Dear Cornelius,
I was intrigued by your question "How does our (UK?) government decide on the basis of pop culture views?"
Perhaps this is not what you had in mind when you asked the question, but I think that this has wider implications than archaeological policy only. I think that pop culture views also include for example theories of sociopolitical evolution as archaeologists have been employing them. And I believe that such theories, and especially the versions used in popular accounts, influence the way how governments make their decisions, for example about how best to aid a third world country in becoming a stable and prosperous government. When governors are faced with such a decision they need to refer to the way they believe societies evolve 'naturally' (reasonably supposing that an unnatural state would be unstable).
Most people in our culture are bombarded with stories of how either the Romans civilised the North European barbarians, how the Christians salvaged the souls of Mores and thereby civilised them, or how Columbus brought civilisation to the New World. Although the process of colonisation is usually considered evil, the results (globalisation, increasing levels of technology, the abandonment of 'superstition') are considered beneficial.
Especially 'superpowers' such as the US may feel they have a moral obligation to police the world and act as a big brother to 'developing' countries. I believe archaeology (and especially in its popular versions) figures largely in the way they do that.
Take, for example, the focuses of archaeology in explaining how civilisation happened. Though now less popular, one cause that has often been pointed to is population pressure, leading to urbanization and to increasingly complex political systems. Therefore, only densely populated areas can be civilised: rural areas such as Tuvalu cannot 'advance' unless they first form a hierarchical settlement structure.
Another is the archaeological emphasis on economic structure. Aid to poor countries, in the usual Western view, is best done by assisting the commercially active parts of communities to get started. Those will increase their companies or farms to the benefit, ultimately, of a whole nation (cf. the images of the American settlers or the American Dream). This derives at least from the same view as Hayden's (and many others') account of aggrandizers who, in fending for themselves, cause 'civilisation' to happen.
And lastly, because archaeology is (necessarily) so focused on the material or technological side of past life, that becomes one of the criteria with which to judge other societies in their civilisedness: how can a community 'too stupid' to invent running water produce anything else of interest? Popular accounts, especially, tend to emphasize very much the differences between a 'civilised' and a 'barbaric' society (e.g. the Discovery programs about either the Aztec, Egyptians, Greeks, Chinese, etc.)
Greetings
Ivan Kisjes
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