Reckoning with Violence
Part of: Society for Historical Archaeology 2020
This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Reckoning with Violence," at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.
This session addresses community engagement and collaboration around violent pasts that continue to have relevance today. Violence can be expressive, structural, or symbolic. Each form of violence materializes in specific ways that call for more explicit theorization in archaeology. Session contributors explore how different forms of violence relate and propel each other across time. Dialogue about violence can challenge those in power by exposing privilege and oppression. Violent narratives must often be negotiated as communities make decisions about how to share these histories with outsiders, as well as about their own political stances and agendas. We explore how we might address violent histories archaeologically with the communities that have inherited them, including interpretive museum exhibits, tours, and signage, oral history recordings, digital storytelling, documentaries, memorials, as well as collaborative fieldwork and labwork. How do we reckon with the social and material realities of violent pasts and their enduring presence?
Other Keywords
Violence •
heritage •
Public Archaeology •
Colonialism •
Memory •
Memorialization •
Materiality •
Northwest Coast •
activism •
African Diaspora
Temporal Keywords
19th-20th Century •
Contemporary •
19th to 21st Century •
1850-1950 •
1898-1918 •
WWII to the Present Day
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 1-6 of 6)
- Documents (6)
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Aspirational Architecture and AK-47s: The Intersections of Nineteenth-Century Settlement Processes and the Post-Conflict Detritus of Violence in Liberia (2020)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Reckoning with Violence" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Global awareness of Liberia’s recent past is largely limited to the long-term bloodshed that erupted with a 1980 coup and the ensuing civil conflict. What remains understudied is how recent episodes of violence are tethered to the decades following Liberia’s founding as a settler colony of the American Colonization Society in 1822. Our new...
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Depicting the Slow Violence of Colonialism in Rural Yucatán, Mexico (2020)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Reckoning with Violence" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Rob Nixon’s concept of slow violence helps to explain the impact of colonialism on rural livelihoods in Yucatán, Mexico. However, is a violence framework useful to those who face colonialism’s long-term consequences? This paper considers the resources and tools that residents of a Yucatecan town have at their disposal when advocating for their...
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Heritage as Liberation? (2020)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Reckoning with Violence" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. In this paper, I argue for heritage as liberation. I openly claim that some forms of heritage practice are inherently more meaningful and effective than others. Such practices include what I call substantive and coalitional archaeologies. I argue that although the Critical Heritage Studies Movement—to which many historical archaeologists...
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I Tell My Heart to Go Ahead: The 369th Infantry Regiment as a Model for Black First World War Archaeology (2020)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Reckoning with Violence" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. To be an African American soldier during the First World War was to be a walking contradiction. Jim Crow laws and white supremacist terrorism tormented black families on the homefront while black men, one generation removed from legal slavery, fought and died for the American cause on the battlefields of France. The African American community prayed...
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Material Engagements with Japanese American Incarceration History (2020)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Reckoning with Violence" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. The World War II mass incarceration of Japanese Americans was a traumatic event that had lasting repercussions on multiple communities. Archaeologists have sought to productively pursue community-based methodologies in studying this period, employing object based oral histories, outreach events, and community participation in fieldwork. However, less...
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"You Have Harmed Us": Structural Violence and the Indian School experience among the Port Gamble S’Kllalam community. (2020)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Reckoning with Violence" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. In 1855, the U.S. government signed the Treaty of Point No Point with the S'Klallam community. In exchange for fishing rights, the S’Klallam ceded 750,000 acres of land and accepted formal education. The Indian education system has enacted both symbolic and structural forms of violence among the S’kllalam, violence that has contributed to the...