Pub Date : 2021-12-01DOI: 10.1017/S1380203821000192
Piraye Hacıgüzeller
Abstract In this essay I scrutinize the non-anthropocentric discourses used by the social sciences and humanities narratives and critiques of the Anthropocene. Although not always predominant within the academic Anthropocene debate, such discursive strands remain politically and ethically inspiring and influential in that debate and for the public discourse concerning the epoch. I stress that these discourses inherit the hope for human progress that characterizes critical theory of the Frankfurt school, i.e. ‘critical hope’, a type of hope that renders the non-anthropocentric discourses self-contradictory. Even when they manage to escape the hold of critical hope, these discourses, I argue, suffer from ethical and political failings due to their inherent lack of focus on human–human relations and largely ahistorical nature. I conclude the essay by advocating an Anthropocene archaeology that remains critical of and learns from the ethical and political shortcomings of non-anthropocentric perspectives and making a related call for a slow archaeology of the Anthropocene.
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Pub Date : 2021-12-01DOI: 10.1017/S1380203821000155
Ian B. Straughn
More than a decade ago – this would be prior to the Egyptian revolution of January 2011, when Hosni Mubarak was still in power, and it seemed likely that rule would pass to his sons – I was in Cairo thinking about potential new archaeological projects. I spent some time with an Egyptian colleague who was the chief inspector for the archaeological preserve that encompassed what remained of the undeveloped urban space that was once Fustat, the early Islamic precursor to metropolitan sprawl that is today’s Cairo. Walking the site together, I quickly understood what it meant to do heritage work in an under-funded, authoritarian system where non-monumental ruins held little value as easily exploitable resources. Instead, the site attracted dead-of-night visits by construction firms that would punch through its retaining walls to illegally deposit their building refuse rather than pay fees at ex-urban landfills. Elsewhere, government contractors bulldozed debris from neighbouring hills that were being graded to build a new museum, sporting club and park into the ever-shrinking archaeological reserve, despite efforts by the state-employed inspectors to use dummy excavations to mark and police the boundaries. However, it was the story of the pile of marble columns, carved ashlars and other architectural fragments that most impressed upon me the challenges of translating the Western universalized doctrines of heritage that Rico discusses in this important essay to the realities of the modern Middle East. Adjacent to the Fustat archaeological preserve is the Mosque of ‘Amr ibn al-As, the first mosque to be founded on the continent of Africa, and one of the oldest still extant in the Muslim world. Administratively it is not part of the preserve today, yet it is historically and archaeologically connected to the site as the spiritual and cultural centre of what was a major new urban foundation – misr in Arabic – by the Muslim community that would settle in Egypt following the region’s conquest in the first half of the seventh century C.E. My colleague shared with me that the heap of marble fragments that now littered the site was the result of a recent renovation of this original congregational mosque. I use the term ‘renovation’ purposefully here as an alternative to ‘conservation’ or ‘preservation’, doctrines and practices which Rico cogently argues operate as core principles of universalized Western approaches to heritage. It turns out that the recent work done to the Jami’a ‘Amr was financed and overseen by Saudi Arabia working through the Egyptian Ministry of Awqaf (Religious Endowments – about which I will offer a few remarks at the end of this commentary) and not the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA). When I first learned of this situation, I was appalled at what appeared to be a Salafi-oriented programme to, literally, whitewash the historical fabric of this grand monument as a way to undermine its heritage value lest it become a distraction to th
十多年前——那是在2011年1月埃及革命之前，当时胡斯尼•穆巴拉克(Hosni Mubarak)仍在掌权，政权似乎很可能会传给他的儿子们——我在开罗考虑潜在的新考古项目。我和一位埃及同事相处了一段时间，他是考古保护区的首席检查员，考古保护区包括了曾经是福斯塔(Fustat)的未开发城市空间，这是早期伊斯兰教的大都市扩张的前身，也就是今天的开罗。走在一起，我很快就明白了在一个资金不足、专制的体系中做遗产工作意味着什么，在这个体系中，非纪念性遗址作为容易开发的资源几乎没有价值。然而，这里却吸引了建筑公司夜深人静的造访，他们冲破挡土墙，非法存放建筑垃圾，而不是在城外的垃圾填埋场缴纳费用。在其他地方，尽管政府雇佣的检查员努力用假挖掘来标记和监督边界，但政府承包商还是把附近山上的碎片推到日益缩小的考古保护区，这些山正在被分级，以建造一个新的博物馆、体育俱乐部和公园。然而，最让我印象深刻的是，把里科在这篇重要文章中讨论的西方普遍的遗产理论翻译成现代中东现实的挑战，是一堆大理石柱、雕刻的石柱和其他建筑碎片的故事。毗邻Fustat考古保护区的是Amr ibn al-As清真寺，这是在非洲大陆上建立的第一座清真寺，也是穆斯林世界中现存的最古老的清真寺之一。从行政上讲，它现在不属于保护区，然而历史和考古连接到网站的精神和文化中心是一个主要的新城市基础- misr用阿拉伯语的穆斯林社区,在埃及定居后该地区的征服上半年公元七世纪的我的同事和我分享,现在堆大理石碎片,散落在网站是最近更新的结果的原始公理清真寺。我在这里有意使用“翻新”一词，作为“保护”或“保存”的替代，Rico认为这些理论和实践是普世西方遗产方法的核心原则。事实证明，最近对Jami ' a ' Amr所做的工作是由沙特阿拉伯通过埃及宗教捐赠部(Awqaf)而不是最高古物委员会(SCA)资助和监督的。当我第一次了解到这种情况时，我对这似乎是萨拉菲派导向的计划感到震惊，从字面上看，它粉饰了这座宏伟纪念碑的历史结构，以此来破坏其遗产价值，以免它成为信徒根据伊斯兰司法原则(阻止偏离神圣真理的手段)的忠诚的分心。这一原则一直是各种穆斯林(尤其是逊尼派)原教旨主义团体长期以来的反传统冲动的标志，他们认为，从什叶派神社到不朽的佛教雕像，对神圣和宗教历史空间的破坏和亵渎是合法的。在这些团体中，自19世纪初以来，
