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Sustainable archaeology: soothing rhetoric for an anxious institution

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 December 2019

Richard M. Hutchings*
Affiliation:
Institute for Critical Heritage and Tourism (ICHT), 330 Spruce Avenue, Gabriola Island, British Columbia V0R 1X1, Canada
Marina La Salle
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, Vancouver Island University (VIU), 900 Fifth Street, Nanaimo, British ColumbiaV9R 5S5, Canada
*
*Author for correspondence (Email: [email protected])

Abstract

The primary objective of sustainable archaeology is to maintain the profession of archaeology—that is, to sustain itself. An effort to rebrand the discipline as virtuous, sustainable archaeology is self-serving and reflects larger institutional anxieties around an unethical past and an uncertain future. An example of futurist rhetoric and doublespeak, sustainable archaeology exists because archaeology is unsustainable.

Type
Debate
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd, 2019

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