by Jon Lackman | 15 September 2010 | Ancient
On NPR, ecologist/journalist Craig Childs calls for an end to archaeology or, at least, an end to archaeological digs:
I’ve come to believe that artifacts need to stay in their place. And that’s after having gone through museum collections and seeing just the vast amounts of material that we’ve gathered already and going through private collections and just realizing how much we have swept up from the ground. And when I find something that’s on the ground, even if it’s a tiny thing, even if it’s a broken arrowhead, it is so much more powerful there than it is on a shelf or in a display case. And, you know, I’m not saying we need to get rid of all the artifacts we’ve gathered. I’m just looking at it going, we don’t need to take everything. We can leave some stuff out there, and there’s not that much left. I walked thousands and thousands of miles across deserts and mountains, and I know. I’ve seen the holes. I’ve seen where diggers have been. And I know that there is a lot missing, and I know that these last pieces that are remaining are rare, and I don’t want them moving.
Childs’ new book is “Finders Keepers: A Tale of Archaeological Plunder and Obsession.” According to the L.A. Times, “Once, he stole a pot from [a] case to return it to the desert. He did not feel entirely good about that.”
