Archaeology has recently been described as a means of “bearing witness” through the recuperation of pasts forgotten and dismissed. But archaeology is also a tool for unseeing, creating voids in the historical record easily filled by state-sponsored polemics. In few places is this as clear as the Armenian Highland of eastern Turkey. The year 2020 marked the 105th anniversary of the Armenian genocide, a program of mass murder enacted by the collapsing Ottoman Empire that resulted in the deaths of up to 1.5 million people and the dislocation of almost the entire Armenian population of Anatolia. The genocide continues to define regional politics as a century of denial by the Turkish government strains international relations. Even as an increasingly vocal cadre of historians has grappled with the legacies of collective violence in the region, foreign archaeologists working in Turkey have increasingly avoided the material remains of the Armenian past and the evidence of its erasure, etching genocide denial into the authoritative discourse of the discipline. The disappearance of Armenians from international archaeological accounts of the region effectively co-opts the discipline as a functionary of the Turkish government’s historical revisionism. This study combines close readings of works from international archaeology’s archive with interviews with foreign archaeologists to better understand the discipline’s understudied practices of unseeing.

中文翻译：

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看不到过去

考古学最近被描述为通过恢复被遗忘和抛弃的过去来“见证”的一种手段。但考古学也是一种看不见的工具，它在历史记录中创造了容易被国家支持的论战填补的空白。很少有地方像土耳其东部的亚美尼亚高地一样清楚这一点。2020 年是亚美尼亚种族灭绝 105 周年，这是由崩溃的奥斯曼帝国实施的大规模谋杀计划，导致多达 150 万人死亡，几乎整个亚美尼亚安纳托利亚人口流离失所。种族灭绝继续将地区政治定义为土耳其政府一个世纪以来的否认使国际关系紧张。就在越来越多的历史学家直言不讳地处理该地区集体暴力的遗留问题时，在土耳其工作的外国考古学家越来越多地避开亚美尼亚过去的物质遗迹及其被抹去的证据，将否认种族灭绝的事实刻在该学科的权威话语中。亚美尼亚人从该地区的国际考古记录中消失，有效地使该学科成为土耳其政府历史修正主义的一个职能部门。这项研究将仔细阅读国际考古学档案中的作品与对外国考古学家的采访相结合，以更好地了解该学科未被充分研究的看不见的做法。亚美尼亚人从该地区的国际考古记录中消失，有效地使该学科成为土耳其政府历史修正主义的一个职能部门。这项研究将仔细阅读国际考古学档案中的作品与对外国考古学家的采访相结合，以更好地了解该学科未被充分研究的看不见的做法。亚美尼亚人从该地区的国际考古记录中消失，有效地使该学科成为土耳其政府历史修正主义的一个职能部门。这项研究将仔细阅读国际考古学档案中的作品与对外国考古学家的采访相结合，以更好地了解该学科未被充分研究的看不见的做法。