Absence of the Sacred

June 30, 2008 by Jay Taber.

The World Archeological Congress will meet soon in Dublin, where, among other topics, they’ll examine the Tara controversy. Tara Hill, to the Irish, is like The Black Hills to the Lakota and Cheyenne — a sacred landscape imbued with spiritual values, myth and legend.

As a national monument, as well as proposed UNESCO World Heritage Site, Tara defenders are fighting the government of Ireland to protect it from a planned motorway.

As pointed out by Professor Ronayne from Galway University, the privatization of archaeology in service to global development corporations and militaries ensures that such foundational aspects of human identity as cultural heritage will be increasingly under attack. In the absence of the sacred, of course, we will no longer be fully human; maybe that’s the whole idea.

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