No abstract

Among public health researchers two ethical concerns have recently stimulated discussion: “over-research” and “ethics dumping”. Over-research refers to a situation where the host community are not benefiting from research activity conducted by outsiders. Ethics dumping refers to doing research deemed unethical in a researcher’s home country in a foreign setting with laxer ethical rules. We briefly review the origins of these terms and explore their relevance for archaeology, with special consideration of Southeast Asia. To minimize over-research and ethics dumping in archaeology we propose some modest, specific activities that should be possible for all archaeologists to do to increase the benefit of their research to local communities, and to ensure their work is consistent with international ethical standards.

Tektites formed by an extraterrestrial impact event in Southeast Asia at 0.78 Ma have been found in geological contexts and archaeological sites throughout Australia, East and Southeast Asia. At some archaeological sites, especially in Bose Basin, China, and An Khe, Vietnam, tektites have been interpreted as in situ in primary deposits, marking the age of deposit formation, and thus the age of artefacts in those deposits. We argue that tektites are rarely reliable age markers. We describe five archaeological sites in Vietnam where tektites have been found in association with artefacts with a variety of ages in the Late Pleistocene and Holocene. We review the conditions when tektites may be useful as chronological markers, and recommend that they only be used as such in combination with other dating methods.