What Is "Historical"?

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "What Is "Historical"?," at the 2024 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Historical archaeology has been redefined through the years but a constant has been the focus on colonial-era histories in the North American archaeology tradition. However, this temporal definition often centers on settler experiences resulting in ever-disappearing Native/Indigenous subjects. The rigid temporal divisions promote writing about the “other” without allowing the knowledge of people marginalized as “other” to exist in the same temporal space. Exclusion of Indigenous people’s histories from the same temporal space as Western histories effectively excludes Indigenous archaeology and Native/Indigenous community partners from historical archaeology spaces. This session questions what ‘historical’ means today, whether a temporal division still exists (in definition or in practice), and the effect this designation of Native and Indigenous histories as ahistorical has had on perceptions of contemporary Indigenous communities or our relationships with community partners.