Below we see two articles from the same source (Science), but two months apart, reporting on how an archaeology journal is prohibiting authors from publishing pictures of ancient objects from Native Americans that were dug up on indigenous lands. You can just read the first article if you want the more comprehensive take, but there’s one factual difference between the two—a difference that’s fairly important. (Click on each headline to read.)
Both articles, however, report that the Southeastern Archaeological Conference (SEAC) has a new rule that its journal, Southeastern Archaeology, will no longer allow authors to publish pictures of funerary objects except in “a supplemental online database”. Only line drawings of found objects can be reproduced, and in both cases, researchers would have to get permission of “tribes”.
There are several rubs. First, which tribe? Given that lands have changed hands repeatedly, and Native Americans have moved around, both on their own and forcibly by the government, how can one be sure which tribe you need to consult? Perhaps the nature of the burial objects, or any useful DNA, could tell you, but remember that objects are not human remains (those have already been prohibited from being photographed or even studied by researchers), but objects.
And that is the second rub: on what grounds can present-day Native Americans claim ownership of objects created by their ancestors long ago? It’s as if you dug up Viking helmets in Greenland and you couldn’t photograph or study them because they had to be returned to the ancestors of those who wore them. This is not the practice, of course; it’s only in America and Canada where objects of archaeological interest found in a country cannot be studied by citizens of that country without securing permission of the presumed descendants of the ancient ancestors.
That leads to the third rub: the prohibition is intimately connected with spirituality and religion. The objects, like the bones themselves, are considered sacred:
Many tribes with ties to the U.S. Southeast say seeing such images is a profound spiritual and cultural violation, and that publishing them is exploitative.
. . . Avoiding such images is crucial for some Indigenous people. “Funerary objects are sacred and part of the ancestor they were buried with,” says RaeLynn Butler, citizen of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation and historic and cultural preservation manager for her tribe. Many tribal members say seeing images of ancestral remains and funerary objects is a violation so profound it can induce physical illness. “From a Muscogee cultural perspective, publishing photos of funerary objects is a form of exploitation,” she says.
This seems a bit extreme, and to me it suggests that this kind of “offense” may be largely a power play (see below).
Of course Vikings could make the same claim if an object is funerary. Do we need to respect those claims? Which descendants of Norsemen must we consult?
Although the SEAC vote in October verified this rule by a fairly narrow margin 56%-44%, the first article says that the rule was already put into place by fiat of SEAC’s executive committee, not by vote of its members:
The petitioners say their biggest complaint is that SEAC’s executive committee approved the policy without putting it to a vote by the membership. Such a significant change “should be a policy the membership is invested in, not one that a small group of members have imposed,” Steponaitis says.
Well, perhaps the petition was circulated just to see if the members would verify a policy that was already approved. This isn’t important: what is important is that the policy remains in place, it prohibits display of photographs of objects created by Native Americans without strict permission, and, most important, this is surely going to spread to other groups.
The downside, of course, is that banning or restricting circulation of photos (and even line drawings without permission) impedes our study of the human past. Although all the archaeologists agree that Native Americans should be consulted out of civility (I agree, but I don’t think they should have censorship rights over photographs), several archaeologists explain why the free dissemination of photographs is important:
Archaeologists on both sides of the debate agree consulting tribes is an ethical imperative and often improves research. But Steponaitis says scholars ranging from Ph.D. candidates to emeritus professors told him they worried that under the new image policy, their work could no longer be published by their society’s flagship journal, and that yearslong projects could be suddenly stalled. What is considered ethical is changing so fast that “the goalposts are moving from week to week,” he says.
That’s especially concerning to those in the field of iconography, which deciphers the meaning of the motifs decorating funerary objects through detailed visual analysis. Without images of an object, an iconographic study “is unintelligible,” says Vernon James Knight, an archaeologist and professor emeritus at the University of Alabama, who signed the petition.
Line drawings are prohibitively expensive and don’t capture critical subtleties, and photos published as online supplemental material will likely disappear as technology changes, Steponaitis says. He also argues the new consultation requirement impinges on academic freedom. “If what I publish as a scholar can be suppressed by government officials—and I don’t care if it’s a state government, the federal government, or a tribal government—that’s a huge problem,” he says.
If the restrictions spread, they could hamper education and even preservation, worries Jessica Fleming Crawford, the southeast regional director for the Archaeological Conservancy and a SEAC member who signed the petition. Students who don’t see funerary objects in the classroom might not recognize them during salvage work, she says. “I’ve walked around so many sites surrounded by destruction,” she says. “I want us to have the best archaeologists out there working for and with tribes.”
. . . If the restrictions spread, they could hamper education and even preservation, worries Jessica Fleming Crawford, the southeast regional director for the Archaeological Conservancy and a SEAC member who signed the petition. Students who don’t see funerary objects in the classroom might not recognize them during salvage work, she says. “I’ve walked around so many sites surrounded by destruction,” she says. “I want us to have the best archaeologists out there working for and with tribes.”
