An Archaeology of Redress: Freedom as Impossible Praxis

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "“Folkeliv” and Black Folks’ Lives: Archaeology, History, and Contemporary Black Atlantic Communities", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Black studies critical theorizations have much to offer the field of archaeology both in theory and practice. For Saidiya Hartman (2008) redress entails confronting formations of epistemic violence that undergird the archival record; it is a praxis that is always incomplete. This article maps Hartman’s theory of redress onto the practice of community archaeology to explore the opportunities and challenges that arise when archaeologists center youth engagement, capacity building, and cultural and natural heritage stewardship. Using the Estate Little Princess Archaeology Project as a case study, we explore one way archaeologists attempt to offer restitution to the issues their work reveals (i.e. legacies of environmental racism, truncated avenues of economic sustainability, racialized disenfranchisement) through an “archaeology of redress.”

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• “Folkeliv” and Black Folks’ Lives: Archaeology, History, and Contemporary Black Atlantic Communities   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2023

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow