> We are running a course on cultural resource management and are trying to
> get students to think critically about issues. Does anyone have any
> references for academic argument *against* a model of conservation of
> archaeological material
>

Neither of these are really academic arguments and I dont have references
handy, but could perhaps find some if you were interested.

1.  The Yupik of St. Lawrence Island (South Bering Straits, part of Alaska)
are said practice a kind of destructive folk archaeology based on their
remembered experiences of the Danish archaeologist Geist, who worked there
in the 1930s.  Using squarish holes and screens, they engage in community
digging.  While a main goal of this is to recover ivory (both carved
figurines for resale, and bulk "fossil" ivory which has value as raw
material and outside of CITES guidelines); they also use this a means of
cultural vitalization, which takes two forms:
A.  The digging being a community based endeavour, in the process of which
knowledge about traditional practice is passed on: eg, "see this little bone
doodad, thats a sealing harpoon and would have been used at such and such a
time of year when the seals do this and by the way, heres a little story
about seals/your grandfather etc.
B.  The proceeds of the sale of the artifacts help provide the cash needed
for a 20th century subsistence economy - gas for snowmobiles and outboard
engines, rifles, etc.
The point being that there may be higher and better uses of the
non-renewable cultural resource than passive preservation of a dead past - a
sort of indigenous anti-conservationism.

2.  There are several moves afoot in British Columbia to have objects
repatriated from museums around the world to BC aboriginal groups.  In
several of these the objects in question are monumental wood sculptures
("totem poles") and the stated goal of having them repatriated is not to
preserve them in a museum closer to home but to return them to their sites
of origin (usually in fairly remote wilderness locales) so that they might
re-enter into the process of decay.  (one could cast the entire skeletal
repatriation/reburial movement into these terms as well).  In the case of
the poles, there is often an offer to trade the museum for a replica pole -
illustrating that it is the right to carve the pole which matters, not
necessarily the pole itself - and the right was not sold, stolen, or lost.
(There is a current case in which the Haisla are repatriating such a pole
from Goteborg, with the old pole to go into the very remote Kitlope valley).
Not only does this challenge the idea that archaeological record is a
non-renewable resource, but it also raises interesting questions of
authenticity.

Regards

Quentin



Quentin Mackie
Department of Anthropology
University of Victoria
PO BOX 3050, MS 7046
Victoria, B.C. Canada
V8W 3P5
Voice:  (250) 721-7055
FAX: (250) 721-6215
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