The past of others : archaeological heritage management in Thailand and Australia

Abstract

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 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.