Preservation as ‘Disaster Capitalism’: The Downside of Site Rescue and the Complexity of Community Engagement

As ethics have increasingly become a topic of interest for archaeologists, ‘heritage preservation’ has become harder to define. What was once thought to be a very simple and benign idea is now seen clearly as a colonial construction. There are no reliable rules to guide decisions about how heritage should be preserved, even if it is possible to determine which heritage should be preserved. However, most archaeologists and preservationists accept that the final say belongs with the people whose heritage or community is the focus of a preservation programme. In this paper I consider how imposed preservation schemes, buttressed by hyped-up public concern about the ‘loss’ of archaeological sites, can alienate people from their resources, making them vulnerable to predatory organizations. I bring in contrasting case studies from my own work in Belize and Kyrgyzstan to exemplify the complex ramifications of promoting preservation.