Oral Narratives and Archaeology: Telling Multiple Stories for Multiple Pasts?

Summary

It is widely accepted that the study of material culture and oral narratives are two different but equally important avenues for looking into the past. While the distinct sets of data they produce frequently corroborate and/or complement each other, allowing for a deeper understanding of the past, discrepancies are not uncommon. In those cases, "scientific" data often take precedence and local knowledge is marginalized. While archaeologists see oral narratives as useful "tools" to archaeological interpretations, ones they can incorporate or discard, for First Nation groups, such narratives form the core of their identity and their history, and thus are essential to preserving their culture and their past. This ranking of knowledge is something Indigenous scholars have been denouncing for many years now on the grounds that knowledge systems should be evaluated within their own epistemological logic. Privileging archaeological interpretations over traditional knowledge can lead to substantial conflict between researchers and descendant communities, with negative impacts on communities, especially when the archaeological data challenges the latter’s conceptions of "identity," "history," and "heritage." In this paper I consider the ethical and social implications of the bridging of knowledge derived from distinct epistemologies and of the use of oral traditions by archaeologists.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage