Introduction: the Business of Archaeology

The business of archaeology is the present. Olivier (2013)

Insofar as the business of archaeology is the present, it is also the business of the state and of late modern capitalism. In this essay, we deconstruct reactions to three events directly relevant to the project that is “disentangling” archaeology (Gnecco and Dias, this volume). The three events of concern are:

  1. 1.

    the publication of “Commercial Archaeology in British Columbia” (La Salle and Hutchings 2012);

  2. 2.

    the announcement of the World Archaeological Congress’ (WAC) Inter-Congress “Disentangling Contract Archaeology” (Gnecco and Dias 2013); and

  3. 3.

    our participation in the 2013 Annual Meeting of the Canadian Archaeological Association (Hutchings 2013; La Salle 2014).

What these events have in common, apart from our personal involvement, is that they all concern the business of archaeology.

To analyze reactions to the three events noted above, we employ the classificatory scheme developed by Paul Graham (2008) (Fig. 1). Graham’s “hierarchy of disagreement” is pyramidal, illustrating that most disagreement falls within the lower categories because these are easier to formulate, and are gut emotional responses—“Truly refuting something requires one to refute its central point, or at least one of them. And that means one has to commit explicitly to what the central point is” (Graham 2008, n.p.).

Fig. 1
figure 1

Paul Graham’s Hierarchy of Disagreement, illustrating the significance of different kinds of responses, ranging from name calling (bottom) to refuting an argument’s central point (top). Only the top three levels constitute counterargument and refutation. (after Graham 2008 and Rocket000 2008)

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Graham’s hierarchy is useful here because the subject of capitalism’s influence on contemporary society can be psychologically unsettling and debate often becomes emotional and personal. Understanding the rationale behind these emotions is essential as it comprises archaeology’s “culture” (Kahan et al. 2011; Shanks and Tilley 1987). As such, the discipline/practice of archaeology/cultural resource management (CRM) can be “disentangled” through a consideration of responses to its critique.

Our analysis of contemporary archaeological practice affirms it as neoliberal statecraft. As such, understanding the role of archaeologists in this structure requires thinking and talking about archaeology in terms of ideology, bureaucracy, and late modern capitalism, thus globalization and neoliberalization. We conclude that archaeology represents a form of disaster capitalism, characterized by dispossession and violence—a harsh reality that is actively “forgotten” in the culture of archaeology.

Three Exchanges

Exchange 1—Commercial Archaeology in British Columbia

For all of the academic articles, books and conferences that publicize archaeological projects, there is comparatively little written about the business side of the practice. La Salle and Hutchings (2012)

Our study of the business of archaeology (La Salle and Hutchings 2012) was prompted by the observation that CRM represents the majority of archaeological fieldwork where we live, but comparatively little is published on the subject. Using information published by the Archaeology Branch in British Columbia, Canada, we found a 3000 % increase in government permits issued between 1960 and 2011, suggesting that business has been booming, particularly for industrial sectors central to the province’s resource extraction economy: forestry, oil and gas, and energy projects. We calculated that 97 % of archaeology undertaken in British Columbia is commercial (Fig. 2). Despite this, few local institutions feature CRM in their curriculum, so practicing CRM archaeologists receive little training in preparation to be heritage managers. What students learn instead of the 97 % is problematic, as we discuss elsewhere (Hutchings and La Salle 2014).

Fig. 2
figure 2

Virtually all archaeology is compliance archaeology, at least as measured in 2011 in British Columbia, Canada. (after La Salle and Hutchings 2012, p. 10)

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Archaeologists commonly sign non-disclosure agreements for the corporations and developers for whom they work, limiting their ability to communicate about the work being done. Thus, there is little opportunity for truth-telling.

Our conclusions destabilized four conventional tropes that we learned in our formal state education in archaeology:

  1. 1.

    archaeology is not about the preservation of sites and materials, but rather is about facilitating the destruction of heritage landscapes;

  2. 2.

    archaeology is not undertaken in the name of research to learn about the past, but is undertaken to fulfill legal and regulatory obligations in the present;

  3. 3.

    archaeologists do not have a responsibility to disseminate their results, except to their clients and the government; and

  4. 4.

    archaeology is not undertaken for the public good, but is instead a private, for-profit enterprise.

Response

Although our critique of archaeology/CRM focused on large corporations, the only written response came from four archaeologists employed by an Indigenous CRM firm—representing the overwhelming minority of archaeologists in the province. Lyons et al. (2012, pp. 6–7) criticized “the tone” of our article as “denigrating and dismissive,” “unnecessarily divisive” and lacking in “solutions.” They contrasted the “dense and complex” nature of politics and CRM with what they saw as an “academic ‘high ground’” espoused in our paper, wherein we “appear to be standing on a pedestal and critiquing from above rather than entering the fray.” Rather than industry, they offered that the Indigenous peoples of British Columbia have been “the most important prime mover on the historical trajectory of CRM archaeology,” and continue to have “considerable influence over CRM practice.”

The authors felt we portrayed CRM archaeologists as “a pack of money-grubbing, ethically-challenged, underachievers who couldn’t land academic jobs.” Rather than a “community [that] willfully sells resources for money,” they countered that CRM “folks” are “generally ethically-grounded, professionally-minded individuals who are committed to the best interests of archaeological resources” and only “make a solid, middle class salary.” They concluded by shifting the conversation:

while we are not able to change the broader workings of this macroenvironment, we are able to examine the structure(s) of our working milieux and relationships in order to generate observations, critique, discussion, and debate. Rather than asking who is making the money, we suggest setting our sights higher, and asking how we, as a collective, could work better together in order to manage the archaeological resources that are still extant in B.C. (Lyons et al. 2012, p. 7)

Argument Analysis

Referring to Graham’s hierarchy (see Fig. 1), Lyons et al. (2012) relied on the following forms of argument:

  • Ad hominen

    • Dismissing the argument because we not CRM archaeologists working in the province and/or are judging from an academic “pedestal”

      • Neither discredits the arguments or the evidence used to support them. Further, Hutchings’ CRM experience in the United States was ignored.

  • Responding to tone

    • The “tone,” described as “denigrating and dismissive,” was the “primary bone of contention” that Lyons et al. (2012, p. 6) had with the article

      • The tone—an immeasurable and perceived quality of any paper—does not negate the arguments or evidence.

  • Contradiction/counterargument

    • Suggesting that Indigenous peoples have been the main drivers behind CRM

      • Evidence supporting this claim was not provided. Regardless, this claim does not negate our contention that the economic climate of the province and resulting industry and development are what drive archaeology and thus permits issued. This is therefore counterargument aimed at a different issue.

  • Refutation

    • Countering that archaeologists only make a “modest middle-class wage”

      • This refutation does not correspond to any statement made in our article and represents refutation aimed at a different issue. The “modesty” of this wage compared to national averages, however, is discussed later in this paper.

In sum, Lyons and colleagues did not address our central points. However, this argument analysis clarifies the motivations and emotions prompting their response: the authors understood our critique of the structure of archaeology and of corporatization as a critique of the individuals employed in that structure. Perceiving an attack upon commercial archaeologists as “money-grubbing” and “ethically-challenged,” the authors countered by humanizing them as “folks” and “professionally-minded.”

They also minimized both the relevance and amount of money involved. The desire to dismiss economics in favor of “higher” discussions about ethics indicates discomfort with the nature of archaeology under capitalism. It also signals the feeling that these structures are outside of “our control” and thus inevitable. As the authors expressed, the role of people within this system is thus to “work better together” while trying to “avoid ‘biting the hand that feeds’” (Lyons et al. 2012, pp. 7–8).

The following year, British Columbia archaeologist Robert Muckle (2013a) reviewed our paper in the American Anthropological Association’s Anthropology News, addressing the ethic of conservation touted in archaeology and the “potential conflicts of interest” for archaeologists “working for large corporations that are development-oriented.” Despite being “shared” digitally over 500 times, no comments were ever posted to the website.

Exchange 2—Disentangling Contract Archaeology

The relationship between archaeology and capitalist expansion appears as an innocent instrumentality, as a mere technical service. Gnecco and Dias (2013)

In April 2013, the WAC Inter-Congress on commercial or contract archaeology was announced (Gnecco and Dias 2013). The abstract opened with a description of CRM archaeology as “the way the discipline engages capitalist expansion, sacrificing its critical stance,” and suggested that archaeologists working for this growing market “have abandoned any possible intervention in contemporary issues in order to dance to the rhythm of money.” Concerns included changing curriculum for this market, working for social justice while complicit in market mandates, the commodification of heritage stewardship, and how capitalism influences archaeological philosophies.

Response

Response to this abstract on the WAC listserve was immediate. People described “the tone” of the abstract as “hyperbolic,” “highly emotionally charged,” “prejudiced,” “unbalanced,” and lacking a “professional manner.” They wrote it portrayed “smugness,” “elitism,” and “a self-serving agenda.” Some felt the abstract was “offensive,” “accusatory,” and “casting aspersions on the ethics of the majority of working archaeologists,” putting them in a “provocatively negative light”; one person called the abstract “xenophobic.”

Others suggested that CRM is not “selling out” and has been used to “expand research and education,” emphasizing that capitalism also produces social “goods.” One person wrote: “corrupt or not, the system is what it is, there is no need for us to judge it one way or the other.” We responded to the maelstrom with our short essay “Five Thoughts on Commercial Archaeology” (Hutchings and La Salle 2013).

Many others applauded the conference organizers for confronting a sensitive and timely issue. Highlighted were the negative experiences of Indigenous peoples with archaeology, a pervasive lack of consultation, and pressure by employers to “get the job done.” People cited both consulting and academic archaeologists as harboring “a powerful lack of morals and ethics.” A few lamented the restrictions of “policy” as the main force “regulating” archaeological practice.

