Mesa Verde and the preservation of Ancestral Puebloan heritage ARCHES: At Risk Cultural Heritage Education Series Speakers: Dr. Lauren Kilroy-Ewbank and Dr. Steven Zucker
As you talked about people living along the cliffs (which I absolutely could not do, lol), I was reminded of my dream this morning. I was walking along a mountain's edge with a few intrepid individuals and was terrified of falling off. I've never had a dream like that before, about any mountains, and have to wonder if it's from the residual impression that loading this video yesterday left on me.. 🤔 "One could call that exploration a type of looting." Such a polite way of phrasing that, lol. That does raise an interesting question about what the line between excavation and looting would be. Is there a certain amount of time that a land must be completely unpopulated? Is it just a government permit thing? I've never thought about it. I'm glad NAGPRA gave people the closure and dignity they and their ancestors deserve - or at least, closer to that.
It's an important question. Many archeologists acknowledge that their work is inherently destructive; you can't reverse such work, and a dig site is never again undisturbed. Where a continuous cultural tradition exists the morality is, or at least should be, clear-but what about ancient cultures? Should we feel free to unearth the tombs of cultures that have long since ceased to exist? Some feel such exploration is important and advances human knowledge, while others feel an imperative to respect even long ago traditions and leave things where they are.
@@smarthistory-art-history Maybe it boils down to a basic, "to the victor goes the spoils" situation: in their day, the ancient cultures were able to assert their beliefs and desires for the treatment of their people for their purposes. Now that they're gone, modern people are able to assert ours for whatever aim we choose. It's a humbling reminder that we're all on borrowed time and there's only so much influence we'll have once we're gone. Nothing like a little existential crisis and chill over the weekend. 🙃
We hope to, in the meantime we have added a lot of short illustrated essays on the art of Latin America, Oceania, Asia, and Africa at our website in fact we just published a new introduction to Andean cultures yesterday: smarthistory.org/intro-andes/
