The Wyoming Archaeologist Volume 43(1), Spring 1999 35 The topic of Archaeology Awareness Month “Who Owns the Past?” is most perplexing. As an archaeolo- gist, I have been trained to respect the past, both by trying to explore it through archaeological research and to protect it from the depredations of looting, construction and other forces that destroy its remains. Like many of my colleagues, I have understood the archaeological past to be a public heritage, one that no one could own. However, through a quarter-century professional career in archaeology on the Great Plains, I have come to find many who are not archaeologists simply do not accept these professional beliefs. Certainly, this point has been made no more clear than with the issues of repatriation and reburial of human remains, but there have been many challenges to other aspects of what I do as an archaeologist. Some have surprised me in their vehemence, but all have caused me to reflect on the reasons for these challenges. What I would like to do here is to explore these reasons. This exploration will be a bit circuitous, I suppose. I will hit several major themes. Among them, I will talk about what it is archaeology does as a sci- ence and why it is hard for people to understand. I will also look at my personal views about why the results of archaeology are so hard for Native Americans to accept. I’ll also look at the repercussions of our work and express some concerns regarding archaeological attitudes toward Indian people and our responsibili- ties. WHAT ARCHAEOLOGY DOES AS A SCIENCE In some ways archaeology is very simple. It takes the material remains people leave behind, along with their contexts the relationship of the objects to each other and builds a story about a culture’s life around them. We archaeologists have goals that are straight- forward. We want to reconstruct the who, was where, when, and with what part of the story. We want to reconstruct the lifeways of the culture. We want to understand the processes of how the culture adjusted to changes in both its natural and social environment in the hope we will discover general principles for how all cultures operate. Some of us want to reconstruct cultural meanings. We have developed or applied sophisticated methods and technologies to get at these answers. We have proposed, debated and synthesized sophisticated theories to help frame our understand- ings. Most archaeologists, and many members of the general public, would call archaeology a science, though certainly it is still a small science. Its concepts are weakly developed, and many just consider us sci- ence-like. And, it is an historical science in which the past can never really be “proved.” Yet, because some quest for connections to the past seems almost to be a universal, many find our stories fascinating, if not compelling. Because of this in the United States, non- archaeologists are even willing to fund our research, up to a point. The past is powerful, an integral part of identity, and a tool that has social uses. Yet archaeologists do what they do with mere frag- ments of whole cultures. You may have noticed I did not use the word people very much in my description of archaeology, only culture and lifeways. Certainly people are implied in what I said, but they are not re- ally there. In that sense what archaeology does is very peculiar. Real people, the creators and users of the objects we find, seem to be left out of the equation or Disputing the Past: Challenging Archaeology’s Role by Larry J. Zimmerman EDITOR’S NOTE: This article by Larry Zimmerman and the following article by Roger Echo-Hawk were originally pre- sented as the Keynote Talks for the 1997 Wyoming Archaeology Month Activities. The two speakers have graciously made them available for The Wyoming Archae- ologist.