Who Owns the Past?

摘要

Around the world, scientists are losing bones and artifacts in clashes with native cultures--and some worry that this means the end of archaeology and anthropology. Archaeologist Jim Allen fears not only that the discovery of a lifetime is slipping through his fingers, but that government officials are helping to pull it from his grasp. Allen and colleagues from La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, have been excavating sites in southwestern and northwestern Tasmania that together hold a continuous record of nearly 35,000 years of human habitation--a rare and invaluable find. Last year, the Tasmanian aborigines, backed by a cultural heritage law, demanded the return of everything the archaeologists had found.