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American Schools of Oriental Research Centennial celebration back to Centennial page |
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Keynote Address
U.S. Department of State, Benjamin Franklin Room The Honorable Thomas R.
Pickering Diplomacy and Archaeology: Past, Present and Future (continued from page 1)
One of the newest members of the Advisory Committee is a Trustee of ASOR as well -- and she is here tonight -- Dr. Patty Gerstenblith of the DePaul University College of Law. Dr. Gerstenblith is an expert in the field of the law and cultural heritage and the arts. She also serves as editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Cultural Property. Law enforcement is the other side of the protection equation, and both the U.S. Customs Service and FBI play major roles in investigating the trafficking in illegal antiquities. We recognize that, as one of the principal markets for stolen antiquities, the United States carries a particularly heavy responsibility for building systems of protection and incentives to halt the traffic in illegal antiquities. And frankly, if looted or stolen artifacts appear in U.S. museums and auction houses, they can harm our bilateral relations with other countries. The United States is taking decisive action in this area. On March 1, for example, a two-year investigation conducted in cooperation with the government of Turkey culminated in the return of more than 100 stolen or looted artifacts representing a panopoly of ancient cultures: Assyrian, Hittite, Phoenician, Greek, Roman, and Byzantine. Our participation in exploring and protecting Turkey's past is hardly new, I might add. American and Ottoman archeologists first explored a site at Assos in 1881, and a well-known Princeton University expedition looked at Ottoman Syria and Jordan before the end of the 19th century. Last November, the First Lady, Hillary Rodham Clinton, announced a grant to exchange archaeological knowledge between Turkey and Greece about their shared Mediterranean heritage -- and incidentally to promote a new spirit of cooperation - between these two countries. Despite its heavy responsibilities for interdicting drugs and other contraband, the U.S. Customs Service has worked vigorously to halt the smuggling of archaeological artifacts. Just last month, federal authorities blocked the sale of a marble wall sculpture stolen from a 10th century tomb in China's Hebei Province. In February, the Customs Service arranged for the return to Italy of two irreplaceable if quite different items: a collection of Paleolithic bones, and a gold bowl, or phiale, dating from 450 B.C. and worth an estimated $1.2 million. By stemming the traffic in undocumented and stolen artifacts, we seek to strengthen the bonds of international scholarship, to encourage research, and to expand opportunities for the exchange and display of historic and cultural artifacts worldwide. A third point of connection between diplomacy and archaeology is that of stewardship. I hardly need to expand on a concept that is absolutely core to both archaeology as a profession and ASOR as an organization. What I can do is cite an example close to home, here at the Department of State. The Department has long recognized the need to undertake a systematic assessment of its own historic and culturally important sites overseas. Now, under the leadership of the Under Secretary for Management, Bonnie Cohen, we have begun to assemble and document such an inventory. The United States owns or holds long-term leases to more than 3,500 properties at 265 locations worldwide. Among them we estimate there are about 150 properties that are significant for historical, architectural, or cultural reasons. Let me cite just two Mediterranean examples:
In the near future, we plan to complete the assessment process and formally announce the Secretary of State's first "Register of Culturally Significant Properties:" Our hope is that the Secretary's register will give these sites greater visibility and protection -- and highlight their historic or cultural designations as genuine assets for the United States. Another tangible example of the U.S. commitment to stewardship of the past is our participation in the World Heritage Convention, largely through the National Park Service and ICOMOS - the United States Committee, International Council on Monuments and Sites. There are now 22 World Heritage sites in the United States. Some are as large and familiar as Yellowstone National Park and Florida's Everglades. Others are less familiar, but no less irreplaceable -- such as the Cahokia Mound outside St. Louis, once the location of one of the great population centers of Mesoamerica. Domestically, efforts to protect historic sites on federal lands go back to the Antiquities Act of 1906. Today, the Federal Archaeology Program encompasses a wide range of research and conservation efforts, collections of artifacts and data, site protection, and public education and outreach efforts. Virtually every federal agency with "on-the-ground" responsibilities -- the National Park and Forest Services, Bureau of Land Management, Army Corps of Engineers -- have archaeological programs integrated into their activities. Outside federal lands, cultural preservation is a state and local responsibility, and the federal role is one of advice and consultation. One must always take care in extrapolating our domestic experience internationally, but I think the concepts of integration and local decision-making are broadly applicable elsewhere. Archaeology, however specialized, is a public endeavor, requiring understanding and support from the people who find themselves living in a region with a significant past. A fourth intersection of archaeology and diplomacy is the complicated issue of how we value the past. In one sense, archaeology is the victim of its own successes. Archaeology's grip on the public imagination is nothing new, dating back at least to the novels of H. Rider Haggard in the 1880s. More recently, however, discoveries such as the Dead Sea Scrolls and Petra have seized the imagination of people around the word. Archaeology is no longer the monopoly of academics. It is now part of the larger culture. Let's admit it, there are worse fates than being portrayed by Harrison Ford, and I'm told that the most popular digital character on the Internet is Lara Croft, heroine of the best-selling computer game, "Tomb Raider." But popularity is a two-edged sword, encouraging trivialization, and threatening to turn archaeological sites into theme parks. We arrive, finally, at a set of very difficult questions. How do we place a value on the human heritage embodied in the ruins and objects of the ancient world? Should they be measured chiefly for their economic value, or because they illuminate the human condition? Is our model the visitor's center at an excavation site, a museum display or the "Antiques Road Show?" One answer, it seems to me, is to connect archaeology and historic preservation with two very powerful concepts that have widespread national and international support: sustainable development and biodiversity. For archaeology to be sustainable, it must be anchored in the local economy as well as in the priorities of national governments. The benefits -- whether knowledge and insight, tourism, partnerships, education, or jobs -- must be as tangible as the shards and stones that workers excavate. Biodiversity we now know, is essential to the life and health of the natural environment. So too is a diverse human environment, one that allows people to become rooted in their heritage and past, even as they seek a better future. The increasing use of science in archaeology, the marriages with botany and new technologies of dating historic objects, are all indicators, too, of how a better future supports archaeology. In the end, however, what captures the imagination and intellect of people is not the monetary value of the artifacts that emerge from the sands and seas of the world. It is, instead, the promise of the encounter with the real, the authentic -- the gripping capacity of your science to tell us the story of our common history and heritage which otherwise we would never know. The people may come for the show. But they will stay for the truth. You are not simply digging up the past, but excavating the human soul. As you do so, you reveal our future as well. For archeologists understand one great truth that they are often reluctant to utter: In the end, all human works will be reduced to rubble. Not because of war or natural catastrophe, but simply because we are human. And for human beings, in the words of the poet Delmore Schwartz, "Time is the fire in which we burn." Just as you, today, sift through pottery shards of past centuries, so too, will archeologists of the future sift through the remains of our time. And no doubt they will wonder at a civilization whose emblematic buildings seemed to be sports stadiums and shopping malls, and whose inhabitants often wore T-shirts emblazoned with tribal or religious symbols that have not yet been deciphered. So as ASOR begins its second century, I have little doubt that great discoveries await you -- that one day you, too, will clear out a rubble-filled passageway and peer into a dark space. And when someone says, "What do you see?" you -- like Howard Carter on that day in the Valley of the Kings when he found the tomb of Tutunkhamun -- can answer: "Wonderful things. I see wonderful things." Thank you. back
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