Ownership or stewardship? Cultural affiliation and archaeological ethics as social ethics

The intersection of politics and identity are of central importance to contemporary archaeological practice, and these factors contribute to a number of prominent professional ethical issues that have emerged in the discipline over the past three decades (Barkan and Bush 2002; Kane 2003; Meskell 1998, 2002; Meskell and Pels 2005; Watkins 2005a). In the present context, and in its broadest sense, an ethic denotes a code of conduct. It is a set of values dictating what is right and wrong and is often closely tied to individual moral behavior.