REVIEW

Archaeologies: Journal of the World Archaeological Congress (
2008)

DOI 10.1007/s11759-008-9083-7

Cultural Imperialism and Heritage Politics

in the Event of Armed Conflict: Prospects
for an Activist Archaeology
Maria Theresia Starzmann, Department of Anthropology,
Binghamton University (SUNY), PO Box 6000, Binghamton,
NY 13902-6000, USA
E-mail: mstarzm1@binghamton.edu

ABSTRACT

ARCHAEOLOGIES Volume 4 Number 3 December 2008

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368

The production of archaeological knowledge is embedded in a longstanding tradition of colonial encounters. This paper asks how politicaleconomic interests impinge on archaeological work, specifically in the event
of armed conflict. To answer this question I discuss commodification of
cultural heritage and analyze it as a form of structural violence. I argue that
the attitude that allows treatment of archaeological artifacts as saleable
items with international owners is part of a strategy of global cultural
imperialism. Exemplified by the case of the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003,
this paper shows how the clash of global heritage politics with local
practices of memorializing the past results in a tension: because capitalist
governments consider the locales whose glorious pasts are studied by
archaeologists to be culturally inferior, the nexus between (trans-)national
actors and local communities is an asymmetrical one. In order to overcome
the hegemonic role of archaeology within these dynamics, I propose an
activist archaeology that enables a political activism grounded in
recursivity.
________________________________________________________________

Resume: La production de la connaissance archeologique est ancree dans

une longue tradition des occurrences du colonialisme. Cet article montre
comment les interets politico-economiques empie`tent sur le travail
archeologique, tout particulie`rement en cas de guerre. Pour repondre a` cette
question je discute de la marchandisation de lheritage culturel et je lanalyse
en tant que forme de violence structurelle. Je montre que lattitude qui
permet le traitement dobjets archeologiques en tant quarticles
commercialisable par des proprietaires internationaux fait partie dune
strategie dimperialisme culturel mondial. Exemplifie dans le cas de linvasion
americaine de lIrak en 2003, cet article montre comment laffrontement de
politiques dheritage mondial avec les pratiques locales dimmortalisation

2008 World Archaeological Congress

Cultural Imperialism and Heritage Politics in the Event of Armed Conflict 369
du passe resulte en une tension: parce que les gouvernements capitalistes
conside`rent les lieux dont le passe glorieux etudie par les archeologues
comme inferieur du point de vue culturel, la connexion entre les acteurs
nationaux et internationaux et les communautes locales est de nature
asymetrique. De facon a` surmonter le role hegemonique de larcheologie
dans le cadre de ces dynamiques, je propose un archeologie activiste qui
permette un activisme politique se fondant sur la recursivite.
________________________________________________________________

Resumen: La adquisicion de conocimientos arqueologicos se enmarca

dentro una larga tradicion de encuentros coloniales. En este trabajo busco
conocer hasta que punto los intereses polticos y economicos afectan al
trabajo arqueologico, sobre todo en el caso de conflictos armados. Para
responder a este interrogante, analizo la comercializacion del patrimonio
cultural en forma de violencia estructural. Argumento que la actitud que
permite tratar los objetos arqueologicos como artculos comerciales con
propietarios internacionales es parte de una estrategia de imperialismo
cultural global. Tomando como ejemplo la invasion estadounidense de Irak
en 2003, este trabajo demuestra que la poltica de patrimonio mundial y las
practicas locales de recordar el pasado provoca un choque no exento de
tension: dado que los gobiernos capitalistas consideran a los lugarenos
cuyo glorioso pasado esta siendo estudiado por los arqueologosinferiores
culturalmente, el nexo entre los actores (trans)nacionales y las comunidades
locales es bastante asimetrico. Para superar el papel hegemonico de la
arqueologica dentro de esta dinamica, propongo una arqueologa activista
que permita un activismo poltico basado en la recursividad.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

KEYWORDS

Cultural imperialism, Structural violence, Political archaeology, Colonialism,

Material culture, Heritage, Globalization
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The Non-possibility of Innocence

With an intensification of armed conflicts worldwide, war today has
become a foundational element of politics (Hardt and Negri 2004:67).
Archaeological work is not immune to such politics. In many cases, archaeologists risk ethical compromise in their decisions to begin, continue, or
terminate their work in countries involved in civil or international wars.
Yet, archaeologists often treat humanitarian and political crises as secondary to archaeological concerns (Bernbeck 2004; Steele 2005). As a result it
remains controversial to what degree, for example, issues of human rights

