Reckoning with Violence

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?