Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-r5fsc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-28T15:17:17.432Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Value and significance in archaeology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 June 2008

Kathryn Lafrenz Samuels
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The concept of value increasingly fills archaeological debates. An examination of how value works within the diverse practices of archaeology (reconstructions of the past, heritage management and self-reflexive critique) provides an integrating factor to these debates. Through a genealogy of value in the management of material heritage, I highlight how ‘significance’ has been institutionalized from contingent forms, and the ‘the past’ rendered an object. Moreover, I follow the translation of these management procedures from the national to the global stage to highlight the emergence of economic significance in international heritage management. Providing an alternative approach to significance, the anthropological work of Weiner and Graeber locates value within practices that manage material heritage. These theories provocatively suggest that archaeological practice and heritage management are one and the same, both capable of producing value. This requires archaeologists to reconsider their discipline, and the contemporary contexts and situated ethical conditions of their work.

Keywords

valuesignificanceheritage managementtemporalityNorth Africa
Type
Notes
Information
Archaeological Dialogues , Volume 15 , Issue 1: Archaeology of Europe: the 2007 EAA Archaeological Dialogues Forum , June 2008 , pp. 71 - 97
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Alcock, S.E., 2002: Archaeologies of the Greek past. Landscape, monuments, and memories. Cambridge.Google Scholar
Altschul, J.H., 2005: Significance in American cultural resource management. Lost in the past, in Mathers, C., Darvill, T. and Little, B.J. (eds), Heritage of value, archaeology of renown. Reshaping archaeological assessment and significance, Gainesville, 192–210.Google Scholar
Anders, G., 2005: Good governance as technology. Towards an ethnography of the Bretton Woods Institutions, in Mosse, D. and Lewis, D. (eds), The aid effect. Giving and governing in international development, London, 37–60.Google Scholar
Appadurai, A., 1986: Introduction. Commodities and the politics of value, in Appadurai, A. (ed.), The social life of things. Commodities in cultural perspective, Cambridge, 3–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Appadurai, A., 1996: Modernity at large. Cultural dimensions of globalization, Minneapolis.Google Scholar
Bakhtin, M., 1986: Speech genres and other late essays (ed. Emerson, C. and Holquist, M.), Austin.Google Scholar
Bataille, G., 1991: The accursed share (tr. R. Hurley), New York.Google Scholar
Baudrillard, J., 1975 (1973): The mirror of production, St Louis.Google Scholar
Baudrillard, J., 1998 (1970): The consumer society. Myths and structures, London.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bazelmans, J.G.A., 2006: Value and values in archaeology and archaeological heritage management. A revolution in the archaeological system, in Berichten van de Rijksdienst voor het Oudheidkundig Bodemonderzoek (Proceedings of the National Service for Archaeological Heritage in the Netherlands) 46, 13–26.Google Scholar
Bloom, J.M., 1993: On the transmission of designs in Early Islamic architecture, Muqarnas 10, 21–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bowdler, S., 1984: Archaeological significance as a mutable quality, in Sullivan, S. and Bowdler, S. (eds), Site surveys and significance assessment in Australian archaeology. Proceedings of the 1981 Springwood Conference on Australian Prehistory, Canberra, 1–9.Google Scholar
Bradley, R., 2002: The past in prehistoric societies, London and New York.Google Scholar
Bradley, R., and Williams, H. (eds), 1998: The past in the past. The reuse of ancient monuments, World archaeology 30, London.Google Scholar
Byrne, D., 1991: Western hegemony in archaeological heritage management, History and anthropology 5, 269–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Byrne, D., 1995: Buddhist stupa and Thai social practice, World archaeology 27, 266–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Byrne, D., Brayshaw, H. and Ireland, T., 2001: Social significance. A discussion paper, Hurstville, NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service.Google Scholar
