Reputation... what reputation?

The case study I received yesterday told the story of an academic up for tenure, who is writing his publication on archaic work in the USA. He is being pushed to publish by his department head, but he is concerned because some of the data he has, or more so, what his paper is based on is a collection of objects which a collector, Mr. Judge, allowed him access to. He is confident that the pieces he used for his paper have the proper provenance, but he has heard rumours that parts of Mr. Judge’s collection have in fact been looted. He is ethically torn because the information he has is good and has led him to conclusions that he otherwise would not have come to, but he fears that his association with a collector will tarnish his reputation; therefore he is willing to risk tenure because he does not want to give the wrong impression to the field, which by the way, he is not even a part of yet.

I know that you may already be able to anticipate what I am going to say – and I don’t think it’s fair to say that I encourage to breaking laws. Sometimes breaking the rules needs to be done in order to move forward and show people that things can work a different way. Hey – the Taliban has laws… the Nazi’s had laws – those are rules we are willing to break. Not comparing Archaeological laws to the Taliban or Nazi’s… but, I’m just extending the argument to its extreme to show that sometimes – it needs to be done. But I digress…

I would say that this academic should publish the work, based on the fact that there are only rumours that parts of the collection have been looted, not solid proof. If every rumour we heard was the truth – Hollywood would be much more messed up than it is at the moment. In addition, the objects that this academic is using have a provided provenance, so their study should not be limited based on the collection they come from. As I say repeatedly, the knowledge that we can gain far outweighs personal conflicts of whether or not it will damage someone’s reputation – that is frankly selfish – and as I mentioned before as well – Archaeologists are the ones that create these rifts and classes within their own field… what’s that word again? Elitist. I can see the portion of this argument that suggests maybe he shouldn’t publish – because yes it could be viewed as supporting looting, but the fact is looting happens anyways, we may as well learn what we can from it. It is the archaeologist’s academic responsibility to publish everything on the subject. You know, historians will complain about not having enough from the past to study, but then they go and discount objects based on where they came from – it’s ludicrous!

On a side note… I really enjoyed Lana’s presentation, and I agree with much of what she has to say. Maybe because I am a bit of a naïve optimist myself – but I think that everyone needs to let go of things for the greater good of everything running smoothly. There has to be a middle road!