Discover Top Posts Tagged with #monument removal

As images of white supremacists rallying to protest the planned removal of monuments to the confederate past filled the news, some people on social media began to argue that archaeology– my d…

As images of white supremacists rallying to protest the planned removal of monuments to the confederate past filled the news, some people on social media began to argue that archaeology– my discipline, my profession— should oppose the destruction of these things.

The argument goes that archaeologists have a responsibility to oppose any destruction of potential “historical information” in material form. At least, some people argued, we should be fully documenting these statues with the kind of 3-D scanning technology that has become so much a part of the popular imagination of our discipline.

Others argued that the loss of these things would lend itself to forgetting the horrific history of which they are a part, a position ridiculed by journalist Radley Balko in a Twitter post:

‘The “erasing history” people have a point. They took down the Nazi statues too, and today no one knows what a Nazi is.’

I watched this conversation unfold for a while before I decided to intervene. I kept waiting for someone to point out the multiple problems with this politically naive and historically uninformed proposal. When I did respond, I tried to make three points:

archaeologists have a long and painful modern history that taught us that demanding to use materials for our purposes can run rough-shod over often more compelling interests of other people, including the people to whose histories we would like to contribute

our discipline is about producing knowledge, not about the automatic preservation of things, and these things are well documented already

these monuments are not about “the past”. They are politically potent in the present– otherwise we would not see rallies of white supremacists chanting “we will not be replaced” in their defense. We should not lend our support to that political position.

While a fair number of archaeologists agreed with me, a number continue to argue that “a real archaeologist” will work to preserve these things, because they are supposedly irreplaceable historical resources.

Leave aside that we actually know quite a bit about these particular statues, including their manufacture (the only thing I can think of that we might learn from keeping the objects themselves). They are part of history, the claim goes, and archaeologists should preserve “history”.

Among those respondents, the conversation continued about how best to accomplish this aim: create a museum where they can be brought together, use scanning technology, find existing historical museums that will take them, or simply add a lot of modern interpretive text where they are displayed to “explain” their troubled history.

People who think and write about cultural heritage accept that not all materials made in the past should be preserved, or if preserved, interpreted for the public. As Paul M. M. Cooper put it at the beginning of a Twitter thread reviewing how similar legacies have been treated in Europe,

People working in heritage are constantly trying to strike this balance between removing hated monuments and preserving some trace of them.

That balance is part of what is at issue in archaeology today. Contemporary archaeologists have been steadily moving to a position of engaged scholarship in which they define the questions to be raised and the material remains to be investigated with communities most affected by potential research, giving up control and accepting limitations.

The whole post is really important and worth a read. Watching this happen in real time was a bit discouraging, because I’m part of the forums where the discussions that inspired this were taking place. As a discipline, we still have a long way to go.

#archaeology #monument removal #confederate monuments #confederate monument removal #cultural heritage #archaeology tag

The knowledge that future generations will never see this statue, will never know who this man was other than “evil white confederate” is a tragedy. The knowledge that we do not treat historical figures as people, as human beings, but as if they are archetypes from mythology—as if they can only be evil or righteous instead of mortal beings existing in a grey space that EACH ONE OF US inhabitants far more than once in our lives—is abhorrent to me.

If you support this, you’re an asshole, an idiot, and absolutely ignorant. You should never be allowed to have an opinion on ANYTHING EVER because your knowledge is severely LACKING. This monument should never have been removed. It wasn’t erected in reverence to a confederate soldier—but a man who served in the United States military for thirty-two years. A man who loved his country, who hated to see it torn, and who would have worn blue but for his loyalty to his home state, Virginia, and that he could not forsake her.

A crying shame, that despite thirty-two years of service to the United States of America, of his time as president and lecturer at Washington & Lee University, a West Point graduate with top marks in his class, and a brilliant military engineer, Robert Edward Lee is only remembered for six years when he served his state. He was far, far more than a confederate. But no one will ever learn that now.

“𝚃𝚑𝚎 𝚠𝚊𝚛... 𝚠𝚊𝚜 𝚊𝚗 𝚞𝚗𝚗𝚎𝚌𝚜𝚜𝚊𝚛𝚢 𝚌𝚘𝚗𝚍𝚒𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗 𝚘𝚏 𝚊𝚏𝚏𝚊𝚒𝚛𝚜, 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚖𝚒𝚐𝚑𝚝 𝚑𝚊𝚟𝚎 𝚋𝚎𝚎𝚗 𝚊𝚟𝚘𝚒𝚍𝚎𝚍 𝚒𝚏 𝚏𝚘𝚛𝚋𝚎𝚊𝚛𝚊𝚗𝚌𝚎 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚠𝚒𝚜𝚍𝚘𝚖 𝚑𝚊𝚍 𝚋𝚎𝚎𝚗 𝚙𝚛𝚊𝚌𝚝𝚒𝚌𝚎𝚍 𝚘𝚗 𝚋𝚘𝚝𝚑 𝚜𝚒𝚍𝚎𝚜.”

— Robert E. Lee

#robert e lee #war monuments #monument removal #liberalism is a disease #civil war #history of america #ignorance of society