Mutual Aid for Climate Justice: Bringing Anarchist Archaeology to the ‘Climate Conversation’

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Bridging Science and Service: How Archaeologists Address Climate Change" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The inclusion of archaeology in the conversation of climate justice has expanded in recent years, but much of this activism is focused on higher levels of centralized governments, with calls for archaeology to be recognized as a source for sustainability policy suggestions. The most effective activism does not occur at these national and international scales, but through on the ground work in local communities. In the words of the late David Graeber, “by participating in policy debates the very best one can achieve is to limit the damage," and archaeologists should not be aiming simply to act as damage control. Recently, archaeologists have created concepts like ‘past-forwarding’, which use archaeological knowledge to inform future decision making, but this often supports current unsuccessful state dynamics. The archaeological record also shows the benefit of mutual aid-style networks of action allowing communities to survive in spite of the hierarchical systems that push to dissolve their autonomy. Thus, in the conversation of combating climate change, I argue that archaeology should be focused on solutions that similarly reject reliance on governmental involvement; it is essential to create sustainable infrastructure networks to meet the needs of communities without relying on governmental aid that may not come.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Bridging Science and Service: How Archaeologists Address Climate Change   •
• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 51122