Say it With Your Chest: Using Collaborative Inquiry to Align with Heart-centered Archaeology in Indigenous Heritage Material Studies

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Landscapes of Care: Exploring Heart-centered Practice in Historical Archaeology", at the 2025 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

In this paper, I reflect on my experience employing the Collaborative Inquiry (CI) approach in the study of 17th-century Ontario Attawandaron (Neutral) shell-tempered pottery with Wyandotte Elder and Knowledge Keeper Richard Zane Smith. This hands-on collaboration, which included the practice of shell-tempered pottery-making and firing experiments, was initially aimed at discerning ancient potters’ technological choices. This engagement evolved into a transformative learning process, influencing my understanding of ancestral knowledge, materials, and the landscapes of the past as a non-Indigenous archaeological scientist. Through this case study, I critically reflect on the process of employing CI in archaeological research and emphasize its potential to create a space for archaeologists to align themselves with the core components of heart-centered archaeology: rigor, care, relationality, and emotion. Central to this discussion is the negotiation of ethical, institutional, communal, and personal expectations in archaeological research practices, particularly within collaborative frameworks with Indigenous communities.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2025   •
• Landscapes of Care: Exploring Heart-centered Practice in Historical Archaeology

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow