Public Presentations and Private Concerns: Archeology in the Pages of National Geographic
Author(s)
Gero, Joan M.; Root, D.
Abstract
Archaeology participates in the formation of the dominant political ideology of America as the prehistoric past is mediated and constrained by a contemporary social context which provides an ideology for interpretation. At the same time, interpretations of the past play an active function, a political function, in legitimating the present context, naturalizing the past so that it appears to lead logically to present social practices and values. In this chapter, the authors inspect how archaeology is presented in the pages of National Geographic Magazine and how, in this particular context, archaeology is touted, exploited, and capitalized upon to reinforce the dominate ideology that produced it. For over one hundred years, National Geographic has played an active role in promulgating a nationalist ideology, presenting a view of the past that promotes technological progress as cultural superiority, expansionism as scientific inquiry for the benefit of humankind, and democratic state systems as inevitable and normative outgrowths of the great civilizations of the ancient Western World. The past we construct is more than passively conditioned by our political and economic system; it is a direct product of, and an effective vehicle for, that system’s ideological messages.
