Path Dependence and the Long-term Trajectory of Prehistoric Hohokam Irrigation in Arizona

This chapter suggests over the course of author argument is somewhat scandalizing. It examines the sensibilities of at least some, if not a good many, archaeologists and outrages others. The chapter shows that having a relationship of interdependency that facilitates illicit antiquities trafficking. And this relationship extends outward into the larger sphere of the black market, which subsumes and is continually produced by interdependencies among human players and nonhuman elements. The illicit antiquities trade is not cut and dried, but messy and intricately complicated by various interdependencies; the practice of archaeology is but one cog in the wheel. The interweaving of archaeology and the antiquities market does not preclude the premise that the pursuit of knowledge about the past and academia are worthwhile undertakings. Entanglements are contradictory and full of incestuous relationships. Archaeology is at the epicenter of the collision of competing values held by the past and the present.