{"title":"Preservationist doctrines as theological propositions in secular clothes","authors":"Ian B. Straughn","doi":"10.1017/S1380203821000155","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S1380203821000155","url":null,"abstract":"More than a decade ago – this would be prior to the Egyptian revolution of January 2011, when Hosni Mubarak was still in power, and it seemed likely that rule would pass to his sons – I was in Cairo thinking about potential new archaeological projects. I spent some time with an Egyptian colleague who was the chief inspector for the archaeological preserve that encompassed what remained of the undeveloped urban space that was once Fustat, the early Islamic precursor to metropolitan sprawl that is today’s Cairo. Walking the site together, I quickly understood what it meant to do heritage work in an under-funded, authoritarian system where non-monumental ruins held little value as easily exploitable resources. Instead, the site attracted dead-of-night visits by construction firms that would punch through its retaining walls to illegally deposit their building refuse rather than pay fees at ex-urban landfills. Elsewhere, government contractors bulldozed debris from neighbouring hills that were being graded to build a new museum, sporting club and park into the ever-shrinking archaeological reserve, despite efforts by the state-employed inspectors to use dummy excavations to mark and police the boundaries. However, it was the story of the pile of marble columns, carved ashlars and other architectural fragments that most impressed upon me the challenges of translating the Western universalized doctrines of heritage that Rico discusses in this important essay to the realities of the modern Middle East. Adjacent to the Fustat archaeological preserve is the Mosque of ‘Amr ibn al-As, the first mosque to be founded on the continent of Africa, and one of the oldest still extant in the Muslim world. Administratively it is not part of the preserve today, yet it is historically and archaeologically connected to the site as the spiritual and cultural centre of what was a major new urban foundation – misr in Arabic – by the Muslim community that would settle in Egypt following the region’s conquest in the first half of the seventh century C.E. My colleague shared with me that the heap of marble fragments that now littered the site was the result of a recent renovation of this original congregational mosque. I use the term ‘renovation’ purposefully here as an alternative to ‘conservation’ or ‘preservation’, doctrines and practices which Rico cogently argues operate as core principles of universalized Western approaches to heritage. It turns out that the recent work done to the Jami’a ‘Amr was financed and overseen by Saudi Arabia working through the Egyptian Ministry of Awqaf (Religious Endowments – about which I will offer a few remarks at the end of this commentary) and not the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA). When I first learned of this situation, I was appalled at what appeared to be a Salafi-oriented programme to, literally, whitewash the historical fabric of this grand monument as a way to undermine its heritage value lest it become a distraction to th","PeriodicalId":45009,"journal":{"name":"Archaeological Dialogues","volume":"28 1","pages":"121 - 123"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"57574386","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-12-01DOI: 10.1017/S1380203821000143
T. Rico
Abstract This article examines the ways in which global heritage discourse has operated across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, from an ideological and historical perspective. Ideologically, I consider tensions between heritage preservation practice and religious traditions that share the same landscape or material culture. This discussion, which is relatively marginalized in the heritage literature, has an adverse effect on many attempts by heritage preservationists to mediate or resolve conflicts and contradictions surrounding this type of historic resource. Historically, I revisit the presence and inclusion of experts from the MENA region in the formative years of a global heritage ideology. In this discussion, I juxtapose the relative marginalization of the Middle East and North Africa in global heritage debates against the frequency with which sites and communities across this region are put in the spotlight of religion-driven heritage conflict. Addressing these two forms of (mis)representation, I aim to bring to the foreground the way in which heritage studies is implicated in the constructions of narratives about – not from or by – the MENA region.
