Ethnographic Ethical Issues

Today in modern archeology new challenges arise for researchers, particularly in the category of ethics. One of the best ways to conduct research on a particular group is by doing ethnography’s. The term ethnography comes from the Greek language and can be translated to literally mean “ the description of a people and its way of life.”(Angrosino, 2007, p. 1). By doing ethnographies, and other research, many ethical issues could arise. There are many ethical issues that may become apparent when doing research. Some of the ethical issues this paper will be discussing will be, human remains, ownership of artifacts, and preservation of sites. These ethical issues can cause some serious problems to the research study for archeologist. That’s why

With the anthropologist trying to uncover the hidden secrets, of for example the reason genocide occurred in a particular region, there could be locals that disagree with the treatment of certain human remains, which ultimately could be a main piece to solving the issue. But as we know, everyone has his or her human rights. As the United Nations describes it, it is the right to equality, freedom from discrimination, freedom from torture and degrading treatment, freedom from interference with privacy, and freedom of belief and religion (Walker, 2008). You can link these human rights with cultural values. Which some governments, for example the Chinese government, have used these cultural values to not allow anthropologist to maintain certain skull collections because it is considered a violation of their human rights (Walker, 2008). Thus creating more problems for anthropologist in different countries. As for dealing with these ethical issues, many associations and government agencies have created ethical guidelines for anthropologist or even just researchers to use. These guidelines contain information on how to deal with developing dilemmas, which could arise from working with human remains (Walker, 2008). Walker in his article gives three good examples on what researchers should keep in mind when working with human remains. Walker