Ethical Challenges in the Practice of Remote Sensing and Geophysical Archaeology

Within archaeology, concern over ethics has become a center point of debate, particularly in terms of cultural patrimony, repatriation, intellectual property rights, and the display of sensitive items. Most of these debates center around objects, information, and narratives acquired and built through archaeological excavations and antiquarian collections, while far less attention has been paid to projects that rely on remote sensing technologies.  Remote sensing technologies are typically viewed as non-destructive, non-invasive, and resulting in non-sensitive data. As such, the ability to record objects remotely, be that from space, the air, or the ground, has resulted in a massive expansion of archaeological data over the past several decades, and the use of these techniques has grown considerably since the turn of the 21^st century. With this massive expansion in use, researchers are increasingly considering the broader social, political, economic, and cultural ramifications of using remote sensing technologies and therefore, how they can best be deployed in an ethical manner. Despite a recent increase in studies highlighting the ethical dilemmas within archaeological remote sensing, the conversation on this topic is still underwhelming. For this reason, among many others, we felt that a formalized discussion of these ethical issues was overdue. In what follows, we will present several major themes of the articles contained in this special issue. Next, we will synthesize the articles contained in this issue. Finally, we will discuss some future goals for remote sensing and geophysical archaeology, particularly detailing what we see as necessary steps for the subdiscipline as it matures and takes its ethical responsibilities seriously.