"Somos todos de fuera" - We are all from somewhere else: Thoughts on the responsibilities of archaeologists

Abstract

The fact of symbolic change can be seen in the long sequences of the archaeological record, or in the much more straightforward forgetting of symbolically important places such as Altamira. For this reason, our Cultural Heritage is not the same as our traditions. For the workers from Barx who excavated Parpalló for Pericot, there was, I suggest, no tradition that linked them to the time of deposition of the stones and bones and art that they discovered, even though there was a tradition in the nineteenth century of digging in the cave to recover flints as firelighters. Yet it is surely their Cultural Heritage - at least that is our convention, and thus our symbolic valuation of the site and its long history. In this sense, we are all symbolically distanced from that past, from that heritage, whether our passports are from that country or another. Even the villagers of Barx, overawed by their discoveries in the cave of Parpalló were distanced from the world of the inhabitants of more than ten thousand years ago. It has been said that "the past is another country" and this argument demonstrates how true that is. We are all from somewhere else, and we should treat the past with the respect due to the inhabitants of another country.