C APÍTULO 06 C ARPINTARÍA E FERRAXARÍA EXTERIOR

This section will further discuss the way in which the Santa Barbara Project has been (re-)presented, perceived and received by different actors. It will explore how, after a successful process of value translation and policy negotiation by the Dutch archaeological actors, the project was subsequently socially produced as successful through stabilisation of story-lines and discourses by creating a network of ‘supporting actors’ with an extensive global reach. In line with the work by Latour (1996, 137; 2005; and see Mosse 2004; 2005, 168), I refer to this process as ‘contextualisation’.

Contextualisation of the project happened through the repeated use of a set of story-lines that, as was illustrated in section 5.5.2, allowed for the most effective translation of values and a subsequent establishment of a discourse-coalition between Leiden University and Santa Barbara Plantation. The story- line that was (re-)produced primarily was one of close cooperation between developer and professional archaeologists that allowed for the successful rescuing of a threatened archaeological ‘record’ by means of excavations and fostering expert knowledge about the past, all the while referring back to the idea of Malta archaeology. The contextualisation of the project, and of the discourse-coalition between Leiden University and Santa Barbara Plantation, was for example facilitated through the repeated use of this story-line by the Dutch archaeologists in academic publications and presentations, a good example of this being the fact that the Santa Barbara Project was mentioned explicitly by the Professor of Caribbean archaeology during the inaugural address. As a result, the story-line was subsequently rehearsed by Dutch media as well as by local Antillean newspapers (see for example Toebosch 2008a in the Dutch magazine Elsevier). A similar contextualisation was facilitated through a press release of 21 July 2008 which was coordinated by the former director of the Curaçao newspaper Amigoe, who now worked for Santa Barbara Plantation as a PR consultant.416

Contextualisation can further be distilled in the fact that several other actors used their global and international reach in order to support the project formation. The above-mentioned meeting between the Dean of the Faculty of Archaeology and the head of DROV during a UNESCO meeting in New Zealand, could be seen as an example of this. The Council of State Advisor for the Netherlands Antilles, a former minister plenipotentiary of the Netherlands Antilles who had been asked to act as a ‘champion’ for the initial envisaged Campaign for Leiden Project, also brought its connections to bear in order to secure the support and success of the Santa Barbara Project. As a vocational archaeologist that brought forward a discourse on archaeological heritage as a fragile scientific resource under threat, the Council of State Advisor for example supported the former chairman of the Board of NAAM in its decision that the director should stop frustrating the development of the project, as to make sure that archaeological knowledge would be produced (see section 5.5.2).

In the Dutch newspaper NRC,417 _{which was taken over by several Antillean media, a similar story-}

line on threatened archaeological archives under pressure from development appeared. Within this article,

AN ETHNOGRAPHY OF DUTCH ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESEARCH PROJECTS ABROAD

190

415 _{For a discussion on some of the outcomes and recommendations of the OCW-report, please refer back to section 5.3.2, and}

see Witteveen & Kraan 2012.

416 _{This press release, which mentioned that Santa Barbara Plantation helped facilitate and fund archaeological research in}

collaboration with Leiden University, was taken over by a range of local newspapers such as Amigoe, Antilliaans Dagblad,

Laprinsa, Vigilante and Nobo.

the need for Malta archaeology was endorsed by the Council of State Advisor for the Netherlands Antilles, whilst the collaboration between Santa Barbara Plantation and Leiden University was mentioned as a successful example of how threatened archaeological resources could be mitigated.

What this suggests, is that when actors saw their values and story-lines reflected and represented in project policies, they did lend their status to stabilise the project, and they worked to uphold representations of the project in order to maintain support. The same can be noted for the initial phases of the proposed collaboration between Leiden University and NAAM. During these phases, the use of story-lines and ‘mobilising concepts’ (see section 2.5.2) that emphasised capacity building, institutional collaboration and local education, contributed to the fact that NAAM supported the proposed collaboration, and the development of a chair for Professor of Caribbean archaeology in Leiden University. When the project developed in such a way that NAAM, Monuments Bureau DROV and the AWG could not translate their values successfully anymore into their institutional aims and policies, we have seen how they started representing the project as ‘institutional undermining’, ‘foreign’ and ‘top-down’. In this respect, these local organisations tried to set in motion a process of ‘de-contextualisation’, trying to produce a ‘failure’ of the project. For example, NAAM used its strong ties with its Board members who represented important political and archaeological positions at the other islands, in order to paint a negative view of the Santa Barbara Project. When the Head of DROV was replaced by its successor, who emphasised a similar discourse on local development and identity formation as the director of NAAM, the project was even further criticised418 _{– especially when the new Head of DROV also took place as the new chairman of the}

board of NAAM. By then, however, the Santa Barbara Project had already started and was in its final stages of implementation.

Success or failure was as such socially produced and evaluated in line with the values that an actor ascribes to archaeological heritage and the project as a whole (cf Smith et al. 2010a, 17). Interestingly, the representations of failure were not at all relating to the actual archaeological field research itself, in the sense that not a single respondent questioned the idea that the excavations were archaeologically, scientifically sound. Project success could as such easily be produced by the Faculty of Archaeology, as it could draw upon the archaeological and scientific values that had been prioritised by the embedded AAD in the project policies, and that were at the basis of the evaluation procedures of their funders and of the quality criteria and standards as set out in Dutch policy and professional quality guidelines such as the KNA (Dutch Archaeology Quality Standard; see Willems & Brandt 2004). However, local actors such as NAAM and the AWG perceived and evaluated the project according to other discourses and values – notably socio-economic, collaboration and educational values, which were at the basis of their perceptions of failure.

Some academic archaeologists that I interviewed questioned if the archaeologist of NAAM, who gave advice on the inspection of the archaeological quality to Monuments Bureau DROV, was sufficiently qualified to do so because the archaeologist did not have a long field experience in Caribbean archaeology. In their views, the ability to evaluate success should be done by those who demonstrated archaeological expertise and who could judge academic merit. In contrast, the NAAM archaeologist, backed up by several local cultural policy government representatives (see above), stated that inspectors should demonstrate knowledge of the local socio-political and cultural context, and that an ability to judge the degree to which contract agreements had been made was more important for an inspector.419 _{This view, that cultural}

THE SANTA BARBARA PROJECT

418 _{Current Head of DROV (Willemstad, August 2010).}

heritage management was more to do with a working knowledge of political and social context instead of by academic expertise, was mirrored also in the reply by the director of NAAM on my question why they had not invited the archaeologists of Leiden University to the cultural heritage seminars of 2005 and 2009; “why should I have invited them? They are archaeologists, not heritage specialists”.420 _Accordingly,

success of the project was judged by the local partners not on the basis of academic results and quality, but rather on the degree to which local participation and capacity building had been achieved. The emphasis by the newly appointed archaeologist of NAAM on securing that the public outreach activities were done in line with the agreed PvE, illustrates this further.