There seem to be two lines of ethics on conflict sites; one is on the professional side, the other is on the public side and reconciliation is definitely necessary. There is also a question of the ethics being different for sites of different time periods and whether or not there are human remains present. The latter can come under interment laws as well as any heritage regulation. Another component is that Armies create archaeological sites, often superimposing structures onto existing archaeological sites. The more recent military aspects are equally worthy of recording as they also represent human activity in the archaeological record. In fact, as they are more mundane and usually unrecorded, it is essential that these aspects of multicomponent sites be recorded as well as the more elite sites they intrude upon. These themes will be addressed with examples from the United States and Berlin, Germany.

© Lawrence E. Babits
e-mail: babitsl@ecu.edu


This article should be cited like this: L. E. Babits, "It's MY heritage": Differing Views on Recovering Materials from Conflict Sites, Forum Archaeologiae 55/VI/2010 (http://farch.net).