In response to Tim Thomas and Carol McDavid:
While the metaphor of 'ownership' implies control and power over the past,
that of 'stewardship' suggests that we have some sort of special
responsibilities and duties towards the past, as we do towards children for
example. If ownership means 'Get off my past!' or 'Return my past to me!',
stewardship means 'But it's for the past's best! or 'Is there anything else
we can do for the past?'.
I am unhappy with both these metaphors as they seem to imply that we are
somehow separated from the past, without being part of it, merely looking
-- and feeling ripped off or proud or responsible or guilty. But we are not
independent from the past, somehow beyond it. Past and present are one.
Could we then not better say that the past owns and steers *us*? That is
not to say that we are determined by the past, but to acknowledge that the
past is a real force in the present. If that makes sense, we could use the
metaphor of 'belonging'. We belong to our past. Knowing our past results in
a 'sense of belonging' in which we belong to the past -- not the past to
us.
I am just thinking 'aloud' (except that there is no sound). What do the
others think?
Cornelius
--On Thursday, December 09, 1999, 8:59 AM -0600 Carol McDavid
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> In reponse to Tim Thomas' suggestion for a different metaphor (other than
> ownership):
>
> In the US, the current trend is to refer to the archaeological role as
> 'stewardship' -- this was discussed in detail in the 1995 SAA Special
> Report, "Ethics in American Archaeology", edited by Mark Lynott and Alison
> Wylie. In their essay about this, they say "Although archaeologists rarely
> have legal ownership of archaeological resources, they should practice and
> promote stewardship of the archaeological record" -- as both "caretakers
> and advocates".
>
> Although I do have a problem with the implied notion, in the above,
> that "WE" archaeologists are the most proper "stewards", a more recent SAA
> publication, the Principles for Curriculum Reform published by the SAA
> Task Force on Curriculum, discusses stewardship in terms of "fostering"
> it -- a slight but important shift -- and also explicitly states that
> "various publics have a stake in the past". Those guidelines are fairly
> short, so I've included them below (don't yell at me if you don't like
> them!).The idea is for these principles -- which are still under review
> and comment, both at annual meetings and on a discussion forum on the SAA
> web site -- to be incorporated in archaeological education on all levels.
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