Book Review: Bridging the Divide: Indigenous Communities and Archaeology into the 21st Century (original) (raw)
Related papers
Turning tables in search of dialogue
2011
This chapter is part of a bigger project in which I intend to touch upon the political aspects implicit in the archaeological practice and that, inherently, form part of the definition of the discipline and its members. The aforementioned project responds to the need to deal with these and other aspects and introduce them actively into the academic debate. Here, I am interested in emphasizing the experiences through which the relationships between archaeology, politics, and society become evident and in which the debate and decisions over the past is also claimed by other stakeholders. It is important, I argue, to trace the conceptual and practical frameworks (as well as their implications), power relations, and the social and economic connotations in which these relations take place, especially regarding the discourses of cultural plurality in nationalists and postnationalists contexts.
Archaeological dialogues, 2002
Archaeology is not just about writing reports and interpreting ancient societies and their social structures, but it is also a process which should aim at the creation of a clear communicative message to the general public. Thus, archaeologists should be aware of every possible medium of communication – verbal, written, visual, sound – to express re-constructions of ancient pasts. In this essay I express some ideas about how archaeologists could collaborate with experts, for example theatre directors, in defining artistic way of communicating the past. Finally, I focus on the relationship between academia and fringe archaeology and I look into the political role of archaeologists in modern society.
Demands for accountability are transforming archaeology: accountability to descendant communities and to a growing range of public stakeholders who have an interest in archaeological research. What dominates high profile debate about these critical challenges are anxieties about the costs of response to them: research opportunities lost, credibility eroded, professional autonomy compromised by legal constraints and by intractable conflicts among stakeholders. All too often this obscures local initiatives that illustrate what becomes possible when practice is reconceptualized as a form of intellectual and cultural collaboration. While moral, political, and legal commitments are typically the primary motivation for these partnerships, the archaeologists involved also describe innumerable ways in which their research has been enriched, empirically and conceptually, by extra-disciplinary collaborations; the impact of and justification for such practice is as much epistemic as normative. I articulate an epistemic rationale for community based collaborative practice in archaeology that is grounded in core scientific norms of critical engagement. Acknowledgements It is a particular honor to give the 2008 AAA-AD Distinguished Lecture, this being the first year it has been designated the Patty Jo Watson Distinguished Lecture. Patty Jo has been an extraordinary mentor, and is a model of generosity in collaboration of all kinds. I am most grateful to the AAA-AD executive for their invitation to give this lecture, and warmly endorse their dedication of this lecture series to Patty Jo.
The Languages of Archaeology: Dialogue, Narrative, and Writing
2002
for their encouragement of her engagement with issues raised in these papers. The original version of the first dialogue, in chapter 2, was written for and presented in the session "Doing Archaeology As if it Mattered" at the 93rd Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association (Atlanta, 1994), organized by Meg Conkey and Ruth Tringham. Rosemary Joyce would like thank Bob Preucel for extending the invitation to collaborate on this paper. Preucel and Joyce thank the organizers for the invitation to participate and Alison Wylie, discussant for the session, for her comments. They also gratefully acknowledge the collaboration of Meredith Chesson and Erika Evasdottir on the survey of textbooks cited in this dialogue. Leslie Atik provided the alternative metaphor of fieldwork-as-cultivation, for which we are indebted to her. Joyce's analysis of burials from Tlatilco, Mexico, in chapter 6 was originally presented in the Dumbarton Oaks Pre-Columbian Symposium "Social Patterns in Pre-Classic Mesoamerica" (1993). She would like to thank David C. Grove for the opportunity to coorganize and participate in this conference, and Elizabeth Boone, then Director of Pre-Columbian Studies, for her encouragement. The first viii acknowledgments 1989b). Contrasting a late eighteenth-century archaeological field report with its late-twentieth-century descendants, he called for archaeologists to reflect on their writing practices, as ethnographers and historians were then already doing. He specifically identified rhetoric, narrative, and dialogue as crucial topics for archaeological reflection. These concepts are central to this book. Ten years later, there has been an explosion of experimentation with new forms of writing within archaeology, fueled by sources including feminism, post-structuralism, and critiques of representation from descendant groups who see archaeological sites as their cultural heritage. Yet this vibrant experimentation with writing has yet to include a sustained critical examination of writing. This book explores the nature of narrative and the significance of dialogue within archae
2016
A response to La Salle and Hutchings’ critique of the special section, “Community-Oriented Archaeology,” which appeared in 2014 in the Canadian Journal of Archaeology. We start by correcting factual errors before moving to an analysis of four foundational issues: 1) Can archaeology reveal history? 2) Does archaeology inevitably contribute to marginalizing Indigenous peoples? 3) Are archaeology and other forms of scholarship simply self-serving acts of maintaining the colonial status quo? and 4) Does archaeology have value to Indigenous communities and other marginalized or subaltern peoples? We argue that archaeology can be about history, can confront colonialism, is not simply a Western self-serving indulgence, and can have value to Indigenous communities in Canada and elsewhere. We suggest that the model that most advances this goal, the model that our papers explored, is archaeology in partnerships with descent communities, which in settler contexts are primarily Indigenous.
"Still 'Seeking the End of Indigenous Archaeology'?"
Indigenous archaeology arose 25 years ago in response to calls from Indigenous peoples to make the discipline more relevant. What emerged is a vibrant, highly nuanced, and often effective coupling of indigenous epistemology, collaborative methodology, and scientific technique. Despite growing recognition and respect, Indigenous archaeology remains on the margins. In “Seeking the End of Indigenous Archaeology” (2003) I proposed both the need for both its continuance as a distinct endeavor and its incorporation into mainstream archaeology to help transform it. In this presentation I re-examine this premise in the context of the changed and charged landscape of British Columbia archaeology. —Presented at the Society for Applied Anthropology Conference, Vancouver, March 2016
Advances in Archaeological Practice 6(3): 212–227, 2018
"Heritage interpretation" is generally conceived as the development and presentation of knowledge about the past for public audiences. Most obviously evidenced in descriptive signs, guides, and related media installed on archaeological and cultural sites, heritage interpretation has more than a half century of theory and applied practice behind it, yet it continues to sit uncomfortably within the typical archaeological workflow. While the concept can be criticized on many fronts, of concern is the lack of recognition that it is of equal relevance to both nonexpert and expert audiences (as opposed to nonexpert audiences alone). Our profession appears to rest on an assumption that archaeologists do their own kind of interpretation-and, separately, nonexperts require a special approach that heritage interpreters must facilitate but that field specialists have no need for-or from which little obvious expert benefit can be derived. For this reason, it is rare to find heritage interpreters embedded in primary fieldwork teams. Here I call for a rethinking of the traditional workflow, with a view to integrating the heritage interpretation tool kit and heritage interpreters themselves into our basic field methodologies. Their direct involvement in disciplinary process from the outset has the potential to transform archaeological interpretation overall. La interpretación del patrimonio cultural generalmente se considera como el desarrollo y la presentación de conocimientos sobre el pasado para el público en general. Su mayor evidencia son los letreros descriptivos, guías y medios relacionados instalados en sitios arqueológicos y culturales. La interpretación del patrimonio cultural tiene más de medio siglo de teoría y práctica aplicada detrás de ella; sin embargo, permanece en una posición incómoda dentro del típico proceso de trabajo arqueológico. Si bien el concepto puede ser criticado desde muchos frentes, es preocupante la falta de reconocimiento que la interpretación del patrimonio cultural tiene la misma relevancia para el público de expertos que para el de no expertos. Nuestra profesión parece basarse en la suposición que los arqueólogos hacen su propio tipo de interpretación y que, por separado, los no expertos requieren un abordaje especial que los intérpretes del patrimonio cultural deben facilitar, pero que los especialistas de campo no necesitan, o que los beneficia de manera limitada. Por eso es raro encontrar intérpretes del patrimonio cultural integrados en equipos de campo primarios. Aquí se propone reconsiderar el flujo de trabajo arqueológico tradicional, con la intención de integrar los instrumentos de la interpretación del patrimonio cultural y los intérpretes mismos en nuestras metodologías de campo básicas. Su participación directa desde el comienzo del proceso de trabajo tiene el potencial de transformar la interpretación arqueológica en general.
Ethical Issues in Indigenous Archaeology: Problems with Difference and Collaboration
Canadian Journal of Bioethics, 2019
The critique of archaeology made from an indigenous and postcolonial perspective has been largely accepted, at least in theory, in many settler colonies, from Canada to New Zealand. In this paper, I would like to expand such critique in two ways: on the one hand, I will point out some issues that have been left unresolved; on the other hand, I will address indigenous and colonial experiences that are different from British settler colonies, which have massively shaped our understanding of indigeneity and the relationship of archaeology to it. I am particularly concerned with two key problems: alterity-how archaeologists conceptualize difference-and collaboration-how archaeologists imagine their relationship with people from a different cultural background. My reflections are based on my personal experiences working with communities in southern Europe, Sub-Saharan Africa and South America that differ markedly from those usually discussed by indigenous archaeologies. La critique de l'archéologie dans une perspective autochtone et postcoloniale a été largement acceptée, du moins en théorie, dans de nombreuses colonies de colons, du Canada à la Nouvelle-Zélande. Dans le présent texte, j'aimerais développer cette critique de deux façons : d'une part, je soulignerai certaines questions qui n'ont pas été résolues ; d'autre part, j'aborderai les expériences autochtones et coloniales qui sont différentes de celles des colonies de colons britanniques, qui ont façonné massivement notre compréhension de l'indigénéité et de la relation entre l'archéologie et celle-ci. Je m'intéresse particulièrement à deux problèmes clés : l'altérité-comment les archéologues conçoivent la différence-et la collaboration-comment les archéologues imaginent leur relation avec des personnes d'un autre milieu culturel. Mes réflexions sont basées sur mes expériences personnelles de travail avec des communautés d'Europe du Sud, d'Afrique subsaharienne et d'Amérique du Sud qui diffèrent sensiblement de celles que l'on retrouve habituellement dans les archéologies autochtones.