The Core Ethic: Protecting, Obtaining, and Using Data

A basic assumption underlying archaeological practice is that it is a good thing to do, that it is right and proper to perform archaeological research. But for what purpose? If pressed, most, if not all, archaeologists would say that we work to preserve information about the human past that would otherwise be lost, that we seek to bring that information back into the intellectual mainstream from which time has displaced it - that is, to interpret the past accurately - and that we try to use the information we recover, and our interpretation of it, to address questions and issues that are important to humankind. If this is our tripartite purpose, then our central ethical obligation must be to pursue it well, to achieve it to the best of our abilities.

This core ethic - which in fact we are rarely called upon to articulate, but which remains an assumption underlying all our work - is the justification for doing archaeology and for the support it receives from the public and governments worldwide. One way or another, it informs and influences how we attend to all other ethical responsibilities.

Some of our commonly recognized ethical prescriptions follow directly from the core principle. For instance, forging artifacts and assisting in the perpetuation of hoaxes are taken by archaeologists to be unethical. Why? Because such activities mislead, and can cause the past to be misinterpreted, violating our ethical responsibility to interpret the past accurately. For a similar reason - because our core ethics require that we make what we recover available for use in accurately understanding the past - the failure to write up and publish the results of a field project is almost universally regarded by archaeologists as an ethical failure. To a somewhat lesser degree it is regarded as at least questionable for an archaeologist not to share data with another researcher, particularly if one has delayed publication of one’s results for a long time. Similarly, it is regarded as ethically reprehensible not to see to it, to the extent one can, that the materials one takes out of the ground, and the documentary records that one creates in the process, are cared for properly, theoretically in perpetuity, usually by an appropriate museum or other curatorial facility. Of course, it is regarded as highly unethical to excavate an archaeological site without fully recording what one does, what one finds, and the spatial relationships among things found and observed.

However, it is generally understood that an archaeologist may not be able to follow all these prescriptions in every case to the extent that all archaeologists might wish. No one faults an archaeologist who suffers a debilitating illness and cannot finish writing up an excavation. Nor is one faulted if one turns over artifacts and records to a curatorial facility that is subsequently bombed or looted, that burns down, or whose new management decides to throw out its archaeological collections to make room for Edwardian furniture or post-Impressionist art - though in the latter case, if the archaeologist is aware of the institutional change, there is some ethical responsibility to try to get the archaeological collections moved to another facility. Finally, how much one can record during an excavation depends on whether one has plenty of time or is being rushed by forces of destruction; it also depends on what the forces of destruction are, the character of the site, the local sociopolitical situation, and so on. Although giving up one’s life to protect a site from vandals with AK-47s may be regarded as admirable, it is not generally held to be an ethical requirement.