Page 16 - Proceedings book

In this framework, competing ethnonationalist claims are mapped onto archaeological
narratives. In the Sinhala-Buddhist south, archaeology is often pursued to ‘prove’ the
ancient and
autochthonous status of Sinhala identity—stretching it back to a mythic antiquity
untouched by mixture or disruption. Meanwhile, Tamil nationalist discourse in the north
seeks to establish an equally ancient, separate, and continuous presence, imagined in
isolation from the rest of the island. What results is not dialogue, but a battle of origins—
archaeology in the service of political myth.

This is not merely a misuse of archaeology. It is a distortion of its ethical potential. It risks
reducing a rich and multi-vocal past into a set of hardened narratives, where complexity is
flattened, and history becomes a weapon rather than a resource for reflection, repair, or
renewal.

We must ask, then: whose past has archaeology served? And whose pasts has it erased?
These questions became especially urgent during—and after—the civil war.
Archaeological claims were often entangled with military, separatist, and territorial
narratives. Excavations were not only scientific acts; they became acts of possession, of
legitimation, of claim-making. In the post-war years, we see a pattern: certain sites are
valorized, preserved, celebrated. Others—often associated with minority communities, or
with memories of violence and displacement—are neglected, altered, or silently effaced.

The challenge does not lie only in politicization. It lies also in erasure by development. As
infrastructure projects expand, traditional knowledge systems—like the ancient tank
cascade networks—are neglected or disrupted. Sacred landscapes are fragmented. The
environmental and cultural integrity of many heritage sites is compromised, often without
adequate consultation, study, or consent. This is not simply an administrative oversight. It
is a deeper ethical failure—a failure of care, of listening, of imagination.

We are left with a range of hard questions. Can we practice archaeology in ways that do
not reproduce the hierarchies and exclusions of colonialism? Can we conserve heritage
without turning it into a tool of identity politics? Can we move from rivalry to dialogue,
from erasure to repair?

If we are to move forward, these are the questions we must not only ask, but dwell with.
We must tarry about with these questions. They must unsettle our comfort zones, reshape
our methodologies, and compel us toward a more ethical, more inclusive archaeology—
one that recognizes that the past is never neutral, and that its meanings are made—and
remade—in the thick of the present.

Creative Practices for Sustainability
How, then, might archaeology move beyond its inherited burdens? How might it become a
force not of erasure, but of restoration? Not a battleground of origins, but a practice of care
and possibility?

To begin, we must broaden what we mean by sustainability. It is not only about ecosystems
and energy use. It is about the capacity of communities to live meaningfully in relationship
to their environments, to each other, and to their own pasts. Archaeology, if reimagined,
can support this broader, deeper form of sustainability in several ways.