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It's less "de-westernization" and more a internationalization and the removal of racist ideology in archeology. Archeology was for decades deeply affected by ra

It's less "de-westernization" and more a internationalization and the removal of racist ideology in archeology. Archeology was for decades deeply affected by racist believes, both directly and indirectly by building on-top of research which was affected without realizing it. Idk. why but people often forget that the race ideology (crossed with nationalism and religion) which is today often seen a "being a nazi thing" was very wide spread even before the German Nazis became a thing all around the western world (and also outside of the western world replacing "european-white supremacy" with e.g."japanese-asian supremacy", but that kinda doesn't matter for this discussion). A good example how the mindset affected "historic" research for a long time, is how for a long time it was believed that in pre-human history in each step of evolution there where always a few "evolved" sub-subspecies from a human predecessor and only one survived "by itself/without mixing". Which as it turns out is complete bs as there was a constant interbreeding of such species and the modern human is a result of this interbreeding (sure some species traits dominated, but either way it wasn't still constant DNA exchange of sub-species, i.e. "pre-humans" which are noticeable more different then any two modern humans of different ethnicity).

boffinAudio 5y ago
>internationalization = de-westernization Or do you consider that the rising economies and cultures of Africa are 'part of the west', now? I think it says a lot that a non-European archeologist had to do the field work on this site to start to convince the world that the prejudiced conclusions made decades ago were incorrect. I concur with you that people discount the racism of our cultures that existed prior to nazism - heck they do it with our extant cultures in the modern era too. There are plenty of examples in the modern era where racism and prejudice preclude an honest look at a nation states pre-history (cough Australia cough) and these, in many cases deep-rooted prejudices are most definitely an affliction of our modern era. Which is why it is great to see a non-Western academic address the issue of Great Zimbabwe in a way that reveals the truth of the matter - naysayers in the entrenched, hallowed European halls be damned ..
- dathinab 5y ago
  Idk. the way I read it: de-westernization == removal of (modern) western researchers from the topic Internationalization == adding researchers of many/all nations Also I'm not so sure about the premise of "says a lot that a non-European archeologist had to do the field work on this site to start to convince the world". EDIT: I'm also not saying it's not a problem. I'm pretty sure I have seen "western" docus years ago which point out this problem (in general not necessary specific to that case).

boffinAudio 5y ago

>internationalization = de-westernization Or do you consider that the rising economies and cultures of Africa are 'part of the west', now? I think it says a lot that a non-European archeologist had to do the field work on this site to start to convince the world that the prejudiced conclusions made decades ago were incorrect. I concur with you that people discount the racism of our cultures that existed prior to nazism - heck they do it with our extant cultures in the modern era too. There are plenty of examples in the modern era where racism and prejudice preclude an honest look at a nation states pre-history (cough Australia cough) and these, in many cases deep-rooted prejudices are most definitely an affliction of our modern era. Which is why it is great to see a non-Western academic address the issue of Great Zimbabwe in a way that reveals the truth of the matter - naysayers in the entrenched, hallowed European halls be damned ..

dathinab 5y ago
Idk. the way I read it: de-westernization == removal of (modern) western researchers from the topic Internationalization == adding researchers of many/all nations Also I'm not so sure about the premise of "says a lot that a non-European archeologist had to do the field work on this site to start to convince the world". EDIT: I'm also not saying it's not a problem. I'm pretty sure I have seen "western" docus years ago which point out this problem (in general not necessary specific to that case).