Page 92 - Studia Universitatis Hereditati, vol 13(1) (2025)

the legal instrument. There were no institution- with for decades. The Southern African Associa-
al procedures for the administration of contract tion of Archaeologists (SA3), for instance, devel-
archaeology in Namibia. However, the guide- oped a code of ethics in 1990 (Deacon 1993, 79).
lines were developed and approved as from Au- However, the guidelines were not universally
gust 2021. In contrast, South Africa and Zim- binding, and their effect was limited to members
babwe had specific regulations, guidelines and of the SA3. ASAPA, which was the successor
minimum standards that governed archaeo- of the SA3, further developed some guidelines.
logical intervention in developmental projects. Although the Association of Southern Afri-
The South African Heritage Resources Agency can Professional Archaeologists (ASAPA) es-
(SAHRA), like its Zimbabwean counterpart the tablished minimum standards for Cultural Re-
National Museums and Monuments of Zimba- source Management (CRM) practices and its
bwe (NMMZ), adopted and domesticated the accreditation was recognised across the South-
92 standards and guidelines of professional associ- ern African Development Community (SADC)
ations such as ASAPA. These were used to reg- region, these standards were not implemented in
ulate the work of contract archaeologists, es- Namibia before the approval of the guidelines
studia universitatis hereditati, letnik 13 (2025), številka 1 / volume 13 (2025), number 1
pecially when they carried out archaeological for heritage impact assessment. Nonetheless, the
impact assessment. effectiveness of ASAPA’s guidelines has been
In the absence of legislation and guide- subject to critique, with scholars such as Ndlovu
lines that governed the practice of contract ar- (2014, 203–217) arguing that the organisation
chaeology in Namibia, archaeologists tend- failed to enforce compliance by imposing sanc-
ed to be accountable to themselves. There was tions on archaeologists who violated its code of
self-regulation of the practice, which resulted in ethics.
non-standardisation and an absence of control The argument here is that regional and in-
of the practice. In such circumstances, as Chiri- ternational standards and guidelines for the
kure pointed out, mistakes or potential unethi- practice of archaeology were not effective be-
cal practices by practitioners could go unnoticed cause they were not adopted or enforced through
(Chirikure and Sinamayi 2015, 34). Such circum- local guidelines or standard operational pro-
stances resulted from situations whereby, despite cedures. Localisation of laws and standards re-
some regional standards and guidelines being quires adopting and converting them for local
readily available, they were not enforced univer- usage in ways that take into account the idiosyn-
sally. The practice of contract archaeology relied crasies of given local conditions. An alternative
on the self-discipline and good will of the prac- approach to governing the practice of contract
titioners and developers. According to Chiri- archaeology is the establishment of a profession-
kure, ‘There is no common set of ethics binding al association. Such an institution can play a crit-
archaeologists working in Africa, while inter- ical role in setting professional standards and fa-
national standards were rarely used to improve cilitating continuous professional development.
the local system’ (Chirikure and Sinamayi 2015, This enables practitioners to remain informed
27) Therefore, some institutions developed their about contemporary advancements and meth-
own sets of standards for the practice of contract odologies in contract archaeology and, as Chiri-
archaeology, but such standards were not bind- kure significantly observed, regulate ‘the con-
ing at national level. duct of their members’ (Chirikure 2014, 33).
The absence of control or administration of The National Heritage Act (2004) made
the guidelines regarding archaeological practice reference to developer-funded environmental
in general and contract archaeology in particular impact assessment and caused heritage resources
was not unique to Namibia. It was an issue that to be included in such assessments at the expense
professional archaeologists were preoccupied of the developer. Since the main area in which