Abstract
The visibility created by archaeology and heritage conservation brings ethical responsibilities derived from how visibility provides the ‘condition of possibility’ for strategies of power and control. But through their material endurance, heritage places also provide opportunities for strategies of resistance and for individuals and groups to seek ethical experiences of reconciliation, recognition and respect in terms of their own particular social justice concerns and identity politics. In settler societies, colonial archaeological remains can be approached as ‘imperial debris’—locations where we can examine the ‘the longevity of structures of dominance and the uneven pace with which people can extricate themselves from the colonial order of things’.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Beaudry, M. (2009). Ethical issues in historical archaeology. In D. Gaimster & T. Majewski (Eds.), International handbook of historical archaeology (pp. 17–29). New York: Springer.
Bedford, S. (1996). Post-contact Maori: The ignored component in New Zealand archaeology. The Journal of the Polynesian Society, 105(4), 411–439.
Blair, C., Dickinson, G., & Ott, B. L. (2010). Introduction: Rhetoric/memory/place. In G. Dickinson, C. Blair, & B. L. Ott (Eds.), Places of public memory The rhetoric of museums and memorials (pp. 1–54). Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press.
Byrne, D. (1996). Deep nation: Australia’s acquisition of an indigenous past. Aboriginal History, 20, 82–107.
Byrne, D. (2003). Nervous landscapes: Race and space in Australia. Journal of Social Archaeology, 3(2), 169–193.
Byrne, D. (2009). A critique of unfeeling heritage. In L. Smith & N. Akagawa (Eds.), Intangible heritage (pp. 229–252). London and New York: Routledge.
Cameron, E. (2008). Indigenous spectrality and the politics of postcolonial ghost stories. Cultural Geographies, 15, 383–393.
Carman, J. (2011). Stories we tell: Myths at the heart of ‘community archaeology’. Archaeologies, 7(3), 490–501.
Colley, S., & Bickford, A. (1996). ‘Real’ aborigines and ‘Real’ Archaeology: Aboriginal places and Australian historical archaeology. World Archaeological Bulletin, 7, 5–21.
Dawdy, S. L. (2009). Millennial archaeology. Locating the discipline in the age of insecurity. Archaeological Dialogues, 16(2), 131–142.
Dawdy, S. L. (2010). Clockpunk anthropology and the ruins of modernity. Current Anthropology, 51(6), 761–93.
de Certeau, M. (1984). The practice of everyday life (S. Rendall, Trans). Berkeley: University of California Press.
Edensor, T. (2008). Mundane hauntings: Commuting through the phantasmagoric working-class spaces of Manchester, England. Cultural Geographies, 15, 313–333.
Edmonds, P. (2010). Unpacking settler colonialism’s urban strategies: Indigenous peoples in Victoria, British Columbia, and the transition to a settler-colonial city. Urban History Review, 38(2), 4–20.
Foucault, M. (1986). Kant on revolution and enlightenment. Economy and Society, 15(1), 88–96.
Gelder, K., & Jacobs, J. (1998). Uncanny Australia: Sacredness and identity in a postcolonial nation. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press.
Glassie, H. (1977). Archaeology and folklore: Common anxieties, common hopes. In L. Ferguson (Ed.), Archaeology and the importance of material things (pp. 23–35). Society for Historical Archaeology.
Gordon, N. (2002). On visibility and power: An Arendtian corrective of foucault. Human Studies, 25, 125–145.
Graham, B., & Howard, P. (Eds.). (2008). The Ashgate research companion to heritage and identity. Farnham, Surrey, England: Ashgate.
Hall, M. (2006). Identity, memory and counter memory: The archaeology of an urban landscape. Journal of Material Culture, 11(1/2), 189–209.
Hamilakis, Y. (2007). The nation and its ruins: Antiquity, archaeology, and national imagination in Greece. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hamilakis, Y. (2011). Archaeological ethnography: a multitemporal meeting ground for archaeology and anthropology. Annual Review of Anthropology, 40, 399–414.
Harrison, R. (2013). Forgetting to remember, remembering to forget: late modern heritage practices, sustainability, and the ‘crisis’ of accumulation of the past’. International Journal of Heritage Studies, 19(6), 579–595.
Herzfeld, M. (2006). Spatial cleansing: Monumental vacuity and the idea of the West. Journal of Material Culture, 11(1/2), 127–149.
Hetherington, K. (2010). The ruin revisited. In G. Pye & S. Schroth (Eds.), Trash culture: Objects and obsolescence in cultural perspective (pp. 27–49). Oxford, New York: Peter Lang.
Ireland, T. (2002). Giving value to the Australian historic past: Archaeology, heritage and nationalism. Australasian Historical Archaeology, 20, 15–25.
Ireland, T. (2012a). Excavating globalisation from the ruins of colonialism: Archaeological heritage management responses to cultural change. In E. Negussie (Ed.), Changing world, changing views of heritage: The impact of global change on cultural heritage. Proceedings of the ICOMOS Scientific Symposium 2010 (pp. 18–29). Paris: ICOMOS.
Ireland, T. (2012b). Grounding identity: Exploring perceptions of urban archaeological sites in Australia and New Zealand. Historic Environment, 24(3), 19–27.
Ireland, T. (2012c). ‘I felt connected to a past world’: A survey of visitors to colonial archaeological sites conserved in situ in Australia and New Zealand. Conservation and Management of Archaeological Sites, 14(1–4), 458–468.
Ireland, T. (2014). Archaeological traces and memory places. In P. Ashton & J. Z. Wilson (Eds.), Silent system: Forgotten Australians and the institutionalization of women and children (pp. 89–102). Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing.
Jeppson, P. (2006). Which Benjamin Franklin: Yours or mine? Examining responses to a new story from the historical archaeology site of Franklin court. Archaeologies, 2(2), 24–51.
Jeppson, P. (2011). The dynamics of inclusion at the dynamics of inclusion in public archaeology workshop public event. Archaeologies, 7(3), 635–656.
Johnson, M. (1999). Rethinking historical archaeology. In P. Paulo, A. Funari, M. Hall & S. Jones (Eds.), Historical archaeology: Back from the edge (pp. 23–36). London: Routledge.
Jokilehto, J. (2009). Conservation principles in the international context. In A. Richmond & A. Bracker (Eds.), Conservation principles, dilemmas and uncomfortable truths (pp. 73–83). London: Butterworth-Heinemann & Victoria and Albert Museum.
Joyce, R. (2006). The monumental and the trace: Archaeological conservation and the materiality of the past. In N. Agnew & J. Bridgland (Eds.), Of the past, for the future: Integrating archaeology and conservation: Proceedings of the conservation theme at the 5th World Archaeological Congress, Washington, DC, 22–26 June 2003 (pp. 13–18). Los Angeles: Getty Publications.
Karskens, G. (2009). The colony: A history of early Sydney. Sydney: Allen and Unwin.
Keily, J. (2008). Taking the site to the people: Displays of archaeological material in non-museum locations. Conservation and Management of Archaeological Sites, 10(1), 30–40.
La Roche, C. & M. Blakey (1997). Seizing intellectual power: The dialogue at the New York African burial ground. Historical Archaeology, 31(3), 84–106.
Lefebvre, H. (1991). The production of space. Oxford: Blackwell.
Leone, M. (1973). Archaeology as the science of technology: Mormon town plans and fences. In C. Redman (Ed.), Research and theory in current archaeology (pp. 125–150). New York: Wiley.
Leone, M. (2010). Critical historical archaeology. Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press.
Leone, M., & Potter, P. (Eds.). (1999). Historical archaeologies of capitalism. Contributions to global historical archaeology. New York: Plenum.
Levin, J. (2011). Activism leads to excavation: The power of place and the power of the people at the president’s house in Philadelphia. Archaeologies, 7(3), 596–618.
Little, B. (1994). People with history: An update on historical archaeology in the United States. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, 1(1), 5–40.
Lydon, J. (2005). Driving by: Visiting Australian colonial monuments. Journal of Social Archaeology, 5(1), 108–134.
Lydon, J. (2009). Fantastic dreaming: The archaeology of an aboriginal mission. Lanham: Altamira.
Lydon, J. (2012). The flash of recognition: Photography and the emergence of indigenous rights. Sydney: New South.
Lydon, J., & Rivzi, U. Z. (2010). Handbook of postcolonial archaeology. Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press.
Lyon, J. (2007). The Temple of Mithras: Changing heritage values in the city of London 1954-2006. Conservation and Management of Archaeological Sites, 9(1), 5–37.
Matero, F. (2000). The conservation of an excavated past. In I. Hodder (Ed.), Towards reflexive method in archaeology: the example of Catalhöyük (BIAA Monograph No. 28, pp. 71–88). Ankara: British Institute of Archaeology.
Matero, F. (2006). Making archaeological sites: Conservation as interpretation of an excavated past. In N. Agnew & J. Bridgland (Eds.), Of the past, for the future: integrating archaeology and conservation: Proceedings of the conservation theme at the 5th World Archaeological Congress, Washington, DC, 22–26 June 2003 (pp. 55–63). Los Angeles, CA: Getty Publications.
Matthews, C. (2006). The idea of the site: History, heritage, and locality in community archaeology. In L. Lozny (Ed.), Landscapes under pressure: History, heritage and locality in community archaeology (pp. 75–91). New York: Springer.
Mulvaney, J. (1991). The heritage value of historical relics: a plea for romantic intellectualism. In Prehistory and heritage. The writings of John Mulvaney (pp. 266–271). Canberra: The Australian National University.
Murray, T. (1996). Creating a post-Mabo archaeology of Australia. In B. Attwood (Ed.), In the age of Mabo (pp. 73–86). Sydney: Allen and Unwin.
Nixon, T. (2004). Preserving archaeological remains in situ? Proceedings of the 2nd conference, 12–14 September 2001. London: Museum of London Archaeology Service.
Olivier, L. (2004). The past of the present. Archaeological memory and time. Archaeological Dialogues, 10(2), 204–213.
Orser, C. (1996). An historical archaeology of the modern world. New York: Plenum Press.
Otero Pailos, J. (2004). Now is the future anterior for advancing historic preservation scholarship. Future Anterior, I(1), 6–8.
Otero Pailos, Jorge (2007b). Preservation’s anonymous lament. Future Anterior, IV(2):iii-vii.
Otero-Pailos, J. (2007a). Conservation cleaning/cleaning conservation. Future Anterior, IV(1), iii–viii.
Otero-Pailos, J., Gaiger, J., & West, S. (2010). Heritage values. In S. West (Ed.), Understanding heritage in practice (pp. 47–87). Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Paterson, A. (2010). The archaeology of historical indigenous Australia. In J. Lydon & U. Rizvi (Eds.), Handbook of postcolonial archaeology (pp. 165–184). Walnut Creek California: Left Coast Press.
Phillips, C. (2000). Post-contact landscapes of change in Hauriki, New Zealand. In R. Torrence & A. Clarke (Eds.), The archaeology of difference: Negotiating cross-cultural engagements in Oceania (pp. 79–103). London: Routledge.
Rose, G., & Tolia-Kelly, D. (2012). Visuality/materiality: Introducing a manifesto for practice. In G. Rose & D. P. Tolia-Kelly (Eds.), Visuality/materiality images, objects and practices (pp. 1–11). Farnham: Ashgate.
Rubertone, P. (2008). Engaging monuments, memories, and archaeology. In P. Rubertone (Ed.), Archaeologies of placemaking: Monuments, memories, and engagement in native North America (pp. 13–33). Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press.
Russell, I. (2012). Towards an ethic of oblivion and forgetting. The parallax view. Heritage and Society, 5(2), 249–272.
Silliman, S. (2010). Indigenous traces in colonial spaces: Archaeologies of ambiguity, origin, and practice. Journal of Social Archaeology, 10(1), 28–58.
Smith, L. (2006a). Uses of heritage. London: Routledge.
Smith, L. (2006b). Doing archaeology: Cultural heritage management and its role in identifying the link between archaeological practice and theory. International Journal of Heritage Studies, 6(4), 309–316.
Smith, L., & Waterton, E. (2009). Heritage, communities and archaeology. London: Duckworth.
Stoler, A. L. (2008). Imperial debris: Reflections on ruins and ruination. Cultural Anthropology, 23(2), 191–219.
Verdesio, G. (2010). Invisible at a glance: Indigenous cultures of the past, ruins, archaeological sites, and our regimes of visibility. In J. Hell & A. Schönle (Eds.), Ruins of modernity (pp. 339–353). Durham: Duke University Press.
Waterton, E., & Smith, L. (2009). Taking archaeology out of heritage. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Waterton, E., & Watson, S. (2010). Introduction: A visual heritage. In E. Waterton & S. Watson (Eds.), Culture, heritage and representation: Perspectives on visuality and the past (pp. 1–19). Farnham: Ashgate.
Wells, K. (2007). The material and visual cultures of cities. Space and Culture, 10(2), 136–144.
Willems, W. (2008). Archaeological resource management and preservation. Geoarchaeological and Bioarchaeological Studies, 10, 283–289.
Zimmerman, L., Vitelli, K., & Hollowell-Zimmer, J. (2003). Ethical issues in archaeology. Walnut Creek: Altamira Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2015 Springer Science+Business Media New York
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Ireland, T. (2015). The Ethics of Visibility: Archaeology, Conservation and Memories of Settler Colonialism. In: Ireland, T., Schofield, J. (eds) The Ethics of Cultural Heritage. Ethical Archaeologies: The Politics of Social Justice, vol 4. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-1649-8_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-1649-8_7
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-1-4939-1648-1
Online ISBN: 978-1-4939-1649-8
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawSocial Sciences (R0)