ABSTRACT
Ethics is a central concern in the social sciences today. This chapter scrutinises the politics underlying the hegemony of ethics and then explores three main themes linking ethics with politics, temporality, affect and materiality. It asks about the ethical responsibilities acquired by archaeologists dealing with the most recent past, particularly in their role as post-witnesses. It then examines the way in which non-historicist notions of archaeology and non-Western temporalities invalidate the distinction between past and present and create new ethical dilemmas and forms of sociopolitical engagement. Finally, the relations between affects and ethics are examined through two concepts: resentment and nostalgia. Rather than criticise them, they are reclaimed as powerful emotions that challenge unilinear concepts of time and expand moral responsibilities beyond the present.
