Ethics and Archaeology

Usually the scientists who dig into humankind's past find solid material for debate in every excavation. What culture produced which artifact and when? Lately they've battled as well over a substantial matter of another kind: What constitutes right behavior? According to the November 23 issue of Science magazine, problems rising in distant Peru have American archaeologists debating ethics.

The trouble began in 1987, when national police notified Peruvian archaeologist Walter Alva that looters were digging up an adobe mound near the village of Sipan. The site had never been scientifically excavated, so Alva hustled to investigate. He realized quickly that under the mound lay an important tomb of the long-gone Moche culture that dominated northern coastal Peru before the Incas rose.

The looters were not about to give up on potential wealth merely because a scientist scolded them. The police had to secure the site, but it took a pitched battle in which one looter was killed.

Alva had a remarkable find, now known as the Tomb of the Lord of Sipan. But the looters had made off with some choice bits---gold funeral masks, a golden image of a Moche god, and five-inch-long gold peanut-shaped objects, as well as ceramic pots decorated with symbols important for understanding Moche culture.

Some of the artifacts were smuggled out of the country, but many of them ended up in the private collection of a Peruvian hotel owner and well-known purchaser of looted goods. He was well enough known so that American archaeologist Christopher Donnan found him easily, and was able to visit his private museum and photograph some of the Sipan finds. Donnan's photographs appeared in the National Geographic, first in the October 1988 issue announcing the tomb's discovery and then accompanying Donnan's own article on the artifacts in the June 1990 issue.

Professional outrage erupted all around Donnan. He's been called an "advance man" for smugglers; he's been castigated by the president of the Society for American Anthropology; his ability to work in Peru has been compromised. Ethical behavior, his detractors claim, demands that an archaeologist have no contact with looters or looted items.

In response, Donnan claims to serve a higher good: had he not tracked down and photographed the looted artifacts, they would be lost to science. The priceless knowledge they represent would go unrecorded, and that would be a greater evil. He's not alone in that view, and has mustered distinguished supporters---including Walter Alva.

Nearly everyone on both sides of the matter decries the looting itself as a bad thing, as archaeologists have done since their field became a recognized science. Yet even that formerly solid ethical point has turned slippery. The present residents of Sipan are the descendants of the people who made the artifacts. What outsiders see as grave robbing and looting they see as mining the past---their own past. If some U.S. citizen fallen on hard times had to sell great-grandmother's necklace, no one would complain; yet the residents of Sipan got scorn at best, death at worst, for trying to sell ever-so-great grandfather's gold baubles. If anyone's looting, they say, it's the archaeologists. In the name of knowledge, which doesn't put food on the table, these strangers come in and carry away the people's heritage and their ancestral wealth. This argument too is strong enough to produce sympathy if not full agreement among some professionals.

The matter of the Tomb of the Lord of Sipan is not unique; it's only singularly conspicuous among the many cases now challenging the ethical sensibilities of archaeologists. The only thing clear in all of them is that the field of archaeology has fallen on interesting times. Its practitioners won't even have much privacy to hammer out new ethical standards among themselves. At least two books are being written about the Sipan case, and a movie deal is in the works.