Community Archaeology in 2020: Conventional or Revolutionary?
Part of: Society for Historical Archaeology 2020
This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Community Archaeology in 2020: Conventional or Revolutionary?," at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.
Community archaeology has grown significantly since the 1990s as archaeologists increasingly seek to integrate local communities and other stakeholders within archaeological projects and interpretations; however, the definition of community archaeology was heavily debated in the first decade of the 2000s. Central to this debate were questions about who constituted a community, the role archaeologists should play, and what the relationship between community archaeology and decolonizing practice should be.
In this symposium, we aim to consider the role of community approaches within historical archaeology at the dawn of a new decade. Does community-engaged scholarship remain an outlier or might contemporary research projects suggest a shift within historical archaeological practice? Papers in this session discuss current theoretical perspectives within community archaeology, broadly defined, as well as recent or ongoing case studies that exemplify practical applications within the field today.
Other Keywords
Community •
Public Archaeology •
African Diaspora Archaeology •
Plantation Archaeology •
Native American •
Preservation •
Impact •
African-American •
Interview •
Archival
Temporal Keywords
19th-20th Century •
19th Century •
19th and 20th centuries •
17th century-21st century •
1800s-1900s •
1854-present •
18th and 19th C. •
Late eighteenth century to present •
1700-present •
18th-21st century
Geographic Keywords
Coahuila (State / Territory) •
New Mexico (State / Territory) •
Oklahoma (State / Territory) •
Arizona (State / Territory) •
Texas (State / Territory) •
Sonora (State / Territory) •
United States of America (Country) •
Chihuahua (State / Territory) •
Nuevo Leon (State / Territory) •
Delaware (State / Territory)
Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-14 of 14)
- Documents (14)
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The Ancestors Speak: Community-Based Paleogenomics (2020)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Community Archaeology in 2020: Conventional or Revolutionary?" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Paleogenomics is now a well-established method for studying archaeological human remains. When geneticists, archaeologists, and descendent communities work together, it can also be a powerful tool for community building and reconciliation. This paper outlines several collaborative projects in which local...
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Archaeologists In Parks (2020)
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This is an abstract from the session entitled "Community Archaeology in 2020: Conventional or Revolutionary?" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. State and local natural resources and parks agencies have added archaeologists to their staffs in the decades since the passing of the National Historic Preservation Act. Archaeological professionals, like the author, were hired to help ensure compliance with Section 106 of NHPA and related provisions of the...
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The Best and Worst of Times: Bridging Stakeholders, Archaeologists, and Students to Craft Community Archaeology at the Robert H. Jackson Farmstead, Spring Creek, PA. (2020)
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This is an abstract from the session entitled "Community Archaeology in 2020: Conventional or Revolutionary?" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. We discuss the complexities of community archaeology involving stakeholders, archaeologists, and students at the 2019 Mercyhurst University field school site on the Robert H. Jackson Farmstead. Disparate but congenial sets of “publics” included persons inspired and interested in Robert H. Jackson, the famous...
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Critical Public Archaeology as Social Change: Five Years of Public Outreach at the Anthracite Heritage Program (2020)
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This is an abstract from the session entitled "Community Archaeology in 2020: Conventional or Revolutionary?" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Archaeologists from the University of Maryland have been carrying out excavations in Northeastern Pennsylvania coal company towns since 2009. Since 2013, there has been a concerted effort within this work to use public archaeology and archaeological interpretations to effect social change in the surrounding...
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"It’s not about us": Exploring Race, Community, and Commemoration at the "Angela Site" on Jamestown Island, Virginia. (2020)
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This is an abstract from the session entitled "Community Archaeology in 2020: Conventional or Revolutionary?" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. This paper explores the complex relationship between making African Diaspora history and culture visible at Historic Jamestowne, a setting that has historically been seen as “white”. The four hundredth anniversary of the forced arrival of Africans in Virginia has created a fraught space to examine African American...
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Mapping Maroon Territory: Implications for Amazonian Archaeology (2020)
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This is an abstract from the session entitled "Community Archaeology in 2020: Conventional or Revolutionary?" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. A Participating 3-Dimensional Modeling exercise (P3DM) was conducted along the Suriname River of Suriname, South America. The study sought to better understand the historical and contemporary cultural landscape and identify areas of high cultural-historical value. Over a period of eleven days, a total of...
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Mapping Memories and Digging the Past in Freetown (2020)
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This is an abstract from the session entitled "Community Archaeology in 2020: Conventional or Revolutionary?" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. This paper presents the latest results of archaeology at the Fowler House, a late 19th and early 20th century Montaukett homesite in East Hampton, New York. Ongoing research at this site is based on a mixed-methods approach that combines ethnography with mapping and archaeological investigation to shed light on...
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"Mo té la": Community-Engaged Plantation Archaeology in French Guiana (2020)
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This is an abstract from the session entitled "Community Archaeology in 2020: Conventional or Revolutionary?" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Archaeology in French Guiana takes place within a neo-colonial framework in terms of permitting, reporting, and disseminating results. While still a generally public pursuit, archaeological projects rarely deploy explicit strategies for involving stakeholders in research. Furthermore, because archaeology is...
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Moving the Baseline: Why Isn’t Community Archaeology the Convention? (2020)
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This is an abstract from the session entitled "Community Archaeology in 2020: Conventional or Revolutionary?" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Collaborative and community-based approaches to archaeological practice should be the base from which all projects are developed. Archaeologists are often complicit in creating or perpetuating heritage protection policies or programs that are superficial; they do not get at the roots of the problems of...
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Revolution or Fad: Perspectives on Community Engagement in Archaeology (2020)
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This is an abstract from the session entitled "Community Archaeology in 2020: Conventional or Revolutionary?" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Over the last twenty years community engagement has become more prominent if not mainstream in archaeology, perhaps to the point that our concept of community archaeology has become generalized. In this paper I will examine the concept of community archaeology, its theoretical underpinnings as activist archaeology...
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Starting Slow: Community informed background research on Oak Bluffs, Massachusetts (2020)
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This is an abstract from the session entitled "Community Archaeology in 2020: Conventional or Revolutionary?" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Little archaeological research has been conducted on the historic black communities of Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts despite the long history of African and African American life on the island. This paper discusses potential archaeological sites related to African American presence in the town of Oak Bluffs,...
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Stories That Can Heal Us: Afrodecolonial Perspectives and Community-based Approaches to Archaeology in French Guiana (2020)
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This is an abstract from the session entitled "Community Archaeology in 2020: Conventional or Revolutionary?" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. On a global setting, scholars have acknowledged archaeology's role in maintaining colonial power dynamics. Community-engagement has become a tool for decolonizing archaeological practice. This paper presents some initiatives for community-based work at Archéo La Caroline, an archaeological project that...
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To What End? Assessing the Impact of Public Archaeology in a Campaign Against Gentrification (2020)
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This is an abstract from the session entitled "Community Archaeology in 2020: Conventional or Revolutionary?" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. As archaeologists, we believe and hope that our work with and on behalf of communities with ties to the sites we study makes a positive difference in those communities' lives. Sometimes those impacts can be difficult to discern in a tangible way. In 2012, residents of The Hill neighborhood in Easton, Maryland, and...
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Transformative Placemaking: The Intersection of Art, Archaeology, and the Community in Freedom City (2020)
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This is an abstract from the session entitled "Community Archaeology in 2020: Conventional or Revolutionary?" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Community-engaged archaeology as a de-colonizing practice has seen a greater emphasis in academic discourse in recent years. However, there is still much work to be done to break down the many barriers within the discipline that impede true collaborative relationships and partnerships. For descendants and...