Community Archaeology in Practice: Great Bay Archaeological Survey

Summary

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

For the last three years, the Great Bay Archaeological Survey has excavated frontier contact period (1620-1750 AD) garrisons within the Oyster River watershed. These early reinforced New Hampshire homesteads are rare finds in New England archaeology. The success of this research relies on treating community volunteers as equal contributors. Archaeologists cannot be the sole voice of local histories. This project works to actively decenter the expert/community divide long extant in the discipline by actively centering the public not just in involvement but in interpretation as well. Public archaeology and community engagement are buzzwords in conversations around the future of the field. We know we must have real buy-in from the broader public to remain relevant. GBAS offers one example of a way to actualize this, being a project that functions with a distribution of voice and power. This paper explores our approach to distributing voice and power, the strengths of our approach as well as pitfalls we have encountered that may inform other archaeologists engaging in community-centered archaeology.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

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

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 24013