Why Social Archaeology Matters
Part of: Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)
We currently find ourselves on the cusp of significant change, as tensions related to race, ethnicity, religion, and gender are currently at the forefront of today's social struggles. Archaeology, specifically social archaeology has the opportunity to inform and enrich current social movements. The goal of this session is to emphasize the contributions of archaeologists to understanding the social processes of the present. AAA president Leith Mullings (2015) recently outlined her vision of "why anthropology matters" by emphasizing anthropology’s relationship to recent social movements –we argue that archaeology has an important role to play in this conversation. Human agency is widely regarded as an important generative force of cultural change and archaeological research on gender, identity, class, power, religion, and ethnicity has exploded in the past two decades. In an effort to make archaeology relevant to the broader public, archaeologists have successfully emphasized the ecological implications for the study of archaeology, however, we have largely ignored the profound insights that archaeology can provide into understanding the role of human agency and social forces in generating wide-scale change. As a consequence, we may be missing opportunities to make archaeology relevant to events that are currently playing out in the modern world.
Other Keywords
Social archaeology •
Mexico •
Historical •
Politics •
water •
Aztec •
Mesoamerica •
Migration •
Medicine •
Borderlands
Geographic Keywords
Mesoamerica •
North America - Northeast •
Central America •
Caribbean •
North America - Midwest •
North America - California
Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-12 of 12)
- Documents (12)
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Archaeological Histories of Urban Indians and Why They Matter (2016)
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Social archaeology today takes research far beyond questions of “subsistence and dating.” It pushes inquiries into historic and recent pasts and is unapologetic in its embrace of anthropologically-informed, hybrid methodologies. Not in the least, it maintains a keen awareness of the role that socially-engaged research can play in the contemporary world. Since the 1990s, multifaceted and collaborative archaeological studies of Native Americans have systematically challenged dominant, and...
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"Clean Up Your Mess, Chino": Contested Space, Boredom, and Vulnerability among Central American Migrants Crossing Southern Mexico. (2016)
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The growing subdiscipline of archaeology of the contemporary has stressed the importance of studying detritus to access silenced or abject aspects of the recent past. This paper takes a different approach, focusing on the ways that an archaeology of the present is not about uncovering “truths” that correct ethnographic research, but is rather a constant agitation and addition to ethnographic engagement. Following recent American pressure on the government of Mexico and changes in Mexican...
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Global Indigeneity in Southern Mexico and the Value of Social Archaeology (2016)
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This paper explores the long-term history of the Nejapa region of southeastern Oaxaca, Mexico and the many groups of people and famous individuals that have called it home. Based on data derived from a variety of archaeological research methods, including archival documents, excavation, survey, oral history interviews, and collaborative research with contemporary residents, I argue that what might be viewed by some as a loss of indigenous identity in the present is rather a multiethnic...
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Indigenous Histories and the Queer Future of Archaeological Anachronism (2016)
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Archaeological representations of modernity can inadvertently bind Indigenous history to a political past. Native origin myths, archaeological exhibits, and racist mascots cement the prior-ness of Indigenous communities. In order to challenge settlement in the present, Indigenous bodies must disrupt a settler state that fossilizes Native sovereignty. The case studies presented in this article consider moments when haunting intimacies with Indigenous presences queered the tense of settlement....
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Introduction: Why Social Archaeology Matters (2016)
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Almost 25 years ago, Elizabeth Brumfiel (1992) argued that ecosystems approaches to archaeology hampered our understanding of social change by neglecting the internal dynamics, conflicts, and negotiations that arise from gender, class, and factional affiliations. Rather than adaptive systems, Brumfiel (1992:559) argued that "cultural systems are contingent and negotiated, the composite outcome of strategy, counterstrategy, and the unforeseen consequences of human action." Human agency is now...
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Palimpsests in the Colonial Borderland at Black Star Canyon, Orange County, California. (2016)
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The Santa Ana mountain landscape of contemporary Orange County, CA has been dichotomously characterized as “a wild colonial borderland” and “a prehistoric indigenous space” where the material and social histories of indigenous communities are ossified while legacies of Spanish, Mexican and American colonial society are both solidified and continued. Within this landscape, the Black Star Canyon village (CA-ORA-132) objectifies this historical disjunction in that the site constitutes a...
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Queering the Narrative: Diverse Pasts and Political Futures (2016)
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This paper explores the impact of queer theory in destabilizing heteronormative and other fixed discourses in archaeological method, practice, and interpretation. By challenging the very idea of what constitutes “normal’ in archaeology, queer theory provides new ways of thinking about and engaging with change, process, and difference. These discussions become important and necessary interventions in political debates around modern queer identities as well as social diversity at a much larger...
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Responsibility for the Past, Responsibility to the Present (2016)
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Decisions about site preservation and public presentation are where archaeologists can bring collaboration with local and descendant communities to bear on policy decisions about heritage management and tourist development. The fact that these are decisions with direct political and sometimes economic import does not absolve archaeologists from engagement. In fact, it is in exactly this arena that engagement of archaeologists with the local communities and a suite of heritage stakeholders is...
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Social Archaeology and Debating Local Scholars (2016)
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How can archaeologists both benefit from interaction with local communities and also debate with local scholars? Engaging with local scholars can sometimes require walking a fine line between imposing foreign values in a colonizing manner and accepting ideas that are either incorrect or that promote oppression and inequality. Theoretically-informed social archaeology can help us engage with local scholars with respect and debate their ideas with the goals of promoting social justice, and without...
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The Social Archaeology of Politics (2016)
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In this paper, we consider how social archaeology can inform the study of political organization and power, and provide insight into the tumultuous events taking place today. Social archaeology has long made significant contribution towards understanding the conflicts the occur between different classes, ethnicities, and factions. However, social archaeology is equally capable of making important insights into top down processes and address broader topics of state organization and politics....
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The social politics of health and healing: archaeological approaches to social meanings and practices of illness and well-being. (2016)
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Colonial regimes of knowledge and practice and the attendant maintenance of biological, raced, class-based, and gendered difference have remained central concerns for social historians, anthropologists, and archaeologists. Within this milieu of colonial studies, social histories of Western medicine have increasingly interrogated the connections between biological science and racial and gendered difference. Social constructionist approaches to biomedicine provide a useful groundwork for...
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Taking Their Water for Our City: Archaeology and Water Rights in New York and Beyond (2016)
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Water rights is a social issue of growing importance. Recently, the United Nations declared access to clean drinking water to be a basic human right. Yet financial groups are predicting that water is the next major commodity, to be bought and sold like oil. What few are talking about is the long history of water flowing towards political and social centers, and away from rural populations. As Leith Mullings stated in her presidential address, anthropology pays attention to not only that which is...