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Paper Short Abstract:

By focussing on certain narratives among “treasure-hunters” in Turkey, this paper explores how a particular way of imagining the past and anticipating the future under conditions of economic precarity gives rise to “the conspiracy theory” as a particular diagnostic of power.

Paper Abstract:

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork among archaeological looters in Turkey, this paper explores how a particular way of imagining the past and anticipating the future under present-day conditions of economic precarity gives rise to “the conspiracy theory” as a particular diagnostic of power. Looters in Turkey, better known as “treasure-hunters,” are typically people who occupy life-worlds characterised by scarcity, precarity, and indebtedness. Largely as a response to these circumstances, they will carry out illegal expeditions into oft undocumented historical sites, where they believe they might find buried valuables from the past. These semi-clandestine practices tend to draw inspiration from imagined local histories, folklore, and various spiritual beliefs. Here, a certain sense of historicity comes together with a certain perception of material uncertainty in order to give rise to a world where deliberately deceptive apparent forms seem to withhold essential truths from the insufficiently vigilant. For most treasure-hunters, numerous “shady actors” lurk around every corner, treasure-related matters “run deep,” and “things are often not as they seem.” Arguably situated within the wider discursive terrain of conspiratorial narratives in contemporary Turkey, “treasure conspiracies” take on particular forms in relation to the wider circumstances of their purveyors. By focussing on the story of a “mysterious excavation” carried out by the state in Southern Turkey and how this event was interpreted by certain treasure-hunters, this paper attempts to think about some of the ways in which “conspiracy theories” figure into the lives of those who must themselves necessarily “conspire” in order to realize their aspirations.