of the site: History, heritage, and locality in community archaeology. In L. Lozny (Ed.), Landscapes under pressure: History, heritage and locality in community archaeology (pp. 75–91). New York: Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  53. Mulvaney, J. (1991). The heritage value of historical relics: a plea for romantic intellectualism. In Prehistory and heritage. The writings of John Mulvaney (pp. 266–271). Canberra: The Australian National University.Google Scholar
  54. Murray, T. (1996). Creating a post-Mabo archaeology of Australia. In B. Attwood (Ed.), In the age of Mabo (pp. 73–86). Sydney: Allen and Unwin.Google Scholar
  55. Nixon, T. (2004). Preserving archaeological remains in situ? Proceedings of the 2nd conference, 12–14 September 2001. London: Museum of London Archaeology Service.Google Scholar
  56. Olivier, L. (2004). The past of the present. Archaeological memory and time. Archaeological Dialogues, 10(2), 204–213.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  57. Orser, C. (1996). An historical archaeology of the modern world. New York: Plenum Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  58. Otero Pailos, J. (2004). Now is the future anterior for advancing historic preservation scholarship. Future Anterior, I(1), 6–8.Google Scholar
  59. Otero Pailos, Jorge (2007b). Preservation’s anonymous lament. Future Anterior, IV(2):iii-vii.Google Scholar
  60. Otero-Pailos, J. (2007a). Conservation cleaning/cleaning conservation. Future Anterior, IV(1), iii–viii.Google Scholar
  61. Otero-Pailos, J., Gaiger, J., & West, S. (2010). Heritage values. In S. West (Ed.), Understanding heritage in practice (pp. 47–87). Manchester: Manchester University Press.Google Scholar
  62. Paterson, A. (2010). The archaeology of historical indigenous Australia. In J. Lydon & U. Rizvi (Eds.), Handbook of postcolonial archaeology (pp. 165–184). Walnut Creek California: Left Coast Press.Google Scholar
  63. Phillips, C. (2000). Post-contact landscapes of change in Hauriki, New Zealand. In R. Torrence & A. Clarke (Eds.), The archaeology of difference: Negotiating cross-cultural engagements in Oceania (pp. 79–103). London: Routledge.Google Scholar
  64. Rose, G., & Tolia-Kelly, D. (2012). Visuality/materiality: Introducing a manifesto for practice. In G. Rose & D. P. Tolia-Kelly (Eds.), Visuality/materiality images, objects and practices (pp. 1–11). Farnham: Ashgate.Google Scholar
  65. Rubertone, P. (2008). Engaging monuments, memories, and archaeology. In P. Rubertone (Ed.), Archaeologies of placemaking: Monuments, memories, and engagement in native North America (pp. 13–33). Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press.Google Scholar
  66. Russell, I. (2012). Towards an ethic of oblivion and forgetting. The parallax view. Heritage and Society, 5(2), 249–272.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  67. Silliman, S. (2010). Indigenous traces in colonial spaces: Archaeologies of ambiguity, origin, and practice. Journal of Social Archaeology, 10(1), 28–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  68. Smith, L. (2006a). Uses of heritage. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
  69. Smith, L. (2006b). Doing archaeology: Cultural heritage management and its role in identifying the link between archaeological practice and theory. International Journal of Heritage Studies, 6(4), 309–316.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  70. Smith, L., & Waterton, E. (2009). Heritage, communities and archaeology. London: Duckworth.Google Scholar
  71. Stoler, A. L. (2008). Imperial debris: Reflections on ruins and ruination. Cultural Anthropology, 23(2), 191–219.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  72. Verdesio, G. (2010). Invisible at a glance: Indigenous cultures of the past, ruins, archaeological sites, and our regimes of visibility. In J. Hell & A. Schönle (Eds.), Ruins of modernity (pp. 339–353). Durham: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  73. Waterton, E., & Smith, L. (2009). Taking archaeology out of heritage. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.Google Scholar
  74. Waterton, E., & Watson, S. (2010). Introduction: A visual heritage. In E. Waterton & S. Watson (Eds.), Culture, heritage and representation: Perspectives on visuality and the past (pp. 1–19). Farnham: Ashgate.Google Scholar
  75. Wells, K. (2007). The material and visual cultures of cities. Space and Culture, 10(2), 136–144.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  76. Willems, W. (2008). Archaeological resource management and preservation. Geoarchaeological and Bioarchaeological Studies, 10, 283–289.Google Scholar
  77. Zimmerman, L., Vitelli, K., & Hollowell-Zimmer, J. (2003). Ethical issues in archaeology. Walnut Creek: Altamira Press.Google Scholar

Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media New York 2015

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Faculty of Arts and DesignUniversity of CanberraBruceAustralia

Personalised recommendations

Cite chapter

Buy options