Collaborating At The Trowel S Edge

A fundamental issue for twenty-first century archaeologists is the need to better direct their efforts toward supporting rather than harming indigenous peoples. Collaborative indigenous archaeology has already begun to stress the importance of cooperative, community-based research; this book now offers an up-to-date assessment of how Native American and non-native archaeologists have jointly undertaken research that is not only politically aware and historically minded but fundamentally better as well. Eighteen contributors—many with tribal ties—cover the current state of collaborative indigenous archaeology in North America to show where the discipline is headed. Continent-wide cases, from the Northeast to the Southwest, demonstrate the situated nature of local practice alongside the global significance of further decolonizing archaeology. And by probing issues of indigenous participation with an eye toward method, theory, and pedagogy, many show how the archaeological field school can be retailored to address politics, ethics, and critical practice alongside traditional teaching and research methods. These chapters reflect the strong link between politics and research, showing what can be achieved when indigenous values, perspectives, and knowledge are placed at the center of the research process. They not only draw on experiences at specific field schools but also examine advances in indigenous cultural resource management and in training Native American and non-native students. Theoretically informed and practically grounded, Collaborating at the Trowel’s Edge is a virtual guide for rethinking field schools and is an essential volume for anyone involved in North American archaeology—professionals, students, tribal scholars, or avocationalists—as well as those working with indigenous peoples in other parts of the world. It both reflects the rapidly changing landscape of archaeology and charts new directions to ensure the ongoing vitality of the discipline.

"Community Based Participatory Research in archaeology finally comes of age with Atalay's long-anticipated volume. She promotes a collaborative approach to knowledge gathering, interpretation, and use that benefits descendant communities and archaeological practitioners, