ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book suggests that archaeologists should redefine their goal as a search not for a transcendent truth opposed to local or particular interests but for significant truths about materials and sites in an open-ended negotiation. It addresses specific research sites of violence and shows that consideration of these sites should lead us to reconfigure the moral economy of research, whether one agrees or disagrees with the World War II anthropologists’ activist stance. The book also addresses a situation that, in the redefinition of ethnography that has taken place, has become more and more prevalent. The ethical engagement of anthropologists has been a constant source of discussion since the 1960s, typically concentrated on the quasi-legal instrument of the ethical code.
