Professional Responsibility in Public Archaeology
Annual Review of Anthropology
Vol. 12: 143-164 (Volume publication date October 1983)
T F King
In lieu of an abstract, the publisher reproduces the first page of the article. (Link)

A couple years ago I took an archaeological fieldwork class for which the site was located in a federal park.  Reading  “Professional Responsibility in Public Archaeology,” I was left with an even greater appreciation of the outstanding job the fieldwork professor did as far as creating awareness of and stimulating depth of thought about ethical concerns in public archaeology.  And he managed to do this without at all dampening the excitement of getting to dig and sift and catologue and record.  Looking back, I’m amazed at the smooth, seamless integration of classroom lectures, firsthand accounts of experiences in public archaeology and personal conduct during the course of the class; there was a truly holistic experience of an on-the-job course in responsibilities in public archaeology.  My mind had been thoroughly engaged regarding all the issues Thomas King discusses in “Professional Responsibility in Public Archaeology.”

King organizes his discussion along the lines of asking to whom the archaeologist is responsible.  He states that the lack of consensus regarding ethical concerns is generally based on disagreements over the object(s) of responsibility.  He describes six objects:

1. The Resource Base: responsibility to archaeological sites.
2. Companions-in-Arms: responsibility to colleagues.
3. Research: responsibility to the advance of scholarship.
4. Clients: responsibility to those who pay the tab.
5. The Law: responsibility to legal and contractual obligations.
6. The Living: responsibility to nonarchaeologists with interests in archaeological sites or data.

King says that some archaeologists become “true believers” in a particular object.  I started to think about my own experience in the field class and wonder which object was supreme in my mind.  Briefly speaking….

With consideration to (1) The Resource Base, decisions about where to excavate during my field class involved discussions about where the most gain could be had with the least destruction to what could be valuable data.  Given the excavation methods and techniques available, excavation in area A seemed productive whereas it might be best to leave area B unexcavated with the thought that the future might bring better excavation techniques that result in greater data recovery with less destruction.  It’s one thing to hear this discussion and it’s another to witness the self-restraint involved in making a decision to preserve a site.  As regards (2) Companions-in-Arms, other archaeologists who had worked in the area were brought in to guest lecture.  A walk-through of a site with an archaeologist who has different interests and different areas of expertise was such a good lesson in how data can have varying levels of significance depending on the research design.  With (3) Research, the importance of keeping good records that followed industry standards for the benefit of other scholars was emphasized.  For (4) Clients, personal accounts of working with a wide variety of public archaeology clients gave perspective to the more sheltered experience of working in a federal park.  For (5) The Law, classroom discussion of laws were reinforced with fieldwork examples of situations in which those laws came into play such as when there was a need to determine whether bone found at the site were human remains.  For (6) The Living, the professor was great at talking to people who wandered by to ask questions; he told personal stories that showed a respect for the concerns of living people with a “cultural and genetic connection,” as King puts it, to the site.

Well, that’s quite fast and incomplete, but the experience in the class gave me a lot to think about when reading King’s article.