All told, over fifty emails were posted to the listserv. However, there was no resolution as to either what exactly the problem was or how to make things better.

Argument Analysis

Emotions ran high following the online distribution of the Inter-Congress abstract and responses illustrated how personally people felt its critique. Comments largely fell into two categories:

  • Ad hominen

    • Dismissing the abstract because its authors are not CRM archaeologists and/or are judging from an “elite” position (i.e., an academic “pedestal”)

      • The authors’ academic positions do not inherently discredit the suggestions made in the abstract.

  • Responding to tone

    • Described as “offensive,” “accusatory,” “negative,” and “unprofessional”

      • The tone does not negate the validity of the abstract’s claims and is more a response to how people felt upon reading it.

These responses echo those to our 2012 paper. Central in both was an overwhelming emotional reaction that prompted critique of what people felt was being said—that the motivations of commercial archaeologists are “profit-driven” and unethical. In this way, critique of structure became personalized.

As a result, people felt the abstract and its authors were “unprofessional,” recalling Lyons and colleague’s defense of CRM archaeologists as “professionally-minded.” The assertion of professionalism is a claim to educated middle-class authority and morality, and infers a suite of interrelated conservative class values including avoiding confrontation, striving for balanced positions, and shunning overt political stands. Archaeology as a “profession” inheres these group values (Trigger 1989), expressed succinctly by one person who felt that, “corrupt or not, the system is what it is, there is no need for us to judge it one way or the other.” Thus, similar to Lyons et al. (2012, p. 7), the emphasis was on finding solutions that work within capitalism.

Exchange 3—The Canadian Archaeological Association

Whither the Heritage Conservation Act? Yellowhorn (2013)

As the WAC conversation concluded, we attended the Canadian Archaeological Association’s 2013 meeting, held in Whistler, British Columbia—the home of the 2010 Winter Olympics. Presenting in separate sessions, we each addressed the relationship between colonialism, capitalism, and archaeology, prompting varied responses.

The Plenary

The plenary session “Whither the Heritage Conservation Act: Renewal or Funeral?” featured Indigenous peoples speaking against the ongoing destruction of their heritage. Panelists spoke passionately about government tactics to “erase culture” by “destroying our heritage,” emphasizing “places cannot be replaced” and what was at stake was “preserving a way of life.” They asked archaeologists to help “stop development.” As the plenary discussant, Hutchings (2013) argued that, from its origins to today’s practice (McNiven and Russell 2005; Smith 2004), archaeology is a firmly colonialist project driven by capitalism to produce narratives that remain elitist, racist, and pro-growth, development, and progress.

Response

Audience response to Hutchings’ paper was minimal, with one exception. A prominent archaeology professor challenged Hutchings for “picking on archaeologists,” noting that the issues he raised have been discussed “for decades”—that this was “old news.” Referencing development undertaken in Whistler for the 2010 Olympics, she suggested the local Indigenous communities have benefitted through construction of a new cultural center.

After the session, two people approached Hutchings, offering support and adding their own frustration with the lack of meaningful dialogue. The rest of the room had cleared after only a few questions: silence was thus the main response.

Community-oriented Archaeology

La Salle (2014) expanded on a published work (La Salle 2010) to argue that collaboration in archaeology is ideological, used to connote friendship, cooperation, equality, and ethics, yet “success” is defined as accumulation and increase of capital. Inequalities between archaeologists and collaborating communities remain and collaboration is ultimately a compromise—a “trade bead” ensuring the project of archaeology continues with minimal objection from Indigenous peoples. La Salle (2014, p. 9) concluded: “Just like the Archaeology Branch, archaeologists have the power to throw a wrench in the machine of development that is responsible for the destruction of these meaningful places, and it’s simple: just stop digging.”

Response

In his review, session discussant George Nicholas commented that La Salle’s critique was “important,” adding that the issue of protecting heritage is an “urgent matter.” Following the conference, Muckle (2013b) published a review of La Salle’s presentation, questioning whether archaeologists pursuing collaborative research “are necessarily motivated by personal, professional, and economic factors,” and suggested that “[j]ust stop digging is a bit strong and more than a bit risky.” Muckle (2013b, n.p.) explained:

While it may be nice to think that many archaeologists are all about assisting Indigenous Peoples, we must realize that ideology is not shared by all in the profession. Archaeology in North America is over a billion dollar a year industry. I sincerely doubt that a significant number of archaeologists will jeopardize their careers by, as La Salle suggests, “just stop digging.”

Although his article was viewed several hundred times online, no one commented.

Argument Analysis

Together, our papers suggested that archaeology constitutes a social violence responsible for the destruction of heritage, despite “whitewashing” (King 2009) it as ethical practice concerned with the welfare of descendant communities. The lack of response is therefore surprising. These are serious critiques undermining the ideals of the discipline and practice, academic and consulting alike—yet, what has overwhelmed is the silence.

