Thinking with, through, and against Archaeology’s Politics of Knowledge

Part of: Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Thinking with, through, and against Archaeology’s Politics of Knowledge" at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

For decades, advances in various strands of critical archaeologies have forced the discipline to grapple with its politics of knowledge. Building on these conversations, we examine the “categories, concepts, and ways of knowing” with which archaeological narratives are generated and reconfigured (Stoler 2016:10). This session reflects on the politico-ethical worlds that are interpellated when engaging “regimes of truth” (Stoler 2016). We ask participants to scrutinize topics pulled into the orbit of, and excised from, various research and political agendas. Topics include, but are not limited to, “labor,” “queer,” “difference,” “indigenous,” “race,” “enslavement,” “disability,” “religion,” and “ethics.” What histories emerge from attending to what constitutes our knowledge and what our knowledge constitutes? What politics, perspectives, and realities are created and foreclosed? What subtle forms of violence are revealed, but also deepened, concealed, or perpetuated? What “ethics” does this necessitate? Participants are also encouraged to draw on history, ethnography, literature, and language to engage archaeology’s politico-ethics of knowledge, as well as the politico-ethics of their own practices. What ways of narrating are interrupted? What does this mean for archaeology’s place in the world—personally, professionally, and in classrooms? What are the limits of such a project?

Other Keywords
Historic • Bioarchaeology/Skeletal Analysis • Ideology • Historical Archaeology • Archaeology • Cultural Resource Management • Ethics • Collections • Theory • Museums

Geographic Keywords
United States of America (Country) • Republic of Turkey (Country) • Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan (Country) • Republic of Iraq (Country) • Islamic Republic of Iran (Country) • State of Israel (Country) • Lebanese Republic (Country) • Syrian Arab Republic (Country) • West Bank (Country) • North America (Continent)

Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-9 of 9)

  • Documents (9)
Documents
  • Archaeology and the Politics of Erasure in the Middle East (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Ahmad Mohammadpour.

    This is an abstract from the "Thinking with, through, and against Archaeology’s Politics of Knowledge" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. As a discipline initially tasked with understanding non-Western histories and heritage, archaeology has functioned mainly as a technology of forgetting rather than remembering when it came to indigenous material cultures. The role of archaeology in colonizing African and South American cultures is widely explored,...

  • Archaeology’s Empire of Sectarianism (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Tony Chamoun.

    This is an abstract from the "Thinking with, through, and against Archaeology’s Politics of Knowledge" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Social historians demonstrate the historical contingency of sectarianism, which may be defined as a process and discourse that entwines religious sects and identities with political ones, on the ground and in state arrangements (Makdisi 2000). Despite this contingency, academic, government, and public circles...

  • Basket Pedagogies and Other Object Lessons (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Heather Law Pezzarossi.

    This is an abstract from the "Thinking with, through, and against Archaeology’s Politics of Knowledge" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. How can we learn from an object? How is that different from learning about an object? In a class project, I asked students to undo institutionalized silences and challenge dominant narratives with museum objects that appear to be mute. We studied three O'Odham baskets housed at the Syracuse University Art Museum...

  • Black Studies and the Ontological Politics of Knowledge Production in African Diaspora Archaeology (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Greer.

    This is an abstract from the "Thinking with, through, and against Archaeology’s Politics of Knowledge" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeologists often draw on theories from other disciplines to frame their research, which invariably draws our work into the orbit of larger political debates within and outside the academy. Even a subtle gravitational pull from these political bodies of theory can have substantial effects on how archaeologists...

  • Environmental Personhood and the Management of Cultural Resources (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeannie Larmon.

    This is an abstract from the "Thinking with, through, and against Archaeology’s Politics of Knowledge" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Over the past two decades, there has been a renewed interest in the concept of Environmental Personhood, which grants particular natural entities with legal personhood with the intent of reorganizing anthropocentric hierarchies and better protecting the environment. These features, including Te Awa Tupua in New...

  • Integration of Resilient Bodies in Pathological Narratives around Disability (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Jia Tucker. Jennifer Muller.

    This is an abstract from the "Thinking with, through, and against Archaeology’s Politics of Knowledge" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Bioarchaeology’s epistemological history is closely tied to that of paleopathology and medicine. Accounts of disease, injury, and death in the archaeological record are steeped in the medicalization of the body and of corporeal difference as defective and, therefore, requiring correction by practitioners and/or...

  • Perspectives on Deviance: Exploring Sex-Variance from Bioarchaeological and Contemporary Standpoints (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Mycroft Roske. Pamela Geller.

    This is an abstract from the "Thinking with, through, and against Archaeology’s Politics of Knowledge" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this talk, we discuss the visible effects of sex-variance on skeletal material and in the modern politico-ethical world, drawing on bioarchaeological, historical, and medical sources. Here, sex-variance includes the overlapping categories of castrates (such as castrati and eunuchs), transgender people, and...

  • Queer Imaginatives, Normative Narratives: Examining Archaeological Theory and Conceptions of Hunter-Gatherer-Fisher Labor and Social Identity (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Ashley Hampton.

    This is an abstract from the "Thinking with, through, and against Archaeology’s Politics of Knowledge" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeology’s role and capacity to present multiple narratives about the past situates the discipline as a locus for competing power dynamics: What stories about the past are prioritized? How are stories constructed? Which stories are utilized for crafting a generalizable theory about “human nature”? At the same...

  • Unveiling Silenced Narratives: Ethical Codes and the Challenge of Knowledge Dissemination Facing Middle Eastern Archaeologists (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Lubna Omar.

    This is an abstract from the "Thinking with, through, and against Archaeology’s Politics of Knowledge" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper delves into the glaring disparities faced by Middle Eastern archaeologists in disseminating their invaluable knowledge about their own heritage, elucidating how prevailing Western-centric ethical codes fail to redress these issues effectively. A profound asymmetry exists, wherein Middle Eastern...