Digging and destruction: artifact collecting as meaningful social practice

Abstract

Collected sites are commonly seen as places requiring expert intervention to ‘save the past’ from destruction by artifact collectors and looters. Despite engaging directly with the physical effects of collecting and vandalism, little attention is given to the meanings of these actions and the contributions they make to the stories told about sites or the past more broadly. Professional archaeologists often position their engagement with site destruction as heritage ‘salvage’ and regard collecting as lacking any value in contemporary society. Repositioning collecting as meaningful social practice and heritage action raises the question: in failing to understand legal or illegal collecting as significant to heritage, have archaeologists contributed to the erasure of acts that aim to work out identities, memories and senses of place, and contribute to an individual’s or group’s sense of ontological security? This question is explored through a case study from the New England region of North America where archaeologists have allied with Native American and other stakeholders to advocate for heritage protection by taking an anti-looting/collecting stance. We explore alternatives to this position that engage directly with forms of collecting as meaningful social practices that are largely erased in site narratives.

Keywords:

• collecting
• looting
• vandalism
• New England
• social practice

Acknowledgements

This article benefitted greatly from discussions and feedback from Cornelius Holtorf and Troels Myrup Kristensen. We thank them for the invitation to participate in discussions at Kalmar and provoking us in productive directions. We also benefitted significantly from three anonymous reviewers and the journal editor, Laurajane Smith, and appreciate their constructive and thoughtful feedback. Many thanks are offered to the stakeholder participants in the Pocumtuck Fort Archaeology and Stewardship Project who have helped us think about the relationship between cultural heritage and collecting in new and unexpected ways. The staff and students of the UMass Amherst Field School in Archaeology (2006, 2008, 2011) are thanked for their efforts documenting the collected areas of the Area D site. We are grateful to David Pollack and Kenny Barkley for allowing us to use the image of Slack Farm. Any flaws in this work are solely our own.

Notes

1. The term ‘avocational’ has often been used synonymously with ‘amateur archaeologist,’ to differentiate these people from ‘professional archaeologists,’ on the one hand, and ‘artifact dealers’ and ‘pothunters’ on the other (Frison 1984, 185–186; Tesar 1988, 33–34; DeAngelo 1992). Here, we distinguish ‘avocationals’ from ‘collectors’ because their relationship to the material record is similar to that of professional archaeologists, in that the knowledge and information gained from the context of material culture is valued (Hart 2009).