Indigenous Data Sovereignty at the Paint Rock Archaeological Project

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Many Voices in the Repository: Community-Based Collections Work" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The Paint Rock Archaeological Project is an ongoing community-based investigation led by members of the Comanche Nation, the Lipan Apache Band of Texas, and Coahuiltecan tribes. Working with archaeologists from the University of Texas' Texas Archeological Research Laboratory, researchers from Abilene Christian Univeristy, and members of the local community of Paint Rock, Texas, Tribal members and elders have advocated for the respectful investigation of a site of historic and spiritual significance to their communities, the Paint Rock petroglyph site. As the project planned its third year of work, it became apparent that a strategy for long-term collections care and data management was necessary to preserve the information generated by archaeological work at the site. In this paper, we discuss how by centering community values and goals while bringing in professional expertise, the project can ensure the value of the investigation data and the safety of recovered cultural items for future generations while preserving connections to ancestral practices.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• Many Voices in the Repository: Community-Based Collections Work

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 51521