Community Engaged Bioarchaeology: Decolonizing Research

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Community Engaged Bioarchaeology: Centering Descendants" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Bioarchaeology as a field of inquiry aims to bring forward the life histories of individuals through the analysis of skeletal markers of disease, trauma, and activities, at the individual and population level to better understand the experiences and identities of people that came before. A recent and important shift in the bioarchaeological approach has been the inclusion and consideration of descendant groups. In this paper, I consider the slow pace of, and sometimes resistance to, intertwining Indigenous and descendant community knowledge within bioarchaeological research. My goal here is to underscore the need to rethink traditionally colonial research questions and modes of inquiry, and to revision bioarchaeological practices that are community engaged and intertwined with Indigenous/descendants' knowledge of their ancestors. A community engaged bioarchaeological project begins by bringing in Indigenous and/or descendants from the very beginning of the project, centering their questions and bringing forward their knowledge of the past provides grounding and inclusion. Shifting away from solely the analytical goals of bioarchaeologists to those of the community creates a shared vision of the past that is co-created by invested descendants and bioarchaeologists. This process looks different and develops differently across projects but is an important step in decolonizing bioarchaeological practices.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Community Engaged Bioarchaeology: Centering Descendants   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 39955.0