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should be considered in the work of archaeologists; it is unclear how ethical dilemmas get solved by archaeologists working in places disrupted by
war; and it is debated whether political activism in archaeological scholarship is acceptable. For many archaeologists, a convenient circumvention of
these dilemmas is to claim an agenda-free position from where it is
argued that the destruction of cultural heritage in the event of armed conflict is simply a preservationist problem of either preventing or documenting the damages that have occurred, rather than a political-economic
strategy employed by imperialist governments. However, the notion of an
agenda-free or neutral academic scholar has always been a nave one
(Habermas 1960). Archaeologists produce knowledge that is not only intimately intertwined with their own social positions, but also politically
charged (Trigger 1984). As a practice that is rooted within the broader field
of past and present colonialism, the intellectual dissemination and representation of archaeological knowledge inevitably involve political decisions
that may feed into political processes of domination. Innocence is not a
possibility (Said 1989).
It is only through critical reflexivity that archaeologists can question
their very practices of knowledge production. Such questioning must first
and foremost include the analysis of power relations between archaeologists
and the different stakeholdersdescendant communities, local governments, academic institutions, private investors, land owners, workers,
etc.with which they engage (Pels 1997). It is, however, most important
to note that any analysis must fail if it remains on a purely discursive level
or is merely applied to the individual researcher. In order to undo the
hegemony of academic discourses, it is not enough to talk about a politics
of location where we position ourselves in relation to the knowledge we
produce as scholars. This kind of reflexivity needs to be recast into recursivity and practiced as such. Reflexivity asks what constitutes the [anthropologist] as a speaking subject. Recursivity asks what interrupts her and
demands a reply (Fortun 2001:23).1 As archaeologists we must take a
position amidst competing calls for response, thereby weighting the interests of the least represented stakeholder groupsthe disenfranchised
(Scham 2001)over those of powerful capitalist institutions, military units,
or individuals with business concerns. To really decenter the places from
where the anthropological objects of study are produced, it is necessary
that we hold ourselves accountable to the subjects of our studies by
acknowledging their politicized subjectivities, allowing for politicization for
itself rather than in itself (Franklin 1995; Marcus 1998; Marx and Engels
1939 [1845]; Myers 1988; Yanagisako and Delaney 1995). The goal for the
disenfranchised, however, is not enfranchisementand consequentially,
participation in the political life of the statebut their liberation and the
consequential abolition of the disenfranchising system itself.

Cultural Imperialism and Heritage Politics in the Event of Armed Conflict 371

In this paper I want to situate the production of archaeological knowledge within the larger frame of (neo-)colonialist and (neo-)imperialist politics world-wide. Following Meskell (2005:127), I will show how the
creation of sites of cultural heritage by both heritage consultants and
archaeologists is a culturally generative act that is intrinsically political.
In this context, I will focus on discussing how the preservation of some
and the simultaneous neglect of other sites of cultural heritage go hand-inhand with the hegemonic claims of a universalistic reading (and writing)
of history as global heritage.2

Hegemonic Readings (and Writings) of History

UNESCOs concept of world heritage, materialized in the world heritage
list, is a prime example of a universalistic, yet object-centric reading of history. The practice of treating cultural heritage as specifically material
revolves around three legal constructs of rights of ownership, rights of
access, and rights of inheritance (Meskell 2005:127), which are deeply
rooted in (neo-)liberal values. In the secular ethics of the capitalist state,
these juridical categories are blended with ethical ideas and hence appear
as moral standards of modernity (see also Ticktin 2006).3 The result is a
universalizing language that elevates the legalmoral categories of ownership, access, and inheritance to global values, while cultural heritage itself
becomes a common good belonging to all of humanity (Pollock 2003,
2005; Pollock and Lutz 1994). The UNESCO world heritage list includes
851 properties forming part of the cultural and natural heritage which the
World Heritage Committee considers as having outstanding universal
value (http://whc.unesco.org/en/list, retrieved Feb. 11, 2008, emphasis
mine).
At the same time, however, we find hierarchies among these global values that are enacted by practices of exclusion and inclusion: only certain
historic events are selected for the archives of (and for) the privileged and
then naturalized as instances of a global history. Accordingly, while global
hierarchies of value do seem ethical, they in fact only legitimize hegemony
through an appeal to a universal moral ground (Herzfeld 2004; but see
Heinz, this volume). Humanity itself is a homogenizing and thereby
exclusive category that erases the historical specificity of any possible others; instead the Others identity becomes a restrictive one that is imposed
from the outside (Trouillot 2003). Or more precisely, the identity of any
Other is constructed by way of inclusion of an outside that isolates the
nonhuman within the human: the non-man is produced by the humanization of an animal: the man-ape, the enfant sauvage or Homo ferus, but

