Activating Heritage: Encouraging Substantive Practices for a Just Future

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 "Activating Heritage: Encouraging Substantive Practices for a Just Future" at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Heritage isn’t a static reflection of some real (or imagined) past. Heritage does things: it engenders community, teaches history, celebrates diversity; it can also exclude people, reproduce ideologies, and create silences. Heritage is not a thing in itself but rather a set of relations (to the past and each other) that act on and in the world. Nor is heritage beholden to the conventional disciplinary boundaries of archaeology. Instead, it puts archaeology to work in the world. Recognizing heritage’s role as a nexus of social action, this session asks how archaeologists can engage in more substantive heritage practices that aim to dismantle systems of oppression and actualize a more just future. Individual papers present Indigenous and descendant community collaborations, projects that help transcend histories of conflict, and work that brings to light oppressed and silenced narratives. Contributors also offer critiques on archaeology itself, the limitations of heritage work, and the importance of redressing its failures. Reflecting on how archaeologists can and should conduct their work, the papers in this session generally share a pragmatic view that emphasizes not only how heritage does act in the world but how it might act more readily toward consciously anti-oppressive and even liberatory aims.

Other Keywords
Historic • Cultural Resources and Heritage Management • Historical Archaeology • Colonialism • Indigenous • Cultural Heritage and Preservation • Ethics • Paleolithic • African Diaspora • Ethnohistory/History

Geographic Keywords
United States of America (Country) • Republic of Botswana (Country) • Republic of Namibia (Country) • Republic of South Africa (Country) • Republic of Kenya (Country) • United Republic of Tanzania (Country) • North America (Continent) • Republic of Uganda (Country) • Gabonese Republic (Country) • Republic of the Congo (Country)

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

  • Documents (9)
Documents
  • “An Acre of Land to Plant or A Stick of Wood to Make a Fence or Fire”: A Heritage of Mohegan Allotment (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Craig Cipolla. James Quinn. Jay Levy.

    This is an abstract from the "Activating Heritage: Encouraging Substantive Practices for a Just Future" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Allotment was a world-changing institution that forever altered the course of North American history; through this process, Indigenous lands were broken up into lots, “owned” by individuals and families rather than collectively held. Allotment placed an unprecedented amount of stress on Indigenous traditions of...

  • Activating Heritage: Introductory Remarks on Substantive and Pragmatic Archaeologies (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Tiffany Fryer. Alexander Bauer.

    This is an abstract from the "Activating Heritage: Encouraging Substantive Practices for a Just Future" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Drawing on the session co-organizers' experiences, this paper offers reflections on the state of heritage research being conducted by archaeologists, its current limitations, and its potential for greater social impact. Leaning into the notion that heritage does important work in the world, we offer thoughts on how...

  • An Archaeology of Return?: African Diaspora Heritage in the Wake of the Slave Trade (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Reilly.

    This is an abstract from the "Activating Heritage: Encouraging Substantive Practices for a Just Future" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Analytical vectors of the African Diaspora have traditionally run east-to-west, charting the journeys of captive Africans from Sub-Saharan homelands to spaces and systems of racial violence in the Americas. Historical archaeology continues to shed light on the realities of such experiences across the spectrum of...

  • Heritage in Action at the Pauli Murray Center (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Anna Agbe-Davies.

    This is an abstract from the "Activating Heritage: Encouraging Substantive Practices for a Just Future" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Rather than argue that heritage does things, this paper explores what might happen when archaeologists (to borrow a phrase from J L Austin) “do things with heritage.” Specifically, I use the points raised by Patricia Hill Collins in her weaving together of pragmatics and intersectionality to frame a discussion of...

  • Heritage Pragmatics: Problems and Opportunities in Pursuing Decolonization (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Annalisa Bolin.

    This is an abstract from the "Activating Heritage: Encouraging Substantive Practices for a Just Future" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. “Decolonization is not a metaphor,” Tuck and Yang remind us (2012). What does this call to action mean for heritage studies? This paper explores attempts at decolonizing cultural heritage management and research. First, tracing the ways coloniality has continued to influence management practices in Rwanda, the...

  • Heritage, Pragmatism, and Indigenous Collaboration (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Stephen Mrozowski.

    This is an abstract from the "Activating Heritage: Encouraging Substantive Practices for a Just Future" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Over the past 20 years, I have worked with the Hassanamisco Nipmuc of Massachusetts with the express goal of seeing how archaeology can aid the Nipmuc with their own heritage initiatives. In all these efforts, the centrality of pragmatic philosophy has been paramount. Given that North American pragmatic philosophy...

  • Pragmatism and Peacebuilding: Building an Empirically Honest, Ethically Engaged Archaeology (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Audrey Horning.

    This is an abstract from the "Activating Heritage: Encouraging Substantive Practices for a Just Future" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Building on literature from peace and conflict studies as well as social justice movements, I consider the role and responsibilities of archaeologists as we grapple not only with our positionality in the present, including our roles as citizens and scholars, but the manner in which we mobilize the past in aid of...

  • Reclaiming and Activating Chinese American Heritage in Wyoming (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Laura Ng.

    This is an abstract from the "Activating Heritage: Encouraging Substantive Practices for a Just Future" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Rock Springs Chinatown in Wyoming was the site of the 1885 Chinese Massacre, where a white mob murdered 28 Chinese coal miners. Survivors took refuge at the Evanston Chinatown, approximately 100 miles west. While archaeological research led by Dudley Gardner has been ongoing at both Chinatowns for over three...

  • Weaving Paths to Healing and Human Rights: Creating Tsunamis of Systemic Change in Archaeology (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Paulette Steeves.

    This is an abstract from the "Activating Heritage: Encouraging Substantive Practices for a Just Future" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Substantive practices for a just future in archaeology require an acknowledgment of the history of discrimination and marginalization within American archaeology. Equity is not achieved through policies supporting marginalized communities within the discipline. Substantive practices and equity are addressed through...