Intellectual Disability, Employment, and the Public Record

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Archaeologies of Health, Wellness, and Ability" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Disability is a natural part of the human experience and our work as archaeologists should reflect this. The key to recognising and minimizing bias in our work is to include marginalized groups as much as possible. But in a field that by its traditional definition demands a high level of intellectual and physical rigor how can we best do this? This paper evaluates this question through an examination of the complexities of working on the Community 4 All project, a Community Based Participatory Research project at Syracuse University, that is creating digital toolkits by, with and for adults with intellectual disability. As we created tools to support deinstitutionalization and lifelong learning and employment, we were forced to confront the histories of state schools, sheltered workshops, and continued segregation of adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities from the community and public record. Our toolkit explores ways of including people with intellectual disability in the exploration of culture and history and finding ways to incorporate their voices archaeological research.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Archaeologies of Health, Wellness, and Ability   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23224