Compare Ethics Statements

In Chapter 7, you read about human decision-making. Some archaeologists frame their research on the past in terms of human behavior, and how that behavior impacts the evolution of our species. Other archaeologists prefer to frame their research in terms of human history and social theory, and resulting in a more historical lens on the past. The text authors give examples of these approaches.
Archaeologists make decisions as well, many of them about how the research they do will impact the modern descendants of the people who lived at sites we are privileged to excavate, as well as our responsibilities to the scientific community, and the taxpayers who often pay for our research through federal research grants. We have many stakeholders. Every professional association has an ethics statement that members sign on to when they become members, about how to weigh these ethical obligations to different stakeholders. The Society for American Archaeology, American Anthropological Association (Archaeology Division), World Archaeological Congress, Society for Historical Archaeology, and Colorado Council of Professional Archaeologists all have such statements somewhere on their web pages.
The Society for American Archaeology (SAA) and Society for Historical Archaeology (SHA – dedicated to archaeology of the more recent past) are the two largest archaeological associations in the United States, covering work that occurs globally.  SHA does not get mention in your text, but you may have noticed that the examples the textbook authors and I have used for looking at structure and agency in archaeological interpretation, like the St. Kilda example, come from colonial or historic period sites which have relevant documentary as well as excavated data. Historical Archaeologists often work directly with people who lived or whose parents or grandparents died on the sites that they explore.
Step 1
Go to the websites of the first of these two important professional organizations and take a look at the ethnics statement:  
Step 2
Read the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act description AND the Science Magazine articles, both linked below.
Some context: In 1990, a law passed the U.S. Congress and was signed by the President of the United States. It was the  (NAGPRA). Breifly, this law provides for Native American people from federally recognized tribes to claim the remains of the ancestors housed in museums and at universities, and rebury them. Sometimes descendants cannot prove the remains are theirs. Sometimes they do not have federal recognition of their tribal governments, and therefore lack legal grounds to make these claims. Many remains remain “unaffiliated” with any existing tribe, according to the law. Many physical anthropologists and a small subset of archaeologists have in some cases contested this law, as they see these remains as their primary data set. They argue that for them, reburying the remains deprives them of their right to research the past. The data they explore is primarily human remains and (when available) the artifacts and features found in association with human remains. They determine sex, age, social status, pathologies, cause of death, and other demographic information from either individual burials or from cemeteries.
Most archaeologists – including many bio-archaeologists – work with tribal Historic Preservation Officers and support this law.
This spring, controversy erupted at the annual conference of the Society for American Archaeology. The controversy is covered in this article in . “On 15 April, Elizabeth Weiss, a physical anthropologist at San Jose State University and an SAA member, gave a presentation at SAAs virtual annual meeting titled Has Creationism Crept Back into Archaeology? co-written with retired attorney James Springer. During the talk, she said archaeologists have let creationism into the heart of our discipline because NAGPRA gives control of research over to contemporary American Indian communities, who may request repatriation or refuse to participate in certain research partly because of religious beliefs.”
Step 3
After reading the SAA ethics statement, write an essay about this year’s SAA controversy in light of SAAs statement of professional ethics, and what you’ve read in Chapter 7 and seen so far in this course. How might the SAAs statement of ethics apply to this controversy? Or would you suggest changes to the statement based on this controversy?
I would like you to think about the issues raised in the statement of ethics in the weeks ahead, as we cover archaeology that seems to some to be controversial.