Science, conservation, and stewardship: Evolving codes of conduct in archaeology

The Society for American Archaeology (SAA) has developed an extensive body of ethics guidelines for its members, most actively in the last two decades. This coincides with the period in which the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) has taken a strong stand on the need for its affiliates to develop clear. enforceable codes of conduct. The ethics guidelines instituted by the SAA now realize the central recommendations of the AAAS, and in this they illustrate both the importance and the limitations of these recommendations. An earlier version of this paper was presented at a symposium entitled “Ethics in Science: Special Problems in Anthropology and Archacology” held at the 1998 Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), Philadelphia, PA, 15 February, 1998.