ancestors were victims of atrocities and exploitation, archaeologists and

anthropologists have
constituted a second wave of colonialism in which science, like
Christianity, has been viewed as
just another vehicle of oppression. Many live with the contradiction of
inhabiting and working the
land yet not owning it, full citizens but of second-class status. There is a
genuine desire to protect
the dead and to release them from their 'prisons' in museum stores and,
for many, this is a moral
stance linked to a different understanding of history, in which the past
lives on in the present.
At the same time, and without denying the sincerity of these concerns,
the 'reburial' issue has
been a rallying point for political activism, seeking to establish control
over bones as symbols of
power, serving to legitimize ethnicity, equality and rights over land, and
challenging the racism of
the colonial majority. Sometimes respect for the dead has been
imported through western Christian
teachings to indigenous peoples who traditionally were unconcerned by
the fate of human remains.
60 In broader political terms, indigenous peoples have not managed to
gain back the lands and
resources that were taken from them by governments and settlers but
they have won a symbolic
victory which has helped to restore pride and respect in indigenous
identity. In many cases the
general public acknowledges the histories of oppression and dislocation
suffered by indigenous
minorities and has been broadly sympathetic to their aims in restricting
the activities of
archaeologists. At the same time archaeologists have had cause to
remember that they should
always put the living first.
Yet the future is far from certain. How far can the pendulum of redress
swing before extreme
demands prompt a backlash in archaeological and public opinion?
Clement Meighan points to the
case of an excavation in West Virginia in 1991 where not just the bones
but also the artefacts,
pollen samples and other material evidence in association with a 2000-
year-old Adena burial
mound were to be given up for reburial within a year, while Indian
representatives were paid to
censor 'objectionable' photographs or data from the final report. The
excavation agreement also
stipulated that no remains would be touched by menstruating women.
61 The Kennewick case has
opened old wounds on both sides. In Australia there is growing
resentment towards government
support for Aboriginal land claims. The problem with emphasizing
ancestral heritage, at the
expense of a shared heritage of humankind, is that it seeks exclusivity
and raises one ethnic group
above others as somehow more 'human', leading us back into the
politics of racial hatred and
intolerance in a mirror image of the former situation.
The archaeologist is also enmeshed in relationships of power concerning
the world of looting
and illicit trading of antiquities. On the one hand there are groups who
wish to prevent burials being
desecrated, on the other there are local people who cannot dig them up
fast enough. Here is a far
greater problem which is infinitely more difficult to solve because
archaeologists are not in the
positions of power that they once held, and have been able to
relinquish, in the 'reburial' issue.
Instead, the power is very much in the hands of those who benefit from
the trade at every level.
Having been on the receiving end of the efforts of political activists who
have campaigned
effectively for their goals, it is now time for archaeologists to apply the
lessons learned. By joining
with indigenous and local groups whose heritage is being plundered,
archaeologists can engage
actively in limiting the looting and the collecting.
Archaeology is a means of studying the past so that we may know more
about ourselves and
about the present. As such, it is a moral pursuit in which we change not
only our own views and
attitudes about what it is to be fair and just but we also strive to unmask
power and its effects, both
past and present. Dealing with the dead, recent and ancient, inevitably
must serve the living.
NINE
EPILOGUE: DEATH AND MEMORY
[A]rchitectural and ceremonial forms are frequently integrated into the
descriptive imagery
and paradigms used in classifying Batammaliba cosmological structure
and order.
Architectural representations function both as mnemonic aids and as
more permanent and
concrete expressions of the underlying principle on which Batammaliba
cosmogony itself
rests. 1
To some people's minds, matters concerning ritual and the supernatural
will, by definition, leave
little or no material trace. To advance any notions about these aspects
of past, and especially
prehistoric societies, is to work with a minimum of evidence. Yet very
often the treatment of the
dead and their subsequent veneration are given material form in ways
that are impossible for