Here are two arguments why the funerary objects should be controlled by presumed descendants of those who created them. There’s a legal argument as well as an argument based on “institutional review boards” used to vet research before it is done,
Butler and other supporters of the policy compare the consultation requirement to the institutional review board process mandated in other fields of research. They also point out that federally recognized tribes are sovereign nations and have the right to govern their cultural heritage. “It’s just like if you were doing archaeology in Greece,” where researchers need permits and must comply with heritage laws, says Victor Thompson, an archaeologist at the University of Georgia and a SEAC member who supports the policy.
The review board argument cuts no ice with me, since research is vetted before it’s done, but the “sovereign nation” argument may hold up—if it’s verified in court.
North America is the only country I know of where it’s illegal to publish photographs of objects dug up by citizens of that country. (I’m sure that there are strictures about not only photographing but digging for objects in other countries.) I think the new rules are not only wrong, illogical, and, most of all, inimical to acquiring knowledge. The presumption is that the objects belong to the descendants of those who created them, but that’s not clear to me (in Britain, I believe if you find objects on private land, you have to split the take with the landowner, but there’s no photographic prohibitions.) And objects looted or acquired illegally from other countries, like many objects in Western museums, should be returned to the original country. However, the “spirituality” argument leaves me cold.
How should these objects be treated? For human remains, if an existing tribe can show through historical or DNA evidence that those remains belong to ancestors of that tribe, the objects should first be studied thoroughly by scientists, and then returned to the tribes. (I do have some doubts about that, though.) But establishing ancestral provenance is not all that easy.
As for objects dug up with the remains, I don’t favor prohibitions on photographing or drawing them. Or even giving them back to existing groups. Yes, you can do your excavations by consulting with Native Americans, but I don’t think they automatically deserve possession of the objects, which, after all, have educational value and should be in universities or museums.
The more I ponder this, the more I think that the argument is largely about power: who has the power to control our knowledge of human history? Native Americans, by automatically reclaiming anything that they think is connected with their ancestors, are trying to control the history of what may be their ancestors, but also a history that belongs to all of us. Scholars, on the other hand, aren’t so much interested in power as in knowledge—and knowledge, when published, does belong to all humanity.
I’m on the side of the scholars in this one, though of course one should be sensitive to the feelings of Native Americans and collaborate with them whenever possible. But that doesn’t mean bowing to their every demand.
But of course your view may differ, and by all means weigh in below.
h/t: Jon
Or how about when a band makes a claim that the bodies of 200 plus murdered children are buried in an apple orchard, forbids any police forensic examination, extorts 300 plus million dollars from the government for “investigation,” brings an entire country to an orgy of guilt and shame.
I don’t understand this. . .
Canadians will understand it intimately but it is parochial to us and has nothing to do with photographing remains. However, I do have another story in which a bone that is supposedly of a human child (but probably isn’t) has been photographed and publicized extensively by another native band as proof that murders occurred long ago. So photography is not inherently sacrilegious if of propaganda value.
Alison probably refers to the events described in this article: https://quillette.com/2022/07/22/how-fake-news-in-the-new-york-times-led-to-a-canadian-social-panic-over-unmarked-graves/
Does raise the question whether ground-penetrating radar images of “mass graves” are photographs?
Perhaps the best way to respect Native Americans and other indigenous people is to simply stop studying them. End archaeology, it’s a form of intellectual colonization.
We could also forbid mentioning them in history books or other exploitative forms of literature. They should be left to tell their stories to themselves without the intrusion of curious outsiders who can never understand their perspective or lives.
Excellent idea! They are just asking for it.
Right. And they should tell their stories like they did in the olden days, not using newfangled colonial inventions like paper and printing press, television or (Ceiling Cat forbid) the internet. That will help keep their culture alive and pure.
+3
It’s insane. And completely predictable.
I don’t know the details of the present study of Sámi archaeology, but is it correct that all citizens of Nordic countries have equal status to that of Sámi people in relation to the study of Sámi artifacts? Is it right that the issues here arise only in relation to the US and Canada?
I think that there shouldn’t be differences with regard with the Sami people because they, as a culture, formed at the same time as other cultures of the region, and aren’t more indigenous than the rest; and nobody would tell a Sami archaeologist not to study the artifacts of another local culture.
There goes those nature pictures, you disrespectful lot taking images of our naked ancestors who haven’t even died yet
naked cousins, not naked ancestors.
I think I’m going to ask to be buried with a stone tablet on which is etched the message that I give my permission for future archaeologists to dig up my mortal remains and study them, photograph and display them in any way they see fit.
I won’t be needing them by then.
Cousins, I stand corrected.
What would Muhammad say?
By the way, Jerry is now one of twelve new members of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI) at the Center For Inquiry (CFI):
https://centerforinquiry.org/news/committee-for-skeptical-inquiry-elects-twelve-new-csi-fellows/
(I sincerely hope I haven’t jumped the gun here on this announcement — I’m just happy to learn about it.)
I’m just glad that my interest in archaeology was overcome by an interest in paleontology, where the descendants (mostly mollusks and other creatures with hard parts) don’t care about such things. Even so, paleontologists sometimes have to do battle with those who would like to restrict the study and use of fossils.
