Annihilating Difference: The Anthropology of Genocide

4. Justifying Genocide: Archaeology and the Construction of Difference

 Justifying Genocide Archaeology and the Construction of Difference Bettina Arnold It is one of the terrible ironies of the systematic extermination of one people by another that its justification is considered necessary. As Norman Cohn has argued, “[H]owever narrow, materialistic, or downright criminal their own motives may be, such men cannot operate without an ideology behind them. At least, when operating collectively, they need an ideology to legitimate their behavior, for without it they would have to see themselves and one another as what they really are—common thieves and murderers. And that apparently is something which even they cannot bear” (Leo Kuper [:] quoting Norman Cohn [:–]). Obviously warrants for genocide can take many forms, and not all of them make explicit reference to the archaeological past. Those that do deserve closer examination. The starting point for this paper therefore is Leo Kuper’s statement that “massive slaughter of members of one’s own species is repugnant to man, and that ideological legitimation is a necessary precondition for genocide” (:). I explore the symbiotic relationship between nationalism, race, and archaeology from a cross-cultural perspective in order to illustrate how archaeological research has been co-opted to ratify and reify genocide. CULTURAL CAPITAL AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF DIFFERENCE If the politics of memory and the psychology of politics are intimately related, as Hirsch suggests, and if memories, and the myths and hatreds constructed around them, may be manipulated by individuals or groups in positions of leadership to motivate populations to commit genocide or other atrocities (:), then archaeology must be considered a potential contributing factor in such political systems. Archaeological research in contemporary contexts is in fact explicitly referred to as “cultural capital,” a source to be mined for “useful” matter, much as natural re-  sources are (Hamilakis and Yalouri ). The terms “heritage management” (Britain) and “cultural resource management” (United States), both used to describe archaeological research, especially government-funded research, illustrate this point (Arnold :). In the decades since , the cultural capital represented by the “deep past quarry” of archaeological research has become heavily contested territory , without however being accompanied by the development of a clear set of ethical or programmatic policies within the discipline to cope with the potential for overt exploitation. Organizations such as ROPA (the Register of Professional Archaeologists ) in the United States, or the Council of British Archaeology, have not as yet succeeded in raising the consciousness of practicing archaeologists in those countries to the level required if abuse of research results is to be avoided. As Hirsch points out, “[If] the connection between memory and politics is not clarified, the past may be ignored, reconstructed or manipulated, employed as a mythological justification for the present” (: ). On the other hand, the spate of recent publications on the archaeology of nationalism and ethnicity illustrates a dawning awareness of the significance of archaeological research to the ideological underpinnings of political systems (Olivier ; Legendre ; Halle and Schmidt ; Demoule ; Jones ; Atkinson , Banks and O’Sullivan ; Kohl and Fawcett ; Ligi ; Edwards , ). To what extent do material culture remains “map” people, and what are the implications of this operating assumption for archaeology and for the discipline of anthropology more generally? The tendency to equate material culture assemblages with cultural subdivisions still dominates the field of archaeology (Wells ; among others), a theoretical dilemma that deserves closer attention. Archaeologists have traditionally claimed that ethnicity can be recognized in archaeological assemblages. Reduced to a simplistic formula, pots = people (Childe :vi).1 As a result of this assumption, archaeology acquires political significance. In other words, the way ethnicity is identified in the archaeological record and the way archaeology informs ethnicity in contemporary cultures must be seen as two sides of the same coin. British archaeologist Stephen Shennan defines the term ethnicity very generally as “self-conscious identification with a particular social group” (:). A more recent definition by South African archaeologist Martin Hall defines it as “an historically validated continuity of identity” (:). As with most definitions, these raise more questions than they answer. What is meant by “self-conscious” or “historically validated”? How is a “social group” or an “identity” defined, and by whom? Siân Jones in her recent treatment of the topic of the archaeology of ethnicity () argues that not enough attention is paid by archaeologists to distinguishing between the emic vs. etic classification of ethnic groups—self-identified ethnicity vs. that assigned by others. Her criticism is part of a growing recognition...