Genuinely Collaborative Archaeological Work Is ‘Slow’, Or It Is Nothing: Lessons From The ‘Migrant Materialities’ Project

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Slow Archaeology + Fast Capitalism: Hard Lessons and Future Strategies from Urban Archaeology" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

The challenge? To bring a team of 8-12 adult migrants to undertake participatory archaeological interpretation work on data recently recorded in four European locations. The opportunity? To welcome enthusiastic migrant colleagues from eight former European colonies into the heart of the University of Oxford, to collaborate on contemporary research into the material dimensions of experiences of forced displacement. This paper draws on current British Academy funded research to articulate the hurdles involved with designing and implementing a multi-phase community archaeology project with migrants. ‘Slow’ archaeology approaches are shown to be essential for collaboration to be genuine, meaningful and to have integrity, while it is clear that existing processes imposed by the university and funding bodies often lack the necessary flexibility to accommodate ‘slow’ approaches. The result appears to be that community archaeology projects that adhere to and prioritise ‘slow’ approaches unwittingly become sites and networks of resistance to ‘fast capitalism’.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Slow Archaeology + Fast Capitalism: Hard Lessons and Future Strategies from Urban Archaeology   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2020

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Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 117