The Moral Standing of Canyons, Cliff Dwellings, and Ancient Artifacts: Philosophical Reflections on Cedar Mesa

Abstract

The Moral Standing of Canyons, Cliff Dwellings, and Ancient Artifacts:Philosophical Reflections on Cedar Mesa Roy H. May Jr. (bio) In southeast Utah, Cedar Mesa rises as a 600,000-acre geological uplift to around 6,500 feet above sea level. It is a geological marvel. Through millennia it has fractured into innumerable canyons, alcoves, and overhangs, and, on its outer edges, produced landforms like the iconic Bears Ears and Comb Ridge. Springs seep through the multi-hued white, red, brown, and buff ancient sandstone. As an uplift, it has been there for around 70 million years. Beginning between 13,000 and 12,000 years ago, people moved into the region as hunter-gatherers, and by the early years of our Common Era were taking advantage of the buttes, canyons, alcoves, and overhangs as permanent places to live. This is the home of the Ancestral Puebloans. For a thousand years, until about 1300 CE, they thrived throughout the area. Their fine architecture, tucked almost imperceptively among the rocks as cliff dwellings, pit houses, and great houses, their metates and manos, textiles and basketry, and their rock art are found almost everywhere from butte tops to canyon walls, although during the last 150 years white settlers, tourists, and archaeologists have carried off most of what was immediately available. Still, as William Lipe and Donald Rommes observe, "Cedar Mesa is one of the last best places in North America—and the world—to see such a large expanse of authentic, non-reconstructed archaeological sites in their original, natural setting."1 It also is one of the most geologically impressive places on earth. However, for the Indigenous peoples who still live in the area—Hopi, Diné (Navajo), Zuñi, Ute, as well as the New Mexico Pueblos—Cedar Mesa is not about archaeological sites and geological formations, but about "places" because they have deep cultural significance and are [End Page 214] perceived as sacred.2 They claim it as their ancestral home. For them, these are not just rocks, but "living beings," not just ruins, but "living places" awaiting their ancestors' return—and, they say, the spirits of past people still occupy these places. For them, as Faulkner perceptively wrote, "The past is never dead. It's not even past."3 Rather, their "past" is "embedded in features of the earth" which "endow their lands with multiple forms of significance that reach into their lives and shape the ways they think," anthropologist Keith Basso explains.4 Unfortunately for them, the area is rich in coal, uranium, and oil and gas, and even though pasture is sparse, ranchers want it too, thus making preservation for environmental and cultural reasons extremely conflictive. It is because of these conflicting interests that the moral standing of Cedar Mesa is an issue.5 How, though, are we to comprehend the moral value of the land and, especially, the ancient dwellings and artifacts? Although archaeological ethics contributes importantly to the practice of investigating ancient places and artifact collection, and their preservation, it does not address the philosophical question of the moral constitution of the artifacts and places themselves, or of the natural environment where they are located.6 The ancient people who lived on Cedar Mesa and nearby areas drew from nature and shaped their natural surroundings in ways to ensure their well-being. They built houses and storerooms, opened fields, put up check dams, and dug canals. They constructed a network of roads for trade, for exchanging ideas, and for making political alliances. Philosophically, what kind of value should we assign this shaping of the natural environment? In what way is it part of the moral ontology of Cedar Mesa? Similarly, what of the land itself, its geomorphology? What makes buttes, canyons, and seeps morally valuable? Visiting these ancient places, and understanding their integral relationship to the beautiful geography or landscape that shaped them, raises several questions about how to value the geomorphology of Cedar Mesa and the ancient places and artifacts found there: • How are we to understand the moral value of the land itself and does the unique natural beauty of Cedar Mesa contribute constitutive moral value? • Is the value of ancient sites and artifacts only...