Those who did publicly respond offered little “argument,” falling into the following categories:

  • Responding to tone

    • Hutchings: described as “picking on archaeologists”

      • Conveys discomfort with the topic rather than an argument against it.

  • Contradiction

    • La Salle: suggesting archaeologists are not “motivated by personal, professional, and economic factors”

      • No evidence is provided to support this; on the contrary, Muckle suggests archaeologists will not “jeopardize their careers” to assist Indigenous peoples.

  • Counterargument

    • Hutchings: suggesting that Indigenous peoples have benefited from development

      • This does not negate the impact of development on heritage sites or archaeology’s role in enabling this; this is therefore counterargument aimed at a different issue.

These transactions convey a deep discomfort with archaeology’s role in alienating lands and resources, historically and today. At this national conference, there were only a few sessions that dealt with CRM; most were “academic.” As such, 97 % of what archaeology is about in this province was absent, and archaeology was represented instead by the 3 %. That this 3 % is largely uninvolved and seemingly uninterested in commercial archaeology is significant.

Disentangling the Responses

Conventional people are roused to fury by departure from convention, largely because they regard such departure as a criticism of themselves. Russell (1930)

We would do well to remember that heritage preservation and the presentation of the past are processes that erase the past just as surely as warfare, looting, or development do. Arnold (2014)

Our three exchanges represent typical modes of engagement between archaeologists: writing a journal article, sending an email, and presenting at a conference. The subject matter in each exchange was similar and the commonalities in responses indicate a pattern:

  1. 1.

    People feel that commercial, contract, compliance or CRM archaeologists are being attacked, judged as unethical, profit-motivated, and “less than” their academic counterparts.

    • This produces a surge of anger that drives immediate “gut” responses to the critique.

  2. 2.

    People suggest that capitalism is inevitable: we cannot change it and we should not judge it—indeed, we should ignore “the money” and talk about how to “work better” within it and be “professional.”

    • This situates capitalism as outside of the archaeologists’ control and rationalizes the practice of CRM.

  3. 3.

    People argue that commercial archaeology is actually beneficial, both for archaeology and science, and for Indigenous peoples who are profiting from it and, in many ways, are driving the industry.

    • This justifies CRM as an ethically responsible practice.

These responses are defensive: they protect archaeologists and their practice by pointing the finger elsewhere to rationalize and justify their collusion in what is charged as harmful. Central to these responses is the personalization of the critique (Hutchings and La Salle 2013, p. 2).

Such reactions have been discussed in terms of cultural cognition, referring to “the tendency of individuals to form risk perceptions that are congenial values” (Kahan et al. 2011). To summarize, people tend to adopt beliefs common to their group (or profession). Individual well-being is tied into group membership through which status and self-esteem are generated. Challenges to group beliefs therefore undermine individual members’ well-being and threaten personal loss. In self-defense, people agree with arguments that reinforce their beliefs and dismiss those that contradict them as having a “negative tone,” particularly if the latter originate from outside of the group.

This dynamic is illustrated in the nature of responses to critiques of archaeology under capitalism. By and large, archaeologists are silent when it comes to the subject of capitalism. This silence may be viewed as a form of forgetting or “amnesia”—both by CRM practitioners and by academic archaeologists—of elements of the discipline deemed unfavourable. In this dynamic, observations (re)affirming archaeology’s ideals of saving or protecting the past reinforce group beliefs and are thus accepted without hesitation. Critiques of money and power are not.

The (re)production of this culture is visible in how people articulate the structure (e.g., as inevitable and unchangeable) and their roles within it (e.g., as trying to do the best they can). While people seem to feel they do not have control to make change, the relationship between structures and agents is recursive and dialectical. To understand how this dynamic unfolds in society more broadly, the remainder of this paper situates archaeology within its larger social, political, and economic contexts.

Archaeology as Disaster Capitalism

The granting of permission to build factories or other structures at places where [Indigenous heritage] sites are located… should be made contingent on the provision by the interested parties of funds for the investigation of such sites before construction commences. We cannot prevent urban expansion and industrial development, but by intelligent legislation they could be turned from a bane to a boon to archaeology. Borden (1950)

I call these orchestrated raids on the public sphere in the wake of catastrophic events, combined with the treatment of disasters as exciting market opportunities, “disaster capitalism.” Klein (2007)

Klein (2007) coined the term disaster capitalism to refer to “making money out of misery.” The concept is the centerpiece of her influential book Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism examining “corporatist states” and their “capitalist disasters.” Klein’s take on neoliberalism maps directly onto contemporary archaeology, demonstrated in the notion of economic development as a “boon” to the profession, as per Charles Borden’s (1950) comments above.

Borden, recognized as the “father” of British Columbia archaeology, is a historical nexus in Canadian archaeology’s origin story (Carlson 1979; Matson and Coupland 1995) or “invention” (Hobsbawm 1992). Historian Robert West (1995, p. ii) suggests “[p]rofessional archaeologists firmly control the prehistory of British Columbia” due to Borden’s post-war efforts to professionalize archaeology:

In the context of archaeological site destruction, during the 1950s, Borden was able to pull unrelated members of the B.C. populous to his cause, including provincial officials… Amateur archaeologists and Aboriginal people lacked the means to amass the powerful alliances that Borden did, and therefore amateurs and Natives were unable to offer a persuasive alternative to Borden’s authority.

Therefore, non-archaeologists must “put their faith” in the experts “and assume that the knowledge they produce is truthful and valid” (West 1995, p. ii). Archaeology’s professionalization and privatization is thus of critical importance, especially to Indigenous peoples, because of its relationship to development and its role in regulating access to resources (Bodley 2008; Mander and Tauli-Corpuz 2006).

The idea of archaeologists profiting from the crisis of modernity (industrialization, corporatization, [sub]urbanization, globalization, neoliberalization, etc.) extends far beyond mid-twentieth-century British Columbia. Today, this sensibility is evident in the notion that “global warming is proving something of a boon for archaeology” (Doyle 2013)—“It’s worrying that glaciers are melting but it’s exciting for us archaeologists... This is only the start.”

Another example of disaster capitalism in archaeology is in “collaboration with industry” (Flemming 2004). Problematically, a prerequisite to such relationships is the near certainty that archaeologists must ultimately abandon and/or ignore the pronounced ethical problems that attend such unions (e.g., Flatman 2007, 2012). According to Joseph Schuldenrein (2013, n.p.), pressures to “collaborate” (i.e., corporatize) are exacerbated by larger crises of funding:

However, this decline is almost inversely proportional to the expanded role of applied archaeology and the concomitant acceleration of private sector influence…The largest budgets and advanced research technologies in today’s archaeology are furnished by pipeline construction. Collaborative efforts between oil and gas engineers and Cultural Resource Management (CRM) professionals has resulted in quantum leaps in the discovery and understanding of the archaeological record.

Schuldenrein describes increasing privatization, suggesting oil and gas extraction—the ultimate cause of the melting glaciers discussed above—has been a boon to the profession, resulting in leaps forward in the science of the past.

Today, archaeology is an industry. Reported by the American Cultural Resources Association (ACRA), there were approximately 1300 CRM firms in the United States in 2012, employing about 10,000 people and generating over $1 billion in revenue (ACRA 2013, p. 2). In British Columbia, the income range for CRM archaeologists of CAN $25–40 per hour is between 2.5 and 4 times the current provincial minimum wage of $10.25 per hour. Academic archaeology professors in the province average CAN $110,000 to $115,000 per annum, which is roughly four times what the median income is for most Canadians ($27,097) and almost six times the median income for Aboriginal people ($18,962) (La Salle 2014). Thus, an enormous income disparity remains between archaeologists, both CRM and academic, and the average population, as well as the Indigenous communities whose heritage is slowly being dismantled.

Archaeology is, indeed, big business, reliant on resource extraction and commercial and residential development for its livelihood, resulting in the destruction of heritage landscapes, both natural and cultural, locally and globally. Archaeology may thus be considered a form of disaster capitalism, an industry created by and serving the neoliberal state.

Archaeology as Neoliberal Statecraft

Nation states, or partisans thereof, control and allocate symbolic resources as one means of legitimizing power and authority, and in pursuit of their perceived nationalistic goals and ideologies. Fowler (1987)

Today, most CRM investigations are carried out by private businesses, both for private industry and for Federal, state, and local governments, so that these organizations can efficiently meet their legal obligations under the National Historic Preservation Act and related laws and regulations. ACRA (2013)

It is well established that archaeology is a form of statecraft (Smith 2004; Trigger 1989), and archaeology’s capitalist foundations have been queried (Hamilakis and Duke 2007; Shanks and Tilley 1987). Less well understood, however, are archaeology’s ties to neoliberalism. We posit that because neoliberalism is the key to understanding disaster capitalism, it is also the key to understanding archaeology.

Rooted in capitalism and laissez faire principles, neoliberalism refers to a new political, economic, and social arrangement emphasizing market relations, minimal states, and individual responsibility (Springer 2010, p. 1025). Understood as an ideological hegemonic project, neoliberalism maintains that “elite groups, organized around transnational class-based alliances, have the capacity to project and circulate a coherent program of interpretations of the world on to others” (Springer 2010, p. 1032). The views of geographer David Harvey, highly regarded for his work on neoliberalism, are summarized by Simon Springer (2010, p. 1032):

Harvey’s primary contention is that the foremost achievement of neoliberalism has been the redistribution of wealth to elites, rather than the actual generation of new wealth. In other words, neoliberalism represents the continuation of what Marx (1867[1976]) regarded as “primitive accumulation,” which Harvey (2003, p. 145) has renamed “accumulation by dispossession” to signify its ongoing relevance under contemporary capitalism in the form of: the commodification and privatization of land and the forceful expulsion of peasant populations; the conversion of various forms of property rights (common, collective, state, etc.) into exclusive property rights; the suppression of rights to the commons; commodification of labour power and the suppression of alternative (Indigenous) forms of production and consumption; [and] colonial, neocolonial, and imperial processes of appropriation of assets (including natural resources).

