Introduction
Having recently returned to full-time employment in commercial archaeology after a period of seven years in academia, the ethics of commercial archaeology is a subject at the forefront of my mind. A lot has been written about the ethical issues involved in indigenous heritage especially the scenario where non-indigenous practitioners and regulators are making decisions regarding the heritage of indigenous people (e.g., Langford 1983; Byrne 1993, 1996; Smith 2004). The ethical dilemmas are obvious in that context; however, while this entry touches on this area, it focusses more broadly on a range of ethical issues including those relevant to the often less-critiqued area of non-indigenous heritage also referred to as historical heritage or the heritage of settler societies. In such fields the archaeologist is often of the same cultural (or a derivative) background as the people who created the heritage. They therefore have a privileged role in studying the cultural remains...
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Further Reading
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McIntyre-Tamwoy, S. (2014). Ethics of Commercial Archaeology: Australia. In: Smith, C. (eds) Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-0465-2_793
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