Evaluating a “Restorative History” Framework for Archaeological Research and Field Schools

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Restorative History is an approach that deploys Public History as a practical tool for justice by confronting root causes of harm and their ongoing legacies today. Drawing on threads of Restorative Justice, institutions like the Center for Restorative History at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History have developed this framework as a tool for responsible and justice-oriented heritage work. In this paper, we reflect on our own attempts to develop this framework as a tool for archaeological research and field school education in Cayambe, Ecuador. Given archaeology's own role in perpetrating historical harm, we discuss the theory of this approach in our work, as well as the methods and execution during the 2023 Summer field season. Our project produced fantastic new modes of collaboration and applications of archaeological field work, but also challenges and questions about the true measures of success for justice-oriented archaeology.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 53876