Archaeology, Heritage, and Moral Terrains: Two Cases from the Mesa Verde Region
Abstract
Multiple cultural identities converge in Mesa Verde archaeology. Archaeologists have engaged research questions for the last half century, leading to cultural reconstructive summaries about how Pueblo people lived prior to migrating out of the Mesa Verde region. The importance of this narrative centers on the identity of the researcher as an archaeologist. An increasingly recognized narrative among archaeologists is that of Pueblo identity, in which contemporary Pueblo people claim Mesa Verde villages and landscapes as part of their heritage. Generally speaking, Pueblo people and archaeologists navigate separate moral terrains, which pose multiple obstacles for both archaeologists and Pueblo people pertaining to the past, present, and future of the Mesa Verde region. A conceptual framework from environmental philosophy opens a platform for reconciliation by providing a relational narrative that empowers Pueblo identity and recalibrates archaeology. This environmental justice lens is applied to two archaeological research narratives, one centering on chemical analysis of biomolecular artifact residues and the other on paleohydrology and Pueblo farming.
References
Archaeological Institute of America (AIA). 2016a. Policies and Documents [web page]. Available at: https://www.archaeological.org/about/policies. Accessed on 10/4/2016.
Archaeological Institute of America (AIA). 2016b. Code of Professional Standards [document]. Available at: https://www.archaeological.org/about/policies. Accessed on 10/4/2016.
Atalay, S., L. R. Clauss, R. H. McGuire, J. R. Welch, eds. 2014. Transforming Archaeology: Activist Practices and Prospects. Left Coast Press, Walnut Creek, CA.
Barker, A., J. Dombrosky, D. Chaput, B. Venables, S. Wolverton, and S. M. Stevens. 2015. Validation of a Non-Targeted LC-MS Approach for Identifying Ancient Proteins: Method Development on Bone to Improve Artifact Residue Analysis. Ethnobiology Letters 6:162–174. DOI:10.14237/ebl.6.1.2015.294.
Barker, A., B. Venables, S. M. Stevens Jr, K. W. Seeley, P. Wang, and S. Wolverton. 2012. An Optimized Approach for Protein Residue Extraction and Identification from Ceramics After Cooking. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 19:407–439. DOI: 10.1007/s10816-011-9120-5.
Camenisch, P. 1983. Grounding Professional Ethics in a Pluralistic Society. Haven Publishing Corporation, New York.
Cameron, C. M. 1995. Migration and the Movement of Southwestern Peoples. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 14:104–124. DOI:10.1006/jaar.1995.1006.
Cameron, C. M. 2006. Leaving Mesa Verde. InThe Mesa Verde World, edited by D. G. Noble, pp. 139-147. School of American Research Press, Santa Fe, NM.
Colwell, C., and C. Joy. 2015. Communities and Ethics in the Heritage Debates. In Global Heritage: A Reader, edited by L. Meskell, pp. 112–130. Wiley Blackwell, Malden, MA.
Douglas, H. 2014. The Moral Terrain of Science. Erkenntnis, 79:961–979. DOI:10.1007/s10670-013-9538-0.
Figueroa, R. M. 2001. Other Faces: Latinos and Environmental Justice. In Faces of Environmental Racism: Confronting Issues of Global Justice, edited by B. E. Lawson, and L. Westra, pp. 167–186. Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Boston.
Figueroa, R. M. 2015. Fire in the Rain: Exploring the Moral Terrains of Mesa Verde. In Sushi in Cortez: Interdisciplinary Essays on Mesa Verde, edited by J. D. Taylor and S. Wolverton, pp. 119–147. University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City.
Figueroa, R. M., and G. Waitt. 2008. Cracks in the Mirror: (Un)covering the Moral Terrains of Environmental Justice at Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park. Ethics, Place & Environment, 11:327–349. DOI: 10.1080/13668790802559726.
Figueroa, R. M., and G. Waitt. 2010. Climb: Restorative Justice, Environmental Heritage, and the Moral Terrains of Uluṟu-Kata Tjuṯa National Park. Environmental Philosophy 7:135–163. DOI:10.5840/envirophil20107219.