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also and above all the slave, the barbarian, and the foreigner, as figures of
an animal in human form (Agamben 2004:37).
Ancient Mesopotamia, commonly referred to as the cradle of civilization, is an oft-cited place that functions as a site of global cultural heritage
and yet remains a highly exclusive space. The trope of the cradle of civilization is, of course, not born out of embodied memories of a once shared
past; it results from the production of archives by way of constructing a
historical continuity, a historicized memory (if memory at all), that is
owned by those who define the rules for the production of historical narratives and dominate the global market for their consumption. From early
on it was primarily Western European scholars who formulated a grand
narrative of the Orient, which represented their own as well as their governments political interests. When the first Assyriologists located the origins of what was considered a major scientific achievementwritingbut
also certain social and political-economic developments in Ancient Mesopotamia, they not only pleased an interested lay audience, but essentially
discovered the primeval antecedent of the Occident. The use of the phrase
cradle of civilization in popular narratives about Mesopotamia therefore
unerringly highlights the paternalistic and colonialist implications of considering the nations infancy its crowning achievement. In Orientalist fashion, this suggests that these countries of the Middle East have never
surpassed their early glories and that the torch of civilization has since
passed to Europe (Meskell 2005:139140; cf. Bahrani 1998).4 Global
meta-narratives of this kind serve to privatise ethics and globalise indifference (Koerner 2004:211); they also underwrite the asymmetry of the
local-global nexus and as such assist in the cultural dominance of interests
of neo-colonial and neo-imperial countries over other countries and their
citizens.5
Universalizing historical narratives thus feed into colonialist discourses
just as much as they attend to nationalist interests, linking both of them to
the effect of constructing a past that legitimates the present (Trigger 1984;
Fowler 1987; Scham 1998). The universalization of history, or more precisely of the West-as-History, is thus the paradigm of modernity that
rules in the colonial setting: While global expansion permitted the West
to assert the universality of its reason despite its particularity, the colonized
were denied this privilege []. Their historical fate was to assert the
autonomy and universality of their culture in the domain of the nation
(Prakash 2002:36). It is through the engendering of patriotic sentiments
that colonized peoples assert not only their cultural autonomy, but also
their political authority. And yet, such use of history is not restricted to
politicians, but archaeologists, too, by way of writing history, make
politics: they themselves often contribute to or follow the grand historical
narratives, while alternative histories are neglected or remain understudied

Cultural Imperialism and Heritage Politics in the Event of Armed Conflict 373

as marginal to the disciplines core interests. Any historical continuities

are obviously the results of efforts to re/construct a long gone past that
gets idealized by cutting out those moments that are less attractive to the
most favored narrative (Connerton 1989).

The Horror Vacui of the Imperial Map

At the same time, and ironically so, there is the almost obsessive urge of
historians, archaeologists, and collectors alike to fill the gaps in their
archives, and the horror vacui of so many ethnographic and archaeological
museums (Corbey 2000; cf. Penny 2002). The institutionalized re/construction of a historicized memory by way of material traces, which usually does
not allow for contested histories or historical errors (but see Kreps 2003),
is then the testimony for the fundamental collapse of memory (Nora
1989:7); where the archiving of historical truths according to empiricist
logic causes the alienation of descendant communities from their cultural
heritage in a globalized world (Yahya 2005).
Certainly the removal of objects from their original contexts and their
management in museum collections play a crucial role here that is part of
the political project of modernity: once pulled out from their life worlds
by collectors, objects come to contain an essential meaning that holds its
place within the universal hierarchy of values; and the historical narratives
displayed in museums are really only productions of the museum itself
(Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 2006). Simultaneously, a basic form of identification and agency is lost on the level of the local actors who have been
deprived of what they may consider their very own heritage objects. The
circulation of ethnographic or archaeological artifacts is instead utilized in
colonialist (and capitalist) practices for making as well as for controlling
subjects (Comaroff and Comaroff 1997). It is, however, not the making of
subjects through objects as such that is specific to capitalism, but the particular mechanism that fetishizes commodities based on a belief in the
monetary exchange value of any object and the drenching of life with
material consumption.

Spatialized Time
Archaeology contributes to these processes through techniques of object
manipulation (such as establishing typologies and taxonomies), where not
only the relationships between objects and subjects, but also those between
past and present get defined (Pels 1997; Dietler 2005). Creating authoritative historical truths by way of managing objects, archaeological knowledge

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can assist in mapping out the cultures of the world in a fashion that makes
them understandable to and controllable by the metropolis. In many
instances this knowledge is employed by powerful governments as an
instrument of colonialism (Dietler 2005:65) and motivation for imperial
expansion (Barringer and Flynn 1998; Corbey 2000).
Characteristic of archaeological techniques of object manipulation is that
the meaning of objects is regulated according to a normative order that
operates on the basis of similarity and difference. Rather than being perceived as things in motion that have a social life or cultural biographies
(Appadurai 1986; Kopytoff 1986), archaeological artifacts are placed within
a nearly unalterable hierarchy of values. Consequently, anthropologists
learned to read the materiality of objects as unambiguous and ever lasting
expressions of human cultural behavior that can be captured in a
museum showcase. Such a reified understanding of objectsas well as a
notion that the museum showcase is not part of an objects life cyclenot
only render human cultural practices, but culture itself static, with stable
notions of author and subject (Said 1989). This view eventually allows for
the production of a quintessential Other whose indispensable qualities are
circumscribed by the boundaries of a Culture. According to Fabian
(1983), constructing the Other as such requires the introduction of an
evolutionary notion of spatialized time where the spatial separation of foreign (often primitive) people and their (usually exotic) cultures directly
reflects a distance in time. Ultimately, spatialized time allows neither for
coevalness nor for history, or historicity, of the Other (Fabian 1983; cf.
Trouillot 1995, 2002; Wolf 1982). Thus removed from modernity, the
primitiveness of other people becomes the factor that is used to justify
the colonialist encounter (Trigger 1984:362363):
During the colonial period, archaeologists and ethnologists regarded the socalled tribal cultures of sub-Saharan Africa as a living but largely static
museum of the past [] The role that was assigned to prehistoric Hamitic
peoples in transmitting to sub-Saharan Africa a smattering of more advanced
traits that were assumed to be ultimately of Near Eastern origin bore a striking resemblance of the civilizing missions that European colonists were
claiming for themselves. And as the evolutionary concept of spatialized time
gets applied to the archaeological past, here too past cultures and people
come to be perceived as fixed in timepassive (Arnold 1999).

Appropriated History
Museum collections contribute to this essentialized understanding of culture, where objects (as well as people!6) are not only removed from their

Cultural Imperialism and Heritage Politics in the Event of Armed Conflict 375

original contexts, but their meanings undergo radical changes (Thomas

2004). As institutional frameworks of colonialism and imperialism, the
representations of ethnographic as well as archaeological objects they contain must therefore be understood as a form of appropriation of cultural others (Corbey 2000:12; cf. Liverani 2005). The 1882 exhibition by
Pitt Rivers in Oxford serves as a case in point: here objects wereas
decontextualized artifactspressed into a typological scheme within
which the exotic curiosities of the collection could entirely be interpreted in compliance with the universe of Western Man (Dias, quoted
in Bereau 2004:94).7 Rather than by geographic or cultural origin, for
example, Pitt Rivers ordered objects according to form and function
resulting in a list of artifact classes that reads like this: agriculture, animalia, animal gear, archery weapon, armour weapon, bag, barkcloth, basketry, bead, body art, box, carving, ceremonial, children, clothing,
clothing textile, clothing footgear, clothing handgear, clothing headgear,
clothing underwear [].8
A prerequisite for the establishment of museums is, however, not only
the appropriation of ethnographic or archaeological objects, but also their
world-wide circulation. It is the movement of goods across borders that
stimulates the expansion of empires on a global scale and the multiplication of the metropolis tentacles into the remotest locales. Therefore, in
times of economic globalization cultural heritage and its material
objectsarchaeological artifacts in particularbecome part of the global
flow of capital and people, and ultimately are treated as economic
resources with international owners (Kammeier 2003; Pollock and Lutz
1994). Collectors and dealers of antiquities, in particular, often reason
that antiquities belong wherever the market distributes them, suggesting
that strong export controls would rather foster black markets (MacKenzie
2002; but see Yahya, this volume). As a result, cultural heritage becomes
reduced to and reified in saleable material objects that belong to those
who can afford to pay for them. Through the notion of ownership of
material culture, heritage and identity are now linked to ideas of private
property and assigned a place in the global hierarchies of value (Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 2006; Pollock 2003; Posey 1998). The commodified and
fetishized objects of cultural heritage are converted into physical correlates
for dominant historical narratives, so that any archaeological commodity
may at this point be appropriated to serve the expression of identity
claims. In stark contrast to this capitalist understanding of cultural heritage, the role archaeological objects might play in the memories and life
worlds of indigenous groups without having been assigned a market value
is neglected by most international collectors (museums and governments
included).

