DC Public Library System

Sins of the shovel, looting, murder, and the evolution of American archaeology, Rachel Morgan

eng

Includes bibliographical references and index

illustrations

index present

non fiction

Sins of the shovel

bibliography

1365063203

Rachel Morgan

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. 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"--, Provided by publisher

Prologue -- A palace in the sky -- The robber baron -- All the world's a fair -- Toward the grand gulch -- Whence and whither -- Bonito, 1895 -- Cacao and turquoise -- Return to the grand gulch -- The trade -- Digging deeper -- Death by committee -- Anni horribiles -- All's fair...St. Louis, 1904 --An act for the preservation of American antiquities -- The race for the rainbow bridge -- On the borderland of hell -- Where the red rocks run under -- Back to the gulch, again -- New deal, new archaeology -- From potsherds to process -- The grand gulch under fire -- People without names -- Repatriation -- The past -- Epilogue -- Acknowledgments -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index