Every year, or so it seems, there are at least one or two horrible political and public relations disasters in archaeology. The Kennewick Man was just such a disaster, in that the political brouhaha arising from the mishandling of his remains led to expensive court suits, damaged relationships between the archaeological community and Native Americans, and caused damage to the Kennewick man himself and the site where he was buried. Kennewick is only the most well known of the recent disasters; but what they all have in common is that each of these problems were, by and large, preventable.
In Preventing Archaeological Disasters, archaeologists Darby Stapp and Julia Longenecker provide some solid recommendations to professional archaeologists and others in the cultural heritage community on how to take action before problems occur, to prepare for potential disasters, and most importantly, how to be responsible, ethical researchers and avoid many of the problems that occur.
Darby Stapp and Julia Longenecker have worked in the Pacific Northwest for nearly thirty years, and are CRM archaeologists who are employed in the cultural resource management programs at the U.S. Department of Energy's Hanford Site, which works actively with tribes, and with the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation (CTUIR), respectively.
This article first appeared in the newsletter of the Association for Washington Archaeology, and is reprinted here by permission.
In Preventing Archaeological Disasters, archaeologists Darby Stapp and Julia Longenecker provide some solid recommendations to professional archaeologists and others in the cultural heritage community on how to take action before problems occur, to prepare for potential disasters, and most importantly, how to be responsible, ethical researchers and avoid many of the problems that occur.
Darby Stapp and Julia Longenecker have worked in the Pacific Northwest for nearly thirty years, and are CRM archaeologists who are employed in the cultural resource management programs at the U.S. Department of Energy's Hanford Site, which works actively with tribes, and with the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation (CTUIR), respectively.
This article first appeared in the newsletter of the Association for Washington Archaeology, and is reprinted here by permission.
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