This volume examines the distinctive and highly problematic ethical questions surrounding conflict archaeology. By bringing together sophisticated analyses and pertinent case studies from around the world it aims to address the problems facing archaeologists working in areas of violent conflict, past and present. Of all the contentious issues within archaeology and heritage, the study of conflict and work within conflict zones are undoubtedly the most highly charged and hotly debated, both within and outside the discipline. Ranging across the conflict zones (...) of the world past and present, this book attempts to raise the level of these often fractious debates by locating them within ethical frameworks. The issues and debates in this book range across a range of ethical models, including deontological, teleological and virtue ethics. The chapters address real-world ethical conundrums that confront archaeologists in a diversity of countries, including Israel/Palestine, Iran, Uruguay, Argentina, Rwanda, Germany and Spain. They all have in common recent, traumatic experiences of war and dictatorship. The chapters provide carefully argued, thought-provoking analyses and examples that will be of real practical use to archaeologists in formulating and addressing ethical dilemmas in a confident and constructive manner. (shrink)

The Turco‐Egyptian conquest of Sudan in 1820–1 was a tragic turning point in the history of the peripheral regions of the Ethiopian and Sudanese states. With the commencement of Turco‐Egyptian overrule, the indigenous peoples of Benishangul, Gambela, Bahr al-Jabal, and Bahr al-Ghazal became integrated into a wider political-economic order in which they had much to lose and little to win. The panorama of social disruption that followed this integration is similar to that of other African regions, which were treated as (...) mere reservoirs of raw materials and forced labour by neighbouring states. This chapter presents an archaeological site that is most likely related to the Turco‐Egyptian control of Benishangul. It describes the structures, proposes a chronology based on historical inferences, and interprets them in the context of the economic exploitation of the region during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Finally, it addresses the issue of monumentality and its implications in a traditional African landscape. (shrink)