Applying Indigenous Frameworks for Archaeological Analysis and Interpretation

Archaeologists often apply interpretative frameworks that they derive from Western disciplinary contexts, even towards sites that were created and organized within non-Western or Indigenous cultural contexts. In this session, we offer contributions that concern Indigenous frameworks––whether as theory, linguistic concepts, oral histories, organizational principles, and/or cognitive or ontological categories––that can be applied towards the analysis and interpretation of archaeological sites. This requires gauging how to configure Indigenous concepts with archaeological strategies and testing methodologies. Such approaches also may involve considering ways to articulate Indigenous frameworks within existing or broadly framed theories, in order to translate from local interpretations for greater import and applicability. Collaborative and community-oriented archaeologies have provided much groundwork for such approaches, yet some projects limit Indigenous collaboration towards its contemporary practice and contexts, and we seek to highlight avenues of analysis towards the archaeological record. Historically, archaeologists have often sought the theories of Western figures, whether the positivist scientists for processualists or the French poststructuralist theorists for postprocessualists. But, to evaluate the sites of Indigenous peoples, we will emphasize how the cultural ideas and traditions of Indigenous peoples can provide interpretive frameworks for analysis and interpretation to better understand archaeological histories.