Indigenous Archaeologies across the Global South: Confronting World-Building and World-Destroying Capacities and Realities

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Archaeological Congress: Multivocal Conversations Furthering the World Archaeological Congress Agenda" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

In recent years, archaeological research and cultural heritage management have advanced considerably toward the integration of community-guided practices and processes. The dimensions of research ethics and social justice appear to play increasingly prominent roles in the design and conduct of archaeological and related projects. It has even been suggested that the current phase can be described in terms of an “ethical turn” in global archaeology. However, at the same time, a range of political, economic, and social factors appear to jeopardize these developments. Global research processes continue to be dominated by the United States and Western European countries. Cultural heritage management and heritage legislation continue to favor extractive industries at the expense of Indigenous cultural heritage preservation and continuation. They continue the historical, epistemological, and ontological legacies of European colonialism. In this presentation, we want to provide an honest conversation about these issues and how they play out in current attempts to develop theoretically informed and ethically aware archaeological practices in the context of Indigenous communities in the Global South. We want to consider the political economy and political ontology of research and cultural heritage management and a deep reflection of the basis of academic knowledge production and dissemination.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Archaeological Congress: Multivocal Conversations Furthering the World Archaeological Congress Agenda   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36508.0