Ethics and Accountability

Native Americans, a number of other indigenous peoples around the world, and a number of scholars began to complain about the way archaeology had been conducted. In particular, they called for codes of ethics, as well as for the return of some excavated human remains and sacred objects to appropriate groups. Laws were passed in the late 1980s to begin to address these concerns.

In 1995, the Society for American Archaeology (SAA) outlined a series of ethical principles for archaeologists. Principle no. 2 is that of accountability:

Responsible archaeological research, including all levels of professional activities, requires an acknowledgment of public accountability and a commitment by the archaeologist to make every reasonable effort, in good faith, to consult actively with affected group(s), with the goal of establishing a working relationship that can be beneficial to the discipline and to all parties involved.

This principle represents two obligations on the part of archaeologists: an acknowledgment of general accountability to the public who is paying for research, and an obligation to make every effort to actively consult with affected groups and to develop working relationships with these parties. The SAA statement ends with the notion that these relationships should be “beneficial to the discipline and to all parties involved’’. Given this mandate, what kinds of relationships have archaeologists formed, and what kinds of problems, successes, and failures have resulted from these relationships? To what extent are archaeologists obligated to evaluate how their work affects others? And, once acknowledged, what is the evaluation of how it does so? What are the consequences and obligations of being engaged? Answering this question helps us get to the larger question of ‘who owns the past?’

A number of archaeologists have viewed this principle as reflecting a reaction to problems that archaeologists have had with indigenous peoples and human remains, as well as the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) (see Native

American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act),

But in fact the issues raised in this principle are universal - archaeologists’ work always affects others in direct or indirect ways, and there are always a number of stakeholders who have concerns or questions, and who may wish to participate in (or even control) developing, planning, and interpreting the work done.

The principle of accountability can be seen as one of engagement. To do what the principle mandates, it is difficult to enter a place, do a quick field project, and then disappear. Even though some projects may be fast and relatively isolated, the principle implicitly encourages placing such work within a long-term framework - as part of ongoing regional research in areas where people know you and you know them. It asks the archaeologist to invest in an area, in terms of commitment and engagement. Many archaeologists have long seen this as an optimal way to conduct research, but generally speaking these conversations have not been placed in ethical contexts - one tends to do better work within a regional context and frame where one understands the details of the archaeology and the basic research questions.

The SAA was not alone in developing principles of ethics in the mid-1990s - organizations such as the Archaeological Institute of America drafted similar ethical principles, and the American Anthropological Association also revised its code of ethics.

The issues raised here are not limited to NAGPRA or to Native American concerns. They are universal, and represent a sea change in the way archaeology is done, and can be done. Whether archaeologists like it or not, it is extremely difficult to do archaeology the same way it was conducted 30 years ago - those archaeologists who entered the field to get away from having to deal with living people are discovering that that is no longer possible. The discipline has long argued that archaeology is critical to understanding what really happened in the past, but archaeologists are sometimes surprised that people are now accepting its claims and want to participate in the interpretation.