Author
Abstract
From the very beginning, archeology has been used by politicians for political purposes. Politicians have employed archeology to destroy or create false national or ethnic histories and identities, or have taken advantage of archeology and its underlying cultural foundations to control the social and political phenomena within the society. Furthermore, the significant role of archeology has not been ignored by politicians for the expansion of cultural tourism and its economic benefits. Archeology can be noticed working behind the political phenomena of nationalism, ethnicism, separatism, internationalism and federalism; meanwhile, archeology provides politicians with the required historical documents for them to prove the truth of their political ideas. Archeology and politics are in interaction with one another. Marxist archeology was formed in the course of an enraged ideological revolution which survived for seventy years as part of the political ideology of the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republic. Nationalist and racist archeologists were in the service of the totalitarian governments so that the community may accept their historical legitimacy. In the occupied Palestine, too, the Zionist regime has been using archeology to give a historical embodiment to the ancient Israeli utopia; similarly the European Union has used this method to change the historical divergence of the European nations to the twenty first convergences. Whereas archeology has no way but to be engaged in politics, it seems that the only solution lies in realizing the global perspective of archeology within the framework of the common heritage of mankind further to the development of an anthropological approach to archeology.
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