Fine-Dare, K. S. 2002. Grave Injustice: The American Indian Repatriation Movement and NAGPRA. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln.
Giblin, J., R. King, and B. Smith. 2014. Introduction: De-centring Ethical Assumptions by Re-centring Ethical Debate in African Archaeology. Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa 49:131–135. DOI:10.1080/0067270X.2014.904979.
Gilmore, M. P., and W. H. Eshbaugh. 2011. From Researcher to Partner: Ethical Challenges and Issues Facing the Ethnobiological Researcher. In Ethnobiology, edited by E. N. Anderson, D. M. Pearsall, E. S. Hunn, and N. J. Turner, pp. 51–63. Wiley Blackwell, Hoboken, NJ.
Glowacki, D. M. 2015. Living and Leaving: A Social History of Regional Depopulation in Thirteenth-Century Mesa Verde. University of Arizona Press, Tucson.
Green, E. L. 1984. Ethics and Values in Archaeology. Free Press, New York.
Hardison, P., and K. Bannister. Ethics in Ethnobiology: History, International Law and Policy, and Contemporary Issues. In Ethnobiology, edited by E. N. Anderson, D. M. Pearsall, E. S. Hunn, and N. J. Turner, pp. 27–49. Wiley Blackwell, Hoboken, NJ.
International Society of Ethnobiology (ISE). 2016. ISE Code of Ethics Online (English) [web page]. Available at: http://www.ethnobiology.net/what-we-do/core-programs/ise-ethics-program/code-of-ethics/code-in-english/. Accessed on 10/4/2016.
Kohler, T. A., and M. D. Varien, eds. 2012. Emergence and Collapse of Early Villages: Models of Central Mesa Verde Archaeology. University of California Press, Berkeley.
Kohler, T. A., M. D. Varien, A. Wright, and K. A. Kuckelman. 2008. Mesa Verde Migrations: New Archaeological Research and Computer Simulation Suggest Why Ancestral Puebloans Deserted the Northern Southwest United States. American Scientist 96:146–153.
Leahy, J. T. 1986. Embodied Ethics: Some Common Concerns of Religion and Business. Journal of Business Ethics 5:465–472. DOI:10.1007/BF00380753.
Lynott, M. J., and A. Wylie. 1995. Ethics in American Archaeology: Challenges for the 1990s. Society for American Archaeology, Washington, DC.
Marshall, Y. 2002. What is Community Archaeology? World Archaeology 34:211–219. DOI:10.1080/0043824022000007062.
Meskell, L., ed. 2015. Global Heritage: A Reader. Wiley Blackwell, Malden, MA.
Naranjo, T. 1995. Thoughts on Migration by Santa Clara Pueblo. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 14:247–250. DOI:10.1006/jaar.1995.1013.
Naranjo, T. 2006. We Came from the South, We Came from the North: Some Tewa Origin Stories. In The Mesa Verde World, edited by D. G. Noble, pp. 49–57. School of American Research Press, Santa Fe, NM.
Ortman, S. G. 2012. Winds from the North: Tewa Origins and Historical Anthropology. University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City.
Plumwood, V. 2002. Environmental Culture: The Ecological Crisis of Reason. Routledge, New York City.
Proctor, J. D. 1995. Whose Nature? The Contested Moral Terrain of Ancient Forests. In Uncommon ground: Toward Reinventing Nature, edited by W. Cronon, pp. 269–297. W. W. Norton, New York.
Proctor, J. D., and D. M. Smith. 1999. Geography and Ethics: Journeys in a Moral Terrain. Routledge, London.
Register of Professional Archaeologists (RPA). 2016. Code and Standards [web page]. Available at: http://rpanet.org/?page=CodesandStandards. Accessed on 10/4/2016.
Society for American Archaeology (SAA). 2016. Principles of Archaeological Ethics [web page]. Available at: http://www.saa.org/AbouttheSociety/PrinciplesofArchaeologicalEthics/tabid/203/Default.aspx. Accessed on 10/4/2016.
Society for Applied Anthropology (SfAA). 2016. Statement of Ethics and Professional Responsibilities [web page]. Available at: https://www.sfaa.net/about/ethics/. Accessed on 10/4/2016.
