Communities of Engagement: Incorporating Deep Time and Slow Science into Community Based Research Projects

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Communities of Engagement: Incorporating Deep Time and Slow Science into Community Based Research Projects" at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

In recent decades, archaeology and other social sciences have been navigating a divergent path between 1.the accelerated pace at which research projects are commissioned to meet career advancement goals and funder’s deadlines and 2. the rate at which communities are willing or able to be involved in research conducted in their communities. This session’s case studies will argue for ‘slow science’ approaches to archaeological research that ‘forefront ethically driven and collaborative research’ (Cunningham & MacEachern, 2016). This session will introduce a diverse group of interrelated presentations highlighting heritage management, contemporary interest in deep-time perspectives, the incorporation of recent archaeological knowledge by local actors, and community engagement initiatives. Two North American projects will examine the incorporation of indigenous knowledge and slow science in the northeastern US, and an additional project explores the relationship between local communities and the well-known Hamann-Todd Osteological Collection, Cleveland, Ohio. In southern Europe, three papers will look at local environmental values through the interpretation of animal figures, community-based research on historical ecology, and the contemporary interest in pre-modern viticulture technology in modern Tuscany, and a final paper explores efforts to affiliate local identity with an ancient Greek colonial site, Apollonia Pontica, in Sozopol, Bulgaria.