In addition to class power, Springer emphasizes bureaucratic formation and its political formation. The former represents neoliberalism-as-policy, the latter neoliberalism-as-governmentality. Both are central elements of our new model of archaeology, discussed below.

To understand archaeology’s relationship with the state, capitalism, and the neoliberal state, we offer a new model of archaeology (Fig. 3). In a sense, the model is archaeology “disentangled,” representing the convergence of Benedict Anderson’s (2006) “mechanisms of state control” and Laurajane Smith’s (2004, pp. 11–12) vision of CRM as governing Indigenous cultural identity.

Fig. 3
figure 3

A new view of archaeology: the convergence of Benedict Anderson’s “mechanisms of state control” and Laurajane Smith’s vision of CRM as governing Indigenous cultural identity

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Anderson (2006, pp. 163–164) describes the mechanisms of state control as “the census, the map, and the museum; together, they profoundly shape how colonial states imagine their dominion—the nature of the people it rules, the geography of its domain, and the legitimacy of its ancestry.” These three features essential to state authority may also be imagined as controlling the identity, places, and memory of a people—the elements that comprise heritage.

Together, they produce a “totalizing classificatory grid, which [can] be applied with endless flexibility to anything under the state’s real or contemplated control: people, regions, religions, languages, products, monuments, and so forth.” The effect of the grid is “always to be able to say of anything that it [is] this, not that; it belong[s] here, not there” (Anderson 2006, p. 184).

A prominent and powerful demonstration of the total classificatory grid in Canadian archaeology is the “Borden Grid” (Fig. 4). Foremost, this is due to its cartographic foundation—it is the “map” in Anderson’s “census, map, museum.” As Kathryn Sampeck (2014) suggests, colonists gain control of a region through mapping, which is “[t]he ultimate tool for implementing state hegemony,” as it lets officials “dictate an authoritative perception of the landscape.”

Fig. 4
figure 4

The Borden Grid (Grille Borden), designed by Charles E. Borden in the early 1950s and adopted nationally soon thereafter, exemplifies the total classificatory grid. To wit, it is colonialism in action. (after Government of Canada 2007)

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The government-funded educational website Artifacts B.C. (n.d.) describes the origin and meaning of the Grid, or “Borden System,” using the Indigenous village site of Kosapsom, Vancouver Island, as an example:

In Canada, all archaeological sites are coded by what is known as the “Borden System.” It assigns each location a sequence of 4 letters (DcRu) and a number (4) relating to a fixed map code. Borden numbers were invented by Charles E. Borden at the University of British Columbia in 1954. Canada was divided into a grid of main map units of 2° (degrees) latitude (high) by 4° longitude (wide). Latitudinal co-ordinates are assigned capital letters from A through U from south to north and longitude is designated by capital letters A through V from east to west. Each 2° × 4° main unit (192 × 300 km) is further sub-divided into 10 min (’) sub-units designated by lower case letters from south to north (latitude) and east to west (longitude). For example, in DcRu4, the first two letters indicate the site is in one of the 16 km wide grid squares in the latitudinal ‘D’ square, and the last 2 letters likewise show the grid position on the longitude. The number ‘4’ after the four letters means it was the fourth site found within a 16 × 16 km unit.

In this (convoluted) way, Indigenous cultural landscapes (Kosapsom) are scientized (DcRu-4), transformed into generic, state-registered archaeological “sites” and “resources,” and thereby made market-ready. The Borden System—and others around the world (in the US, the Smithsonian Trinomial)—operates through the process of renaming. This is the main technique the state uses to colonize Indigenous heritage landscapes, and archaeology is—thus archaeologists are—directly implicated in this process.

Lawrence Berg (2011, pp. 13–14) discusses naming as a means to “symbolically and materially solidify current (and historical) processes of capitalist accumulation by dispossession.” Specifically, “banal and uncontested forms of naming help to hide socio-spatial relations of dispossession.” In light of the “dispossession of Aboriginal peoples and their continued marginalization through ‘ongoing colonialism,’” Berg provides an important vantage from which to consider the “violence” of archaeology, discussed below.

