Collaboration, Accountability, and Performativity: Defining Collaboration in Northern New Mexico Archaeology

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

In recent years, collaborative approaches with descendant communities play an important role in archaeological research. One single understanding of "collaboration" does not prepare the archaeologist for the pitfalls and problems of engaging with communities. The result is a multitude of methodological approaches that display as a "continuum" of archaeological projects with collaborative experience that is essential in developing collaborative approaches. "Continuum" and "spectrum" are words that resonate with terms usually associated with Butler’s "performativity" in gender identity, but in this case, collaboration is not defined by the archaeologist’s or community’s intention, but rather by the outcome or result of knowledge production from working together. The result allows the archaeologist to be accountable to all stakeholders, participants, and partners in all aspects to build community capacity while incorporating multiple forms of knowledge. A local or descendant community can either make or break an archaeological project making collaboration detrimental to several milestones in a project related to research questions, permits, and distribution of knowledge. Learning from previous collaborative projects and working together with the Merced del Pueblo de Abiquiu in northern New Mexico on issues of knowledge distribution gives this descendant community an opportunity to share their history in their own terms.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 25002