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Cultural Imperialism
In many instances neglect of indigenous peoples identity claims includes
active efforts on the part of the colonizing powers to transform or destroy
the cultural heritage of descendant communities as long as their interests
do not support the empires political-economic goals (Arnold 1999; Corbey
2000).9 As the case of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 demonstrates, the
conscious or deliberate neglect and destruction of heritage serves a geopolitical strategy of cultural imperialism (cf. Bernbeck and Pollock 2004),
which is characterized both by the exercise of military power and the perpetuation of notions of civilization, progress, democracy, and order as
modernization (Slater 2004; Stoler 2006).
US cultural imperialism is really a form of neo-imperialism, because not
only in the Middle East, but also in Central and Latin America, as well as
in Africa and Asia, the United States has replaced the great earlier empires
as the dominant outside force (Said 1989:215, emphasis in the original)and has for itself created empire as a way of life (ibid.; see also Lutz
2006). Despite its name, this form of imperialism has not first and foremost a cultural motivation, but an economic one that plays out in cultural
terms: modernization, on the one hand, is measured in terms of economic development; while deep time,10 on the other hand, is materialized
in artifacts and monuments that have ascribed monetary value. In this cultural economy, which operates on a global level, ownership over the historical narratives and their material correlates becomes a tool for
demonstrating and realizing economic claims (Hamm 2005; Waters 1995).

The Antiquities Black Market

In the case of the war in Iraq, the damaging of numerous archaeological
sites as well as the looting of artifacts by both military personnel and local
populations have occurred and are often still ongoing. Due to the fact that
governmental as well as non-governmental institutions world-wide turn a
blind eye to, or even participate in these events, the illicit trade in antiquities has grown enormously after the latest invasion of Iraq. The phenomenon of the antiquities black market not only further facilitates the
commodification and globalization of cultural heritage, but it epitomizes
one facet of cultural imperialismthe structural violence that causes the
disempowerment of local communities by means of a repressive politicaleconomic structure (Galtung 2004; see also Bernbeck, this volume).
The illicit trade in antiquities is supposed to be one of the largest illegal
businesses in the world, the third-largest type of black market trafficking
behind the illicit drugs and weapons trading, with an estimated profit of

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4 billion US dollars per year (Elich 2004). The profit in trading increases
with each transaction where it is primarily the middleman, as part of an
international network of dealers, who accrues profit at a rate of over 98%
of the final price (Brodie et al. 2002). Buyers on the Western European
and North American market include auction houses as well as private people and organizations that acquire looted artifacts. Museums as buyers of
antiquities from Iraq include, for example, the New York Metropolitan
Museum of Art, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, the Toledo Museum of Art, the Princeton Fine Arts Museum,
and the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles.11
The global flow of antiquities is subject to the teleology of the
marketthe new master narrative of Western modernity (Trouillot
2003:48)that contributes to an erasure of social and cultural differences
while the commodification of material objects results in unequal access to
cultural heritage. The argument that the illicit trade in antiquities brings
economic benefit to hard-pressed local communities does not hold true.
According to Brodie et al. (2000:1314) a fossil turtle bought from its finder in Brazil for $10 fetched $16,000 in Europe []. Once commodified
on the Western market, objects continue to circulate for years, perhaps
centuries, generating money in transaction after transaction. None of this
money goes to the original finders or owners or their descendants []. A
more recent case has been reported by AFP, according to which a small
Mesopotamian figurine of a lion (the Guennol Lioness) was sold for over
57 million US dollars.12 I consider this structural violence because of the
aforementioned repressive and exploitative political-economic structure
that may cause or contribute to alienation of local communities from their
cultural heritage. At the same time this structure does not always appear as
repressive and can very well be couched in terms of education or humanitarian intervention. It is such humanitarian imperialism (Stoler
2006:129) that justifies the invasion by military and economic power into
every aspect of daily life, even the most intimate. As is stated most explicitly in a report by the US Defense Science Board, The Armed Forces are
no longer engaged solely in warfare. Their missions now include pacification, assistance, the battle of ideas, etc. (quoted in Said 1989:214).