Dispossession and its byproduct, dislocation, are central to the second component of our model of archaeology. Laurajane Smith’s (2004, p. 11) critique of CRM suggests the practice arose from the need “to help govern a range of social problems,” especially those posed by Indigenous peoples in colonial contexts like Australia and Canada. As Smith (2004, p. 11) describes,

The whole process of CRM, which emphasizes the technical application of knowledge and expertise, works effectively to render wider political debates about the legitimacy of cultural and social claims on the past as non-political… This then renders “heritage,” and the claims made about it, more readily “governable.” The governance of heritage facilitates the de-politicization of Indigenous claims about cultural identity. This has significant consequences for Indigenous people.

Archaeology thus operates as a technology of government, producing and mobilizing knowledge in support of state interests, economic and otherwise. This idea is well-established; as Don Fowler (1987, p. 241), Society for American Archaeology President from 1988 to 1991, articulated decades ago, “interpretations, or uses, of the past are seldom value neutral”:

In various nation states at various times, some archaeologists have analyzed and interpreted the past to fit the ideological requirements of those states. That is one end of the spectrum. The other is the implicit and therefore unquestioned acceptance of ideological tenets and values from within the archaeologist’s culture and how they influence the archaeologist’s use of the past.

Historically, the concern was about how academic archaeologists’ interpretations of the past work “in service of the state.” What Fowler and others (e.g., Trigger 1989) do not address is archaeology in the form of compliance or commercial archaeology. This oversight is critical because academic archaeology (theory) and compliance archaeology (practice) are two halves of a whole, philosophically and institutionally. As such, academic archaeologists cannot disassociate themselves from CRM.

Today, resource management scholars see bureaucratic institutions as containing the “seeds of failure” (Acheson 2006, p. 124; see also King 2009). Sociologist Sylvia Hale (1990, pp. 518–519) describes a major design flaw:

The loyalty of officials lies not with the general public or the electorate, but with the bureaucracy itself. Their vocation is to serve their official duties... Those who work as employees within the bureaucracy are even more rigidly subject to its regulations. They operate as cogs in the machine. The major requirement for their position is unquestioning and strict adherence to written regulations within their narrowly defined areas of jurisdiction. Their individuality has no place within such a system, for it would disrupt the calculated order.

Archaeologists who operate in this system—referred to as “archaeobureaucrats” by Joshua Dent (2012)—“are paid to assess projects, apply for permits, carry out fieldwork, write technical reports, and in effect ‘manage’ resources” (Lyons et al. 2012, p. 8). Critique of this system is implicitly discouraged simply by virtue of being affiliated with this imagined community, sharing in its beliefs, and deriving from it one’s identity. Indeed, as the responses discussed above demonstrate, archaeobureaucrats feel they do not have any control over the system, all the while they are reproducing it every day.

For this reason, archaeology/CRM represents a very powerful thus potentially dangerous form of statecraft, rationalized and justified by the academy, and carried out and reinforced by the industry. As a form of disaster capitalism operating in neoliberal interests, the impact of this project is significant.

Archaeology as Violence

In the later stages of an epic worldwide struggle, the forces of Western economic development are assaulting the remaining Native peoples of the planet, whose presence obstructs their progress. Mander (1991)

Archaeologists have created a thought world which serves to support their own power and privilege, harms the interests of American Indian people, and aids the on-going cultural genocide focused on Native Americans. Custer (2005)

Is there a market price for ethnic cleansing and environmental damage? Tommasino et. al. (cited by Funari 2001)

Neoliberal rationalism is linked to poverty, inequality, and violence (Springer 2011; see also Giroux 2014). The results of neoliberalism are all around us, observes Henry Giroux, “ranging from ecological devastation and widespread economic impoverishment to the increasing incarceration of large segments of the population marginalized by race and class” (Polychroniou 2013, n.p.). Neoliberalism, what Giroux calls the “latest stage of predatory capitalism,” is a political and economic project that constitutes an ideology, mode of governance, policy, and form of public pedagogy (Polychroniou 2013, n.p.). By recognizing the structural violence of neoliberalism is everywhere, “‘local’ experiences of violence that seemingly occur in isolation from the wider matrix of space are in fact tied to the ‘global,’ which renders violence somewhat ‘everyday’” (Springer 2011, p. 95).

As neoliberal statecraft, archaeology is prone to violence. Within the processes of colonialism and capitalism, archaeology as a technology of government operates to “clear” Indigenous heritage landscapes (Blaser et al. 2004; Smith 2008) and open up their resources to extraction and development. In exchange for access, Indigenous communities are placated with such “cultural crumbs” (Gnecco 2012) as reports, videos, school booklets, or a local museum, and sometimes even the “privilege” to be able to participate in the “management” of one’s own heritage. Archaeologists profit directly from this unfolding disaster—the driving force behind the creation of the profession in the first place—and the loss of natural and cultural heritage is the result (Foster et al. 2010).

Our goal here is to neither “prove” that neoliberalism (nor capitalism) is violent nor that archaeology, as a consequence of being neoliberal statecraft, is inherently violent also. This case has already been made, in a variety of contexts and many times over, locally, nationally, and globally. Rather, our concern is that archaeology—thus archaeologists—continues to “forget” this ongoing legacy of violence.

Archaeological violence is manifested on the ground through what Bruce Alexander (2008) calls “dislocation” and Glenn Albrecht (2005) “solastalgia.” Working in a poverty-stricken neighborhood with a high Indigenous population in urban Vancouver, British Columbia, Alexander demonstrates how neoliberal policies dislocate Indigenous individuals from their past and present, often resulting in addiction, homelessness, and violence. Albrecht (2005) uses the term solastalgia to characterize distress caused by dislocation from one’s environment, including pain, loss, and feeling unable to derive solace from the present, resulting in serious physical and mental health problems. This condition is prevalent in Indigenous communities that are strongly connected to “country.” In their study of solastalgia and cultural resource management in colonial Australia, Sutton et al. (2013, pp. 7–8) describe “Indigenous attachment to the environment as an intimate spiritual connection; the impacts of coal mining therefore not only destroy that environment but irrevocably damage people’s connections to country.”

The destruction of Indigenous heritage is directly implicated in not just ecocide, but ethnocide and genocide. However, the problem in identifying solastalgia in the context of heritage destruction is that it is a “slow” process, and thus difficult to see (Nixon 2011a). As Rob Nixon articulates (2011b), slow violence “is neither spectacular nor instantaneous but instead incremental, whose calamitous repercussions are postponed for years or decades or centuries.” Archaeology is slow violence because the loss of heritage landscapes is incremental and rarely newsworthy. As an apparatus of the state, archaeology is entangled in the slow but ongoing process of colonization.

Within archaeology, this violence is viewed as an externality—as something “outside” the institution. It is thus seen as being outside “our control,” and part of the permanent structure within which archaeologists operate. This is what Hutchings (2013) referred to as “siloing,” whereby archaeologists look at problems “in isolation, so we don’t see the whole picture” (Homer-Dixon 2006, p. 17). The role of archaeobureaucrats in reproducing the structure is thus made invisible: it is in the everyday and in the banality of simply doing one’s job (Arendt 1963) that such structure is sedimented and slow violence unfolds.

Conclusion: Archaeology and the Banality of Evil

What is most dangerous in violence is its rationality. Of course violence itself is terrible. But the deepest root of violence and its permanence come out of the form of rationality we use. Foucault (1996)

The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil. Arendt (1978)

To disentangle archaeology is to understand its rationality: an institutional amnesia about its daily practice as commercial, contract, or compliance archaeology. We suggest that archaeology’s energy or inertia as a form of disaster capitalism is derived primarily (>97 %) from accumulation through dispossession, or neoliberal violence. In Northern America (Canada and US), that violence is directed almost entirely toward Indigenous peoples and their heritage, reflecting an obvious but rarely discussed racial component to compliance archaeology in colonial settings.

Archaeology today is a billion dollar project in Northern America. As such, we propose adopting the term “heritage industry” to highlight the corporate nature and industrial scale of the archaeology/CRM institution. As late modern statecraft, archaeology is disaster capitalism par excellence, characterized by specialist managers (archaeobureaucrats) “clearing” Indigenous heritage from the landscape, making way for economic development. This is achieved by first converting cultural heritage landscapes into archaeological sites, then, when development is to occur, converting archaeological sites into shoeboxes and PDF reports.

Indigenous heritage destruction is deemed rational by archaeologists because the acts of violence are shrouded in the sacrosanct thus taken-for-granted veil that is science and scientific neutrality. In this way, the role of academics in the violence of archaeology extends well beyond the fact that they alone discipline professional archaeologists in the skill-set of compliance. In their teaching and in their silence, academic archaeologists legitimize compliance archaeology, in the process validating “authorized” and “official” heritage discourses that emanate from and (re)produce the capitalist ideology of resourcism.

Seeing archaeology as violence has significant implications for the profession. Recently, the World Archaeological Congress (2013) passed the following resolution: “It is unethical for Professional Archaeologists and academic institutions to conduct professional archaeological work and excavations in occupied areas possessed by force.” In colonized or occupied places like British Columbia, this resolution presents a seemingly intractable dilemma for the discipline’s practitioners, academic and consulting alike.

We end with a prediction and a new point of departure. We predict that there will be little to no meaningful challenge to the assertions made here. We certainly do not think that anyone will “refute the central point” that archaeology is neoliberal statecraft and/or disaster capitalism. The reason, in part, is because truly engaging with the problem means “committing explicitly” to the issues at hand. Another reason, wholly related to the first, is that truth-telling is an extraordinarily difficult task, certainly for the individual, and more so for an entire culture. This recognition forms our new baseline, a challenge set out by Ian Angus (2013): “The first step is to tell the truth—about the danger we face, about its causes, and about the measures that must be taken to turn back the threat. In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”