Stories That Can Heal Us: Afrodecolonial Perspectives and Community-based Approaches to Archaeology in French Guiana

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Community Archaeology in 2020: Conventional or Revolutionary?" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

On a global setting, scholars have acknowledged archaeology's role in maintaining colonial power dynamics. Community-engagement has become a tool for decolonizing archaeological practice. This paper presents some initiatives for community-based work at Archéo La Caroline, an archaeological project that investigates a village for enslaved laborers in French Guiana. The approaches discussed in this paper stem directly from a commitment to work toward healing old, deep and open wounds originated by the processes of colonization and enslavement, as well as from an afrocentering of my own world-sense. Adopting orality - "storytelling" - and memory as key-concepts allows for a focus on the encounter between "people" and "things" and creates the possibility for several stories to emerge and be told by various participants in multiple ways (i.e. stakeholders, descendants, archaeologists, spirits, "the site," "old places," "things," vegetation).

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2020   •
• Community Archaeology in 2020: Conventional or Revolutionary?

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Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 900