Cassarino, J.-P., 2004: Participatory development and liberal reforms in Tunisia. The gradual incorporation of some economic networks, in Heydermann, S. (ed.), Networks of privilege in the Middle East. The politics of economic reform revisited, New York, 223–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cernea, M.M., 2001: Cultural heritage and development. A framework for action in the Middle East and North Africa, Washington, DC.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chambers, E., 1999: Native tours. The anthropology of travel and tourism, Long Grove.Google Scholar
Clark, K., 2005: The bigger picture. Archaeology and values in long term cultural resource management, in Mathers, C., Darvill, T. and Little, B.J. (eds), Heritage of value, archaeology of renown. Reshaping archaeological assessment and significance, Gainesville, 317–30.Google Scholar
Comaroff, J., and Comaroff, J., 2005: Beasts, banknotes and the color of money in colonial South Africa, Archaeological dialogues 12, 107–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Comaroff, J., and Comaroff, J., 2006: Colonizing currencies. Beasts, banknotes and the color of money in South Africa, Archaeological dialogues 13, 49–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crosby, A., 1989: Ruins stabilization – the value implied, in US National Park Service (ed.), International perspectives on cultural parks. Proceedings of the First World Conference, Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado, 1984, Denver, 101–6.Google Scholar
Darvill, T., 1994: Value systems and the archaeological resource, International journal of heritage studies 1, 52–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Darvill, T., 1995: Value systems in archaeology, in Cooper, M.A., Carman, J., Firth, A. and Wheatley, D. (eds), Managing archaeology, London, 41–50.Google Scholar
Darvill, T., 2005: ‘Sorted for ease and whiz’? Approaching value and importance in archaeological resource assessment, in Mathers, C., Darvill, T. and Little, B.J. (eds), Heritage of value, archaeology of renown. Reshaping archaeological assessment and significance, Gainesville, 21–42.Google Scholar
Darvill, T., 2006: Stonehenge. The biography of a landscape, Stroud and Charleston, SC.Google Scholar
Dreyfus, H., and Rabinow, P., 1983: Michel Foucault. Beyond structuralism and hermeneutics, 2nd edn, Chicago.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dunnell, R.C., 1984: The ethics of archaeological significance decisions, in Green, E.L. (ed.), Ethics and values in archaeology, New York, 66–74.Google Scholar
Durkheim, E., 1982: The rules of the sociological method (tr. W.D. Halls), Glencoe.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ebron, P.A., 2002: Performing Africa, Princeton.Google Scholar
Edensor, T., 1998: Tourists at the Taj. Performance and meaning at a symbolic site, London and New York.Google Scholar
Elyachar, J., 2005: Markets of dispossession. NGOs, economic development, and the state in Cairo, Durham, NC.Google Scholar
Fajans, J., 1997: They make themselves. Work and play among the Baining of Papua New Guinea, Chicago.Google Scholar
Ferguson, J., and Gupta, A., 2002: Spatializing states. Towards an ethnography of neoliberal governmentality, American ethnologist 29, 981–1002.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fitting, J.E., 1984: Economics and archaeology, in Green, E.L. (ed.), Ethics and values in archaeology, New York, 117–22.Google Scholar
Foucault, M., 1977: Discipline and punish (tr. A. Sheridan), New York.Google Scholar
Foucault, M., 1984: Nietzsche, genealogy, history, in Rabinow, P. (ed.), The Foucault reader, New York, 76–100.Google Scholar
Geary, P., 1986: Sacred commodities. The circulation of medieval relics, in Appadurai, A. (ed.), The social life of things. Commodities in cultural perspective, Cambridge, 169–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gell, A., 1992: The enchantment of technology and the technology of enchantment, in Coote, J. and Shelton, A. (eds), Anthropology, art and aesthetics, Oxford, 40–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gell, A., 1998: Art and agency. An anthropological theory, Oxford.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Glassow, M.A., 1977: Issues in evaluating the significance of archaeological resources, American antiquity 42, 413–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Glassow, M.A., 1985: Comments on Tainter and Lucas's ‘Epistemology of the significance concept’, American antiquity 50, 879–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Godelier, M., 1996: The making of great men. Male domination and power among the New Guinea Baruya, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Godelier, M., 1999 (1996): The enigma of the gift (tr. N. Scott), Chicago.Google Scholar
