"Governed by legislation": what laws do to archaeology

This chapter charts the development of laws, with a view to understanding why archaeologists rely so heavily upon them and what having those laws in place means for us. The chapter raises questions as to why we have laws at all and how the idea of legal regulation of our material and our practices spread across the globe. The connection between ancient material and legal regulation begins in the distant past, long before the emergence of anything we can identify as “archaeology.” In more recent times, that body of regulation has grown to encompass the practices of archaeology as well as the material with which we deal. It is a global phenomenon which differs in form and specifics from place to place and context to context; and yet the theme of legal regulation of archaeology is common to every nation of the world.