In the Margins of the State

Global business in cultural heritage contradicts most current practices of
heritage management. In most cases, the object heritage is still subject to
the sovereignty of nation-states, and the destruction of cultural heritage is
punished by national law-making and executive practices (Young 2004).
What is more, as the trafficking of stolen antiquities tends to transcend

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national boundaries, international agreements exist to prevent this trafficking. However, such agreements usually remain ineffective since they are
not backed by law. Others are never even put into practice, such as those
designed in the Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the
Event of Armed Conflict (The Hague 1954, Art. 4, 3; see also Yahya, this
volume).13 This Convention, designed to prohibit, protect and [] put a
stop to any form of theft, pillage or misappropriation of [] cultural
property (UNESCO), has neither been ratified by the US nor the United
Kingdom, the main invaders of Iraq (Young 2004).14
In the case of Iraq, as in many others, the illicit trade in antiquities
takes place in an in-between space that is located at the margins of the
state (Jeganathan 2004:74; see also Sauders, this volume).15 This space is
disorderly and, especially in times of conflict, only insufficiently covered by
law. Rather than referring to any physical borders, the margins are a space
that is constantly moving in reference to the places where an illicit action
takes place and is not limited to the frontiers of nation-states: the trafficking of antiquities extends past the territorial limits of the nation-state and
onto a transnational level. As such it becomes a global business that
involves people and institutions around the world as clients. Consequentially, this in-between, or third space of the black market can seldom be
localized and now also refers to non-places such as a cyber-space in which
much of the illicit selling of archaeological artifacts takes place. We are
thus confronted with a seemingly paradoxical situation of the materiality
of antiquity on the one hand, and the floating post-materiality
(Hamilakis 2000:244), so to speak, of the cyber-discourse about antiquity.
Yet, even a cyber-discourse is led by real individuals who tend to live
in specific places and participate in localized communities which have their
own and diverse interpretations of history. It is real individuals who fight
the erasure of principles such as equality, the right to human bodily integrity, or the protection of civilians. Their discourses can be read as a form
of resistance to the globalizing trend. It is thus that concepts of collective
identity are not only politically exploited by nation-states in order to create
loyal citizens or imperial subjects but can equally well be employed by
communities that are opposing the state and trying to legitimize claims to
alternative forms of loyalty (Meyer and Geschiere 1999; cf. Anderson 1991;
Hamilakis and Yalouri 1996). If we remain ignorant of such forms of agencyforms of agency that usually remain unacknowledged on the nationstate levelarchaeologists will once more find themselves in complicity
with the ideologically and economically powerful where the study of supposedly culturally dependent and inferior locales by anthropologists goes
hand-in-hand with their imperial domination (McGuire and Navarrete
2005). Rather, we must come to understand that the production of locality
through global discourses can be a powerful counter-hegemonic strategy: it

Cultural Imperialism and Heritage Politics in the Event of Armed Conflict 379

prevents the fragmentation of local forms of resistance by creating worldwide forms of solidarity for local liberation struggles. As archaeologists we
can choose to support those struggles by acknowledging the local discourses as defensive mechanisms rather than as preconditions to enfranchisement, which can always only mean enfranchisement within a colonial
system rather than replacement of that colonial system itself.16

