JCAH 9.3 editorial

Abstract

In our last editorial, we wrote of our dismay about the return of armed conflict to the streets of Europe and the relevance of archaeology and heritage in relation to such pressing concerns of life and death. This sense of dismay has not abated now that over 100 days later the conflict rages on and shows no sign of ending anytime soon. A perhaps unforeseen – thought by no means unforeseeable – consequence of the war has been the ripple effect it has had on energy prices. In our highly globalized economic system, we are all highly dependent on a relatively small number of states (and corporations), controlling most of the world’s energy resources; namely gas and oil. This has led to the sharp increase in the cost of everyday items such as food and clothing – let alone petrol, gas and electricity themselves – which the western media has termed the cost-of-living crisis. The fact that it was largely sparked by the reduced availability of resources that most countries had already committed to reducing, brings with it a distinct sense of irony. But the relationships between the conflict, energy prices and our daily living costs, highlights the fragility of the entanglements of all our lives with petrochemicals. ‘Carbon based economies’, as Esther Breithoff recently put it, ‘have come to infiltrate our lives and bodies and everything around us’ (Breithoff 2022, 92). She goes on to quote Marina Zurkow, ‘we are soaking in petroleum and wouldn’t know how to live, feed, shelter, clothe or express ourselves without oil-based products’ (Plueker 2021). At this stage, readers might wonder how any of this relates to archaeology or heritage. On one hand, we could argue that carbonbased economies have created ‘a deeply entangled, unruly and inescapable heritage’ in themselves (Breithoff 2022, 92). And on the other, they could also be seen as the tip of the iceberg of the extractivist nature of western civilization for the past 500 years, since the onset of Europe’s colonial project. The processes of archaeology (and heritage more generally) are equally caught up in this web of relationships with colonialism and extractivism. In fact, our profession often literally takes things out of the ground and removes them from where they belong in the name of learning, guardianship and progress. The ultimate pinnacle of this is the continued acceptance of financial support from big oil corporations by some of the world’s ‘leading’ cultural institutions, such as the British Museum and the Smithsonian institution. Incidentally, these were also some of the main recipients of the material (including human) remains from colonized parts of the world. On the flipside, there is a groundswell of initiatives that demonstrate more publicly engaged and community-based approaches to heritage, such as many of the studies published in the pages of JCAH. They frequently present the perspectives from communities living the consequences of western extractivist approaches and are directly tacking the issues brought on by the unequal distribution of resources and opportunities. In fact, JCAH deliberately seeks to offer a platform to minoritised communities and those on the receiving end of colonialism and western extractive processes, in communicating their perspectives of the role of heritage in their lives. This includes the potentially transformative possibilities that democratic, participatory and community-centred archaeology and heritage practices can open up. The contributions to the current issue of JCAH present a range of such perspectives from four different continents and focusing on a diverse range of activities and contexts. Following on from their previous paper in JCAH 9.2 about the GIRH Scientific Divers Citizens Science Scheme, Viduka