Stevens Jr., S. M., S. Wolverton, B. Venables, A. Barker, K. W. Seeley, and P. Adhikari. 2010. Evaluation of Microwave-assisted Enzymatic Digestion and Tandem Mass Spectrometry for the Identification of Protein Residues from an Inorganic Solid Matrix: Implications in Archaeological Research. Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemistry 396:1491–1499. DOI:10.1007/s00216-009-3341-4.
Suina, J. H. 2002. The Persistence of the Corn Mothers. Archaeologies of the Pueblo Revolt: Identity, Meaning, and Renewal in the Pueblo World. In Archaeologies of the Pueblo Revolt: Identity, Meaning, and Renewal in the Pueblo World, edited by R. W. Preucel, pp. 212–216. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque.
Swentzell, P. 2015. Irrigating Astrofalfa. In Sushi in Cortez: Interdisciplinary Essays on Mesa Verde, edited by J. D. Taylor, and S. Wolverton, pp. 73–89. University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City.
Swidler, N., K. Dongoske, R. Anyon, and A. Downer, eds. 1997. Native Americans and Archaeologists: Stepping Stones to Common Ground. Altamira, Lanham, MD.
Taylor, J. D. and S. Wolverton, eds. 2015. Sushi in Cortez: Interdisciplinary Essays on Mesa Verde. University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City.
Tsosie, R. 2012. NAGPRA and the Problem of Culturally Unidentifiable Remains: The Argument for a Human Rights Framework. Arizona State Legal Journal 44:809–905.
Tully, G. 2007. Community Archaeology: General Methods and Standards of Practice. Public Archaeology 6:155-187. DOI:10.1179/175355307X243645.
Varien, M. 1999. Sedentism and Mobility in a Social Landscape: Mesa Verde & Beyond. University of Arizona Press, Tucson.
Waitt, G., R. Figueroa, and L. McGee. 2007. Fissures in the Rock: Rethinking Pride and Shame in the Moral Terrains of Uluru. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 32:248–263. DOI:10.1111/j.1475-5661.2007.00240.x.
Watkins, J. 2014. Repatriation of Cultural Property in the United States: A Case Study in NAGPRA (USA). In Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology, pp. 6324–6327. Springer, New York.
Webb, S. A. 2015. Social Workers as ‘Strong Evaluators’: Rethinking Moral Sources and Professional Identity. International Journal of Social Science Studies 3:143–151. DOI:10.11114/ijsss.v3i6.1144.
Whyte, K. P. 2013. Justice Forward: Tribes, Climate Adaptation and Responsibility. Climatic Change 120:517–530. DOI:10.1007/s10584-013-0743-2.
World Archaeological Congress (WAC). 2016. Code of Ethics [web page]. Available at: http://worldarch.org/code-of-ethics/. Accessed on 10/24/2016.
Zimmerman, L. J., K. D. Vitelli, and J. J. Hollowell-Zimmer, eds. 2003. Ethical Issues in Archaeology. Rowman Altamira, Lanham, MD.
Copyright (c) 2016 Steve Wolverton
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain ownership of the copyright for their content and grant Ethnobiology Letters (the “Journal”) and the Society of Ethnobiology right of first publication. Authors and the Journal agree that Ethnobiology Letters will publish the article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International Public License (CC BY-NC 4.0), which permits others to use, distribute, and reproduce the work non-commercially, provided the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal are properly cited.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
For any reuse or redistribution of a work, users must make clear the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International Public License (CC BY-NC 4.0).
In publishing with Ethnobiology Letters corresponding authors certify that they are authorized by their co-authors to enter into these arrangements. They warrant, on behalf of themselves and their co-authors, that the content is original, has not been formally published, is not under consideration, and does not infringe any existing copyright or any other third party rights. They further warrant that the material contains no matter that is scandalous, obscene, libelous, or otherwise contrary to the law.
Corresponding authors will be given an opportunity to read and correct edited proofs, but if they fail to return such corrections by the date set by the editors, production and publication may proceed without the authors’ approval of the edited proofs.