The more red tape there is, the less we will be able to learn about the past. The parties need to reach some sort of accommodation for archaeology to have a future in the U.S.
This is multiculturalist minority politics in practice: Indigenous rights include exclusive cultural authority. Indigenous peoples and their descendants are given the right to prohibit their and their cultures’ external “objectification” by “white science”, because it is deemed oppressive and exploitative. So if they prefer their spiritualist/supernaturalist folk myths & rituals to naturalist scientific research, the latter has to go! The right to cultural self-determination and self-control overrides the right to scientific exploration and illumination.
I think it’s about time someone, maybe more than some, maybe quite a lot of people, started saying that the remains of dead persons, especially very long-dead persons whose remains cannot be reasonably claimed by anyone living, are fair game for researchers. If I possessed the physical remains of any of my ancestors (and sadly I don’t), I would jump at the chance of finding out as much as I could about them and their lifestyles, using the most up-to-date technologies available.
And therefore I also think it’s about time we stopped subjecting science to superstition, wherever it comes from.
For a number of years, I kept my mother’s cremated remains in a container on a shelf above a sofa in my living room. Since visitors of a psychic persuasion might have been troubled by emanations from the container, or even heard sounds, I eventually transferred it to an urn garden in a cemetery. Unfortunately, the local urn garden I found held no negotiations with my mother’s tribe, the descendants of fardaichelt Jews of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
In regard to photographs of indigenous funerary objects, we can surely count on Hamline University to prohibit showing such photographs, if any are still available, in Archaeology classes. Shouldn’t the next step for the Archaeology Society be to ban any mention of such photographs? And the next step after that will be to ban Archaeology—a subject just filled with cultural appropriation.
Tangentially:
Here is Australia, there are media guidelines on photographs for Aboriginals. You cannot show a photo of a deceased person during the mourning period, and a bunch of other rules – I notice that the rules do NOT mention WHY this is prohibited, except that it is culturally sensitive.
It seems that some Indigenous people believe that mentioning the name or showing a photo of a deceased person will invoke their spirit and they will haunt you (and similar such fears for the various mobs).
I get that, and I understand it, and I’m not going out of my way to offend a Christian/Muslim etc, I will be careful – but i the end, it is superstitious nonsense that presupposes a soul etc.
Here it is as if we have committed the worst blasphemy to breach these ‘rules’. But because it is Indigenous, it carries the weight of colonial oppression and pandering to oppressed minorities.
No one is game to say it is nonsense (while still complying and not being a dick). No one seems to even question it.
I just can’t see why I fought against religion all my life, and argue for rationalism, but in this instance all that is thrown out the window.
Perhaps we could do a test and show a photo of a deceased person, and SEE if they come back and haunt you -you know – look for evidence? (I know, I know – they will ‘feel’ the presence which just happens to be unmeasurable by modern (oppressive) instruments.
I am so cynical today.
And don’t even get me started on ‘acknowledgment to country’ where we basically say we stole the land but thanks for letting me use it. Every square inch of Australia belongs to one or other of the Aboriginal clans. (You can google a map of this). I have always wanted to ask – when Cook landed/colonised, there were between 300,000 and 900,000 Aboriginals in the entire continent. So EVERY square inch was claimed by so few people? Were there no bits unclaimed?
Just asking. (ps: I am left wing and support aboriginal land rights. I just feel I should be able to ak these questions).
I did not realise that photography existed that far back in Australian history? Did they also ban carvings of dead people ? Or charcoal sketches? 🤔
My thoughts too!
They would have to create or invent a new superstition around a modern issue.
I ‘get’ not mentioning the dead’s name in the mourning period – that is timeless…
But it is basically – “they are dead – oh there is a picture of them – that means they’re back – can’t have that – they could ONLY be back to haunt me…”!!!!
My observation on other minorities with a history of oppression is that some of them become trapped in a victim mentality and instead of thinking how to improve their lives and future, think how to get back at the majority, even if this means hurting their own long-term interests.
Native tribes moved for another reason besides their own volition, and the force of the US government. They moved to escape war from their own neighbors.
They warred with each other well before European settlers started colonies. The Europeans just had the “Guns, Germs and Steel” credit to Jared Diamond.
I love archaeology and the exciting discoveries it can bring, but I would hate to be an archaeologist in North America. First, all the tiptoeing on eggshells, with new eggshells being discovered, invented, and put on the ground you’re about to step on every day, as evidenced by this article. And second, I must admit, I could never get excited about a shell midden. The excitement of coming across a coin, or a mosaic, or precious-metal grave goods, from an ancient civilization, is something that no archaeologist working in North America will ever experience (though of course those in Central and South America have a greater chance).
Even within those limits, it seems, archaeology in North America is deliberately being made almost impossible to practice. Nothing good can come of this.
Not only that, but new eggshells get tossed on ground you’ve trod years ago. Even if studying something looks safe now, it soon might not be.
The field is essentially dead.