Sins of the shovel : looting, murder, and the evolution of American archaeology /
Rachel Morgan's frank and incisive history begins with Richard Wetherill's "discovery" of Mesa Verde in Colorado in 1888. Subsequent expeditions by amateurs, looters and budding professional archaeologists abetted the devastation of Indigenous sites throughout the Southwest. Thes...
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| Format: | Book |
| Language: | English |
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Chicago :
University of Chicago Press,
[2023].
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| Summary: | Rachel Morgan's frank and incisive history begins with Richard Wetherill's "discovery" of Mesa Verde in Colorado in 1888. Subsequent expeditions by amateurs, looters and budding professional archaeologists abetted the devastation of Indigenous sites throughout the Southwest. These expeditions became the proving grounds for different conceptions of what archaeology should be and how it should be practiced. Ultimately, revulsion at the work of nineteenth-century explorers led to more rigorous and ethical norms, as well as federal regulation, but the core issues of how we ought best to engage with the evidence and people of the past remain live ones today. Morgan, an archaeologist, knows well the field's history of racism and unethical behavior, and she is both unsparing and even-handed in assessing what happened in the Southwest and how it informs relations among people, and with the planet, today. |
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| Physical Description: | viii, 319 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| ISBN: | 9780226822389 0226822389 |