[freehunter]

For the most part we don’t learn about them because we don’t know a lot about them. Many of the pre-Colombian civilizations either didn’t build permanent structures or built them from wood that’s long since rotted away. With a few exceptions they also didn’t congregate in large stationary cities where we can dig to find hundreds/thousands of years of artifacts in the same place . Again with a few exceptions, they also didn’t write down their history for us to read it.

As an American we only learn fairly superficial details about the people who were here before us, because we know they existed but there’s just not a lot of historical record. Look up Cahokia, which was a massive city (at Cahokia’s peak it likely had more residents than London did at the same time). And yet all that remains is some piles of dirt.

[thaumaturgy]

There is an additional complication too: North American archaeologists have to contend with modern descendants of indigenous cultures, who frequently insist that digs be halted and filled in, remains be reburied, and artifacts be repatriated to private owners.

The efforts by assorted tribes against archaeology culminated in NAGPRA, which has hamstrung researchers quite severely.

(Potential HN argument defuser: I'm not making a statement here on cultural values, merely observing that North American archaeology has an additional unique hurdle to understanding cultures of the past.)

[RobertoG]

That made me smile because it's a little the opposite of what happen in many places in Europe. When somebody try to build something new, they have to contend with the archaeologists, who frequently insist that the construction is halted and they start to dig there.

[tt433]

FWIW that's very close to California state law, one of my buddies is that guy who can tell the construction workers to drop everything (they hate him!)

[AlotOfReading]

As someone that's an archeologist in North America and has dealt with NAGPRA... Every country ought to have something similar. It's not ideal and I could go on for as long as anyone about its flaws, but giving people control over their heritage is a non-negotiable position for me.

[donatj]

Mind if I ask why? It seems to the great determent of society and to the benefit of nothing but superstition.

[danielheath]

At what point does the right to inherit stop applying?

[donatj]

That's a legal question I don't have the answer to but I know there are time limits on claiming inheritance that vary by municipality.

[AlotOfReading]

The most succinct explanation is that it's simply professional ethics, with lots of good reasons behind it. In no particular order or comprehensiveness:

1. There's a long history of what is best described as stealing by archaeologists/anthropologists for museums and as a means of colonial control (e.g. looting the Benin bronzes). We want to stay far away from even the appearance of that.

2. Regardless of whether it's logical or not, people can have significant emotional identification with artifacts, sites, and remains. That's a big part of why we want to study them at all. For instance, you'd probably be offended by archaeologists walking into your yard and digging up a loved one's remains, or stealing the constitution of your country, dynamiting St. Paul's Cathedral, etc without at least asking the relevant authorities.

3. In almost all cases, we don't need any individual site or artifact. There are entire databases full of known sites we've never gotten around to excavating, due to time, budget, remoteness, or lack of research questions and people to answer them. The academic value of having one more site or artifact is typically small, while there's a huge potential for harm to an often nebulous "someone". There have been cases where this math is different because of the circumstances of a particular find(e.g. kennewick man), but these are the exception rather than the rule.

4. Artifacts are always part of a wider record, and we as a community are going to have to work with this group in the future. If people are continually feeling screwed over when we don't consider their input, they'll eventually stop helping us (providing cultural input, labor, access to other artifacts/records, land access, legal permissions, they may involve the legal system etc). There are communities where this has already happened and lack of access to them has severely limited later academic work.

5. People with a relationship to the artifacts or remains often have a valuable perspective to contribute. "Academics" (who are not a unified group either) often do better work when they consider local input, and it can help to resolve ambiguous or unclear situations. One famous example came up in what's called the Magician's tomb at Ridge Ruin, where there was an unusually rich grave that the leading archaeologist had difficulty interpreting. He brought in some Hopi (distant descendants), who were able to identify and share how some of the goods would have been used in modern times, which helped contextualize the grave and provided a starting point for future discussions.

6. It's generally considered a human rights violation if the "not asking" is egregious enough.

7. If you don't involve the locals and show them what's up, they get distrustful. This can manifest as petty thievery, destruction of excavations-in-progress, legal issues, and grave robbing.

There are probably a lot more good reasons, but this is what immediately came to mind. What NAGPRA did was establish that this basic respect was required of everyone touching native artifacts, and that while researchers could still do work that benefited scientific understanding, they had to either justify that need or consult with the affected parties. It also did some other good things like establish procedures for repatriation, which certain institutions had been notoriously slow to do for themselves.

[donatj]

Thank you for this. Interesting points in here I certainly had not considered.

[derbOac]

Many remains of the mound building civilizations in the present-day US were plowed away, as they were in prime farming geography. You're right that many of the structures were made of wood and dirt that are less lasting than stone, but there were a large number of them that were lost through field preparation. The reasons for this are complex, including a disregard for Native American structures, but in many cases people just didn't know what they were.

The mound building civilizations of North America are fascinating to me, not the least of which is because of the pyramidal-mound structures of Central America.

[lock-free]

There are several piles of dirt in Cahokia. Part of the trouble is there has never been a serious attempt to uncover and restore the site. But unlike say Machu Pichu or Chichen Itza, it's on the shore of the Missippi with a highway cutting through it and a few centuries of both flooding and human development on top of what could be there.

What's sad is that it's barely outside St. Louis and isn't a part of their tourist identity, despite basically being on top of one of the oldest settlements in North America.

[jcranmer]

> one of the oldest settlements in North America

Cahokia is actually among the newest settlements among North American civilization: it peaks around 1100, fully collapsing by around 1350. The earliest mound building site I'm aware of is Poverty Point, which begins to be built around 1800 BC. The Southwest cultures (e.g., Ancestral Pueblo) are developing clear settlements by around 750. Moving into Mesoamerica, Teotihuacan collapses sometime in the 500s, and dates back to perhaps 1-ish. Contemporary with them is the Classical Maya. San Lorenzo is the oldest Olmec center, dating back to 1200 BC-ish.

[ashtonkem]

And what cultures that did survive the Colombian exchange were massively changed to the point where it’s very hard to determine what they looked like before. This means that a lot of the traditions that survived into the 1800s (when good written records start) are probably not terribly representative of what might have existed in the centuries prior.

The horse in particular changed everything, and created the archetypical Buffalo hunting nomad of the Great Plains, a cultural arrangement that did not exist in North America before the introduction of the horse.

[JoeAltmaier]

We've infested our continent pretty comprehensively. My wife who grew up around Los Alamos remembers exploring mesa tops as a kid with other kids. The boys would look the ruins and toss everything over the side to see it smash - pots, stones, whatever. The structures got pushed over and scattered.

We've only fairly recently gotten to value antiquities I suppose. In the US anyway.

[geggam]

In Casa Grande AZ there is a 2k yr old dirt house. If you go visit you see vandals carving their initials and dates from the 1800s

[AlotOfReading]

The Casa grande ruins aren't 2k years old. The main structure is a classic Hohokam pueblo, from around the 13th century as I recall with a few hundred years of earlier canal systems and villages nearby. You have to go a bit south to Tucson to see the 2-4k year old stuff.