An Activist Archaeology
This paper has attempted to demonstrate how the preservation of so-called
cultural heritage in museums as well as its destruction in the event of
armed conflict may be considered instruments of colonialism and imperialism. In both cases the equation is that he who owns the past owns the
present and may make claims to a countrys resources. The past as a narrative is, in the majority of cases, still owned by Western European and
North American researchers. Through the monopolization of knowledge
about the past by the archaeological discipline, academia (and again first
and foremost its Euro-American branches) is still dominant in the development of archaeological theories and the practice of archaeological fieldwork
(Bernbeck 2003; Trigger 1984). How to get rid of the archaeologists
involvement in political-economic acts of domination and dependency
should therefore be a central concern for future archaeological theory and
practice. A radical critique of our own practices of knowledge production,
where our theories as tools to know the past can be directly utilized to act
in the present, goes in the right direction but is not enough.
I argue for an activist archaeology that involves a lessening of the powerful status we occupy as scholars and an opening-up of the discipline to
the requests as well as protests of disenfranchised stakeholder groups (cf.
Sauders, this volume; Yahya, this volume). Such an integration of scholarship and political struggle for practical interests is, of course, a value-based
undertaking. As some may argue, it even bears the very real risk of making
sudden turns from a liberationist to a deeply repressive narrative; they may
take, as a case in point, the emergence of the state of Israel where archaeological information about the Jewish past played an important role in
establishing an ultra-nationalist narrative. However, repressive narratives of
this kind are usually not defence mechanisms of disenfranchised groups;
rather, they become repressive when the group in question has the power
to make them so. These narratives are in many cases state-sponsored (in
the case of Israel also by the United States of America) or carried by the
powerful members of a populace, and thus they have the potential to
become hegemonic.

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Hegemonic narratives are, however, also furthered by the claim to a

transcendent and objective science, which ignores that as scholars we, too,
are swayed by emotion and that our subjectivity is only enveloped in an
objective stance. If we allow ourselves to be doubtful, and our archaeological practice to become interruptedwhich sometimes may require us to
pause in our work, or at other times to completely bring it to a haltethical principles against violence, inequalities, and exploitation have the
chance to be realized; while at the same time these principles are no universals and must be recognized as positioned, conflicting, and disagreeing,
too. They tend to especially conflict with hegemonic narratives so that it
becomes important to negotiate the principles we hold as political scholars
with those affected by war and violence. For such purpose, anthropologists
need to acknowledge intersubjective relations instead of objectifying the
Other; and they must allow and acknowledge reply from others to the
political actions one is willing to take. This promises to make field practice more complex, since archaeologists will need to be more cognizant
and considerate of other parties, specifically local governments and communities []. We will have to consult, collaborate, negotiate, incorporate,
and be willing to forgo our own research agenda (Meskell 2005:145146).
We can expect this to be a difficult task to be carried out in situations
marked by war, violence, and death, by oppression, rebellion, and inhumanity. And people in a daily struggle for survival might not be interested
in archaeological work, revolutionary or otherwise. But the case for an
activist archaeology is at the very least a project of educated hope (Bloch
1986) that tries to develop an exchange with those immediately surrounding an archaeologists fieldthe local people living in the vicinity of an
archaeological site, the hired workers, the government representatives, etc.
An exchange that is both sensitive to transferential displacement and open
to the challenge of the others voice (LaCapra, quoted in Holly 1996:13).
In effect this means that our actions must be driven by respect for and
solidarity with the disenfranchised, up to the point of their liberation.

Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Reinhard Bernbeck and Susan Pollock for inspiring
and impassioned discussions about this paper topic. My participation at
the conference was supported by a travel grant from the Department of
Anthropology at SUNY Binghamton, for which I want to express my gratitude. I would moreover like to thank Bilge Frat, Archana Mohan, and
James Verinis for critically reading earlier drafts of this paper and providing me with insightful comments.