Graeber, D., 2001: Toward an anthropological theory of value. The false coin of our own dreams, New York.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gregory, C., 1982: Gifts and commodities, New York.Google Scholar
Gregory, C., 1996: Cowries and conquest. Towards a subalternate quality theory of money, Comparative studies in society and history 38, 195–216.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gupta, A., and Ferguson, J., 1992: Beyond culture. Space, identity, and the politics of difference, Cultural anthropology 7, 6–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hall, M., 2005: Situational ethics and engaged practice. The case of archaeology in Africa, in Meskell, L.M. and Pels, P. (eds), Embedding ethics, Oxford and New York, 169–94.Google Scholar
Harvey, D., 2005: A brief history of neoliberalism, Oxford.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Herzfeld, M., 2004: The body impolitic. Artisans and artifice in the global hierarchy of value, Chicago.Google Scholar
Hibou, B., 2000: The political economy of the World Bank's discourse from economic catechism to missionary deeds and misdeeds (tr. J. Roitman), Les Etudes du CERI 39.Google Scholar
Hibou, B., 2004: Fiscal trajectories in Morocco and Tunisia, in Heydermann, S. (ed.), Networks of privilege in the Middle East. The politics of economic reform revisited, New York, 201–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hibou, B., 2005: The privatization of the state. North Africa in comparative perspective, in Schlichte, K. (ed.), The dynamics of states. The formation and crises of state domination, Aldershot, 71–96.Google Scholar
Hibou, B., 2006: Domination and control in Tunisia. Economic levers for the exercise of authoritarian power, Review of African political economy 33, 185–206.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hingley, R., 2005: Globalizing Roman culture. Unity, diversity and empire, London.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Holtorf, C.J., 1997: Christian landscapes of pagan monuments. A radical constructivist perspective, in Nash, G. (ed.), Semiotics of landscape. Archaeology of mind, Oxford, 80–88.Google Scholar
Holtorf, C.J., 1998: The life-history of megaliths in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (Germany), World archaeology 30, 23–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnston, C., 1994: What is social value? A discussion paper, Canberra.Google Scholar
Josephides, L., 1985: The production of inequality. Gender and exchange among the Kewa, London.Google Scholar
Josephides, L., 1991: Metaphors, metathemes, and the construction of sociality. A critique of the new Melanesian ethnography, Man 26, 145–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Karp, I., 1997: Does theory travel? Area studies and cultural studies. Africa today 44, 281–95.Google Scholar
Keane, W., 2007: Christian moderns. Freedom and fetish in the mission encounter, Berkeley.Google Scholar
King, S.J., 2003: Liberalization against democracy. The local politics of economic reform in Tunisia, Bloomington and Indianapolis.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
King, T.F., 1985: If an orange falls in the forest, is it eligible? A comment on Tainter and Lucas, American antiquity 50, 170–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
King, T.F., 1998: Cultural resource laws and practice. An introductory guide, Walnut Creek.Google Scholar
King, T.F., 2000: Federal planning and historical places. The Section 106 process, Walnut Creek.Google Scholar
King, T.F., 2002: Thinking about cultural resource management. Essays from the edge, Walnut Creek.Google Scholar
Kluckhohn, K., 1951: Values and value-orientations in the theory of action. An exploration in definition and classification, in Parsons, T. and Schils, E. (eds), Towards a general theory of action, New Haven, 356–84.Google Scholar
Kopytoff, I., 1986: The cultural biography of things. Commoditization as process, in Appadurai, A. (ed.), The social life of things. Commodities in cultural perspective, Cambridge, 64–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Koselleck, R., 2004: Futures past. On the semantics of historical time, New York.Google Scholar
Latour, B., 1991: We have never been modern, Cambridge, MA.Google Scholar
