Literature Trends of NAGPRA

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Four Decades of NAGPRA, Part 1: Accomplishments and Challenges" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Archaeology greatly contributed to the presence of Native American ancestral remains held in museum and university collections, and recently has been engaged in discussions about the ethical engagement with these collections. An important step in this discussion is to consider how the NAGPRA law, which has been in effect for over 30 years, has been incorporated in the discipline’s primary literature. This study aims to understand the trends in the literature regarding mentions of NAGPRA. Keyword searches were conducted using Web of Science to generate a database of articles that referenced the law in any way. The search was restricted to journal articles published between 1990 and 2023 and returned only 102 articles with direct mention to NAGPRA.

Results show that few journal articles discussed NAGPRA before the 2010s. The journals aimed at general anthropology disciplines contained 21 articles, archaeology journals had 14 articles, biological anthropology journals had 8 articles, and museum studies journals had 22 articles. This initial result demonstrates that, despite its importance, NAGPRA has not been significantly incorporated in archaeological literature.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• Four Decades of NAGPRA, Part 1: Accomplishments and Challenges

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 52210