Cultural Imperialism and Heritage Politics in the Event of Armed Conflict 381

Notes
1. A critical remark about the language used by Fortun (2001): by asking for the what
(instead of who), the notion of recursivity does not actually address another human
subject. As has been laid out by Honneth (2005:4142), such a language can ultimately
not allow for an affirmative acknowledgement (anerkennen) of others but remains at a
level of recognition (erkennen) of the other as object. As such, it might even contribute to driving anthropology further into neo-empiricism. I wish to thank Reinhard
Bernbeck for discussing this issue with me and drawing my attention to Honneths
work.
2. For an example of such a universalistic claim see in Goode (2007:94).
3. It has been argued by Agamben (2003) that ethics and law are in fact never coterminous. In the case of Nazi perpetrators like Adolf Eichmann, he demonstrates, any
blending of the two spheres is only used to exempt a person from juridical sentencing
by accepting a moral guilt and ethical responsibility instead.
4. And yet in some of those countries official historiographies the notion of the cradle of
civilization is actively pursued, precisely because of the benefits it produces in the construction of nationalist or ethnic identities. The notion itself is, of course, far older than
19th and 20th century Orientalism and can be traced back to medieval translatio imperii
theories (Le Goff 1964).
5. In his explorations of the controversies surrounding the Great Zimbabwe ruins, Trigger
(1984:362363) provides another troubling example of the colonialist mentality operative in African archaeology (cf. Hall 1990, 1995; Kohl 1998).
6. Corbey (2000:25) describes how a phenomenon matching the same pattern as colonial
and world exhibitions was what the Germans called Volkerschau: the exhibition of exotic peoples from colonies who, with their objects, had to show scenes from their daily
lives. [] Zoos were popular venues for such manifestations, which were set up by
western impresarios. Revealing is, of course, the situating of these shows in a zoo,
thereby delineating once more the image of the civilized human versus the not-yethuman savage. (For the role of world exhibitions or world fairs in the colonialist
enterprise more generally see also Mitchell 1989, 1992.)
7. For a de-colonial critique of the universalizing claim of Western thought see Mignolo
(2007); also see Wallerstein (2006).
8. Source at http://www.mda.org.uk/spectrum-terminology/pitt-rivers/class (retrieved Nov.
21, 2007).
9. This discussion is further complicated once we look beyond a dualist matrix of colonizer-colonized and also acknowledge competing interests within each group (conflicts
of interests among colonized peoples or within occupied territories have, for example,
been analyzed by Bernbeck 2003; Bernbeck and Pollock 1996; Yahya 2005). For a
detailed discussion of the antagonistic roles of local agents in the production of cultural
heritage, see Starzmann (2007).
10. That is, a concept of long time spans extending back into geologic history and the
related history of life. Also compare the term monumental time used by Hamilakis
and Yalouri (1996) as well as by Herzfeld (1991).
11. Source at http://www.savingantiquities.org/f-culher-museums.php (retrieved Nov. 14,
2005). Note that by the time of completing this article, in several cases looted artifacts
had been sent back to Iraq. In other cases, museum personnel were threatened with
prosecution (as in the case of the curator of the J. Paul Getty Museum). Also, in
November 2007 UNESCOs International Coordination Committee for the Safeguarding of Iraqi Cultural Heritage met for the first time and launched an appeal to stop

382

12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

MARIA THERESIA STARZMANN

illicit trafficking of cultural property from Iraq (see http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.phpURL_ID=41274&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html, retrieved Jan. 15,
2008).
See http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5gMfDoQ_vX7HpjKjVVxJK7NwsMfIw (retrieved
December 28, 2007). Also see the report in Time magazine that basically took this
example to instruct its readers how antiquities are a form of safe investment in an
otherwise volatile market. See http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1693792,
00.html (retrieved February 28, 2008).
The complete text of the convention can be found under http://portal.unesco.org/en/
ev.php-URL_ID=13637&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html (retrieved
August 8, 2007).
Of course, it can be discussed whether the Convention itself, as a product of Western
heritage politics, would not constitute another form of interventionist politics in its
own terms. I would like to thank James Verinis for this remark.
As an other economy, it would be intriguing to compare the illicit trade in antiquities with the so-called subversive or unruly economies of borderlands as described
by Donnan and Wilson (1999), as well as Wilson and Donnan (2006); see also Nordstrom (2000).
An example is the introduction of the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 where the US
government enacted a series of laws imposing citizenship upon first nation peoples:
BE IT ENACTED by the Senate and house of Representatives of the United States of
America in Congress assembled, That all non citizen Indians born within the territorial
limits of the United States be, and they are hereby, declared to be citizens of the United States: Provided, That the granting of such citizenship shall not in any manner
impair or otherwise affect the right of any Indian to tribal or other property. (Kappler 1929:1165) While these laws enfranchised first nation peoples with (at least in
theory) the same political rights as other citizens, it also destroyed their autonomy
and self-determination. The efforts by the US government were couched in a liberaldemocratic rhetoric of equal rights under the law. In reality, however, the privileges of
citizenship, such as the right to vote, were often denied to Native Americans in the
early 20th century by the colonial nation-state. I would like to thank Andrew Epstein
for talking about this issue with me.

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