Byrne, Denis
Description
Beginning with the understanding that several European discourses compete for the
right to interpret the physical traces of past human cultures I have examined what seem
to be the major of these in the European context. They are the discourses of the divine,
namely paganism and early Christianity, and the discourses of the secular and rational,
the principal of which are antiquarianism and archaeology. Since the mid-nineteenth
century archaeology has secured for itself official recognition...[Show more] as the proper knowledge
of the material past.
Archaeology is now to be found practised in almost every part of the world. The
transfer of the discourses of archaeology and art history from the West to the non-
West has, not surprisingly, included the transfer of the conservation ethic. While the
conservation ethic has attained a foothold at a government and elite level in the non-
West it appears to have little constituency at a local and non-elite level. In Thailand I
have looked at Buddhism and animism as systems of knowledge about the material
past and have found beliefs and practices which honour the spiritual essence of ancient
remains but rarely seek to conserve their material fabric.
In Australia the European conception of Aboriginal heritage is implicated in a
primitivist longing for a 'traditional', unchanging Aboriginal culture in which
authenticity is partly equated within pastness. Archaeology established its primacy in
Australia by mixing its discourse with the discourse of heritage. It now finds its
position destabilized as Aborigines themselves borrow elements of the same discourse
in a counter-appropriation of their 'archaeological' cultural property.
The universality of the conservation ethic is manifestly spurious. The West, in its
bid to domesticate the past of the Other World, allies itself with the non-Western state.
The state draws upon the material past as a resource for nation-building,
monumentalizing the past also in the interests of legitimizing present political
arrangements. This alliance of interests is fundamentally anti-religious. Its programme
of 'conserving' ancient sites cuts across local practices.
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