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Pub Date : 2021-10-25DOI: 10.1017/S1380203821000209
Zenta Broka-Lāce
Abstract Today there is a revival of groups who claim to practice ancient Latvian religion. They often accuse archaeologists of lying and concealing the evidence of Latvian past superiority. On the one hand, this might be considered a misuse of archaeological data in order to support religious or nationalistic beliefs. On the other hand, hypothetical reconstructions of prehistoric religious beliefs are related to public archaeology and the relationship between science and the wider society. The aim of this paper is to investigate attempts to reconstruct ancient Latvian prehistoric religion through the lens of the archaeology of religion, and at the same time to broaden the discussion into the problematic relationship between nationalism and public archaeology.
{"title":"Is it possible to reconstruct a prehistoric religion? Latvian archaeology versus the believers","authors":"Zenta Broka-Lāce","doi":"10.1017/S1380203821000209","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S1380203821000209","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Today there is a revival of groups who claim to practice ancient Latvian religion. They often accuse archaeologists of lying and concealing the evidence of Latvian past superiority. On the one hand, this might be considered a misuse of archaeological data in order to support religious or nationalistic beliefs. On the other hand, hypothetical reconstructions of prehistoric religious beliefs are related to public archaeology and the relationship between science and the wider society. The aim of this paper is to investigate attempts to reconstruct ancient Latvian prehistoric religion through the lens of the archaeology of religion, and at the same time to broaden the discussion into the problematic relationship between nationalism and public archaeology.","PeriodicalId":45009,"journal":{"name":"Archaeological Dialogues","volume":"28 1","pages":"141 - 162"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2021-10-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44768657","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-06-01DOI: 10.1017/S1380203821000015
Nicolas Zorzin
Abstract Since the 1980s, archaeology has been further embedded in a reinforced and accelerating capitalist ideology, namely neo-liberalism. Most archaeologists had no alternative but to adapt to it through concessions to the free-market economy and to the so-called mitigations taking place within development. However, it is now apparent that the ongoing global socio-ecological disaster we are facing cannot be reversed with compromises but rather with a radical engagement against the injunctions of competition and growth. I suggest that we must anticipate the necessary transformations of archaeology in the coming decades, before archaeology becomes a technical avatar of the neo-liberal dogma, or before its complete annihilation for being deemed ‘superfluous’ (Wurst 2019, 171) by the capitalist regime. In this paper, I will use the idea of ‘degrowth’ to propose a new paradigm for archaeology by applying the concepts of civil disobedience, voluntary simplicity, redistribution of means and the ethics of no-growth.
{"title":"Is archaeology conceivable within the degrowth movement?","authors":"Nicolas Zorzin","doi":"10.1017/S1380203821000015","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S1380203821000015","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Since the 1980s, archaeology has been further embedded in a reinforced and accelerating capitalist ideology, namely neo-liberalism. Most archaeologists had no alternative but to adapt to it through concessions to the free-market economy and to the so-called mitigations taking place within development. However, it is now apparent that the ongoing global socio-ecological disaster we are facing cannot be reversed with compromises but rather with a radical engagement against the injunctions of competition and growth. I suggest that we must anticipate the necessary transformations of archaeology in the coming decades, before archaeology becomes a technical avatar of the neo-liberal dogma, or before its complete annihilation for being deemed ‘superfluous’ (Wurst 2019, 171) by the capitalist regime. In this paper, I will use the idea of ‘degrowth’ to propose a new paradigm for archaeology by applying the concepts of civil disobedience, voluntary simplicity, redistribution of means and the ethics of no-growth.","PeriodicalId":45009,"journal":{"name":"Archaeological Dialogues","volume":"28 1","pages":"1 - 16"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2021-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/S1380203821000015","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44912945","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-06-01DOI: 10.1017/S1380203821000076
Uroš Matić
Abstract The paper examines epistemological problems behind a recent study claiming to provide a synthesis of a vocal sound from the mummified remains of a man named Nesyamun and behind racial designations in Egyptian mummy studies more generally. So far, responses in the media and academia concentrated on the ethical problems of these studies, whereas their theoretical and methodological backgrounds have been rarely addressed or mentioned only in passing. It seems that the media reaction has targeted the synthesis of a sound rather than other, equally problematic, assumptions found in Egyptian mummy studies. By focusing on the epistemological problems, it will be demonstrated that the issues of greatest concern are endemic to a general state of a considerable part of the discipline of Egyptology and its unreflective engagement with the material remains of the past, especially human remains.
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Pub Date : 2021-06-01DOI: 10.1017/S1380203821000052
LouAnn Wurst
1 When employed by Oxford Archaeological Unit (now Oxford Archaeology) on the Swindon–Gloucester road scheme (1996) we were required to sign a disclaimer against road protests. This was after the Newbury bypass and M3 Winchester protests where archaeologists had been active dissenting voices. Now we found ourselves working for the road builders, who did not consider this dichotomy to be appropriate. 2 See https://blacktrowelcollective.wordpress.com. 3 See www.mola.org.uk/archaeology-and-public-benefit-ukri-future-leaders-fellowship.
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