Walled In: Borderlands, Frontiers, and the Future of Archaeology

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

For archaeology to survive in the current political environment and for critical discourse on the

past to thrive, archaeologists need to be proactive and advocate for our subject’s contemporary

relevance. We illustrate the problems and potentials of this advocacy by examining popular

perceptions of Roman border zones like Hadrian’s Wall, and how these beliefs are related to

modern border landscapes like the US/Mexico border. The authors contend that archaeologists

have not fully dealt with the powerful imagined continuity of socio-political narratives

surrounding borderland landscapes. They advocate for a theorisation that recognises both the

long-term impact of the materiality of borders and how the uncritical portrayal of the material

past, particularly involving politically charged spaces like borders, can contribute to inequality

and oppression in the present.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36156.0