Layton, R., 1989: Who needs the past? Indigenous values and archaeology, London.Google Scholar
Lazzari, M., 2005: Traveling objects and spatial images. Exchange relationships and the production of social space, in Funari, P.P., Zarankin, A. and Stovel, E. (eds), Global archaeological theory. Contextual voices and contemporary thoughts, New York, 191–210.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lilley, I., in press: Archaeology, the World Bank and postcolonial politics, in Liebmann, M. and Rizvi, U. (eds), Archaeology and the postcolonial critique, Walnut Creek.Google Scholar
Lilley, I., and Williams, M., 2005: Archaeological and indigenous significance. A view from Australia, in Mathers, C., Darvill, T. and Little, B.J. (eds), Heritage of value, archaeology of renown. Reshaping archaeological assessment and significance, Gainesville, 227–47.Google Scholar
Lowenthal, D., 1996: The heritage crusade and the spoils of history, Harmondsworth.Google Scholar
Malinowski, B, 1922: Argonauts of the Western Pacific. An account of native enterprise and adventure in the archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea, London.Google Scholar
Marx, K., 1995 (1867): Capital, Oxford.Google Scholar
Mathers, C., Darvill, T. and Little, B.J. (eds), 2005: Heritage of value, archaeology of renown. Reshaping archaeological assessment and significance, Gainesville.Google Scholar
Matthews, C.N., 2002: An archaeology of history and tradition. Moments of danger in the Annapolis landscape, New York.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Matthews, C.N., 2004: Public significance and imagined archaeologists. Authoring pasts in context, International journal of historical archaeology 8, 1–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mattingly, D., 1996: From one colonialism to another. Imperialism in the Maghreb, in Webster, J. and Cooper, N. (eds), Roman imperialism. Post-colonial perspectives, Leicester, 49–69.Google Scholar
Mauss, M., 1990 (1925): The gift. The form and reason for exchange in archaic societies (tr. W.D. Halls), New York.Google Scholar
Meskell, L.M., 2004: Object worlds from ancient Egypt. Material biographies past and present, London.Google Scholar
Meskell, L.M., 2005: Introduction. Object orientations, in Meskell, L. (ed.), Archaeologies of materiality, Malden, 1–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meskell, L.M., and Pels, P., 2005: Introduction. Embedding ethics, in Meskell, L.M. and Pels, P. (eds), Embedding ethics, Oxford and New York, 1–28.Google Scholar
Miller, D., 2005: Afterword, in Meskell, L. (ed.), Archaeologies of materiality, Malden, 212–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miller, D., in press: The uses of value, Geoforum.Google Scholar
Mitchell, T., 2002: Rule of experts. Egypt, techno-politics, modernity, Berkeley.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moratto, M.J., and Kelly, R.E., 1976: Significance in archaeology, Kiva 42, 193–202.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moratto, M.J., and Kelly, R.E., 1978: Optimizing strategies for evaluation of archaeological significance. Advances in archaeological method and theory 1, 1–30.Google Scholar
Mosse, D., 2005: Global governance and the ethnography of international aid, in Mosse, D. and Lewis, D. (eds), The aid effect. Giving and governing in international development, London, 1–36.Google Scholar
Munn, N.D., 1977: The spatiotemporal transformation of Gawan canoes, Journal de la Société des océanistes 33, 39–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Munn, N.D., 1983: Gawan kula. Spatiotemporal control and the symbolism of influence, in Leach, J. and Leach, E. (eds), The kula. New perspectives on Massim exchange, Cambridge, 277–308.Google Scholar
Munn, N.D., 1986: The fame of Gawa. A symbolic study of value transformation in a Massim (Papua New Guinea) society, Durham.Google Scholar
Myers, F. (ed.), 2001: The empire of things. Regimes of value and material culture, Santa Fe.Google Scholar
Myers, F., and Brenneis, D., 1991: Introduction. Language and politics in the Pacific, in Brenneis, D. and Myers, F. (eds), Dangerous words. Language and politics in the Pacific, Prospect Heights, 1–29.Google Scholar
Neumann, T.W., and Sanford, R.M., 2001: Cultural resources archaeology. An introduction, Walnut Creek.Google Scholar
Nietzsche, F., 2000 (1887): On the genealogy of morality. A polemic (tr. C. Diethe), Cambridge.Google Scholar
Olivier, L., 2004: The past of the present. Archaeological memory and time, Archaeological dialogues 10, 204–13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ong, A., 2006: Neoliberalism as exception. Mutations in citizenship and sovereignty, Durham.Google Scholar
Parry, J.P. and Bloch, M., 1989: Money and the morality of exchange, Cambridge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Patterson, T.C., 1995: Toward a social history of archaeology in the United States, Fort Worth.Google Scholar
Pollard, J., and Reynolds, A., 2002: Avebury. The biography of a landscape, Stroud and Charleston, SC.Google Scholar
Raab, L.M., 1984: Toward an understanding of the ethics and values of research design in archaeology, in Green, E.L. (ed.), Ethics and values in archaeology, New York, 75–88.Google Scholar
Raab, L.M., and Klinger, T.C., 1977: A critical appraisal of ‘significance’ in contract archaeology, American antiquity 42, 629–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Raab, L.M., and Klinger, T.C., 1979: A reply to Sharrock and Grayson on archaeological significance, American antiquity 44, 328–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Richards, A., and Waterbury, J., 2008: A political economy of the Middle East, 3rd edn, Boulder.Google Scholar
Roitman, J., 2005: Fiscal disobedience. An anthropology of economic regulation in Central Africa, Princeton.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rojek, C., and Urry, J., 1997: Touring cultures. Transformations of travel and theory, London and New York.Google Scholar
Roymans, N., 1995: The cultural biography of urnfields and the long-term history of a mythical landscape, Archaeological dialogues 2, 2–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Said, E., 1993: Culture and imperialism, New York.Google Scholar
Schaafsma, C.F., 1989: Significant until proven otherwise. Problems versus representative samples, in Cleere, H. (ed.), Archaeological heritage management in the modern world, London, 38–51.Google Scholar
Schiffer, M.B., and Gumerman, G.J. (eds), 1977: Conservation archaeology. A guide for cultural resource management studies, New York.Google Scholar
Simmel, G., 1990 (1978): The philosophy of money (tr. Bottomore, T. and Frisby, D.), London and New York.Google Scholar
Sharrock, F.W., and Grayson, D.K., 1979: ‘Significance’ in contract archaeology, American antiquity 44, 327–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Strathern, M., 1988: The gender of the gift. Problems with women and problems with society in Melanesia, Berkeley.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tainter, J.A., and Lucas, G.J., 1983: Epistemology of the significance concept, Antiquity 48, 707–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Terrenato, N., 2001: Ancestor cults. The perception of Rome in modern Italian culture, in Hingley, R. (ed.), Images of Rome. Perceptions of ancient Rome in Europe and the United States in the modern age, Journal of Roman archaeology Supplement 44, Portsmouth, RI, 71–89.Google Scholar
Thomas, N., 1991: Entangled objects. Exchange, material culture, and colonialism in the Pacific, Cambridge, MA.Google Scholar
Turner, T.S., 1978: The Kayapo of central Brazil, in Sutherland, A. (ed.), Face values, London, 245–77.Google Scholar
Turner, T.S., 1979: The Ge and Bororo societies as dialectical systems. A general model, in Maybury-Lewis, D. (ed.), Dialectical societies, Cambridge, MA, 147–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Urry, J., 2002 (1990): The tourist gaze, London.Google Scholar
Weiner, A., 1976: Women of value, men of renown. New perspectives on Trobriand exchange, Austin.Google Scholar
Weiner, A., 1985: Inalienable wealth, American ethnologist 12, 210–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weiner, A., 1992: Inalienable possessions. The paradox of keeping-while-giving, Berkeley.Google Scholar
Weiss, B., 1996: The making and unmaking of the Haya lived world. Consumption, commoditization, and everyday practice, Durham.Google Scholar
Weiss, L., 2007: Heritage-making and political identity, Journal of social archaeology 7, 413–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wolff, J., 1995: Resident alien. Feminist cultural criticism, New Haven.Google Scholar
World Bank, 2001a: Loan agreement (7059-TUN) for Tunisia Cultural Heritage Project, Washington, DC.Google Scholar
World Bank, 2001b: Project appraisal document (20413-TUN) for Tunisia Cultural Heritage Project, Washington, DC.Google Scholar
Zelizer, V.A., 1997: The social meaning of money. Pin money, paychecks, poor relief, and other currencies, Princeton.Google Scholar