What Have You Done For Us Lately?: Discrimination, Harassment, and Chilly Climate in Archaeology

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "What Have You Done For Us Lately?: Discrimination, Harassment, and Chilly Climate in Archaeology," at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The conjunction of social justice and anti-discrimination movements like Black Lives Matter and #MeToo has been hailed as a watershed moment for historically marginalized people. Archaeology has likewise felt the reverberations of these broader political movements. Consider, for example, recent discussions of fieldwork and harassment, as well as meditations on the potential impact of the current political climate on archaeology worldwide and efforts to define inroads made by—and future avenues for—social justice in archaeology.

This session builds upon this moment in time by considering the current status of underrepresented groups—women, queer people, people of color, disabled people, low-income people, &c. (as well as those whose identities cross-cut these categories)—in archaeology, both academic and professional. Papers will touch upon various forms of discrimination and harassment, including bias in the workplace, intimidation and/or assault in the field, inequities in publication practices, ethical public engagement, the role of activism in archaeology, and other related topics. We are particularly interested in concrete solutions to discrimination at a variety of scales—from day-to-day interactions to fieldwork best practices, in addition to the little-explored (but exceedingly important) topic of structural and institutional discrimination. This session dovetails with the round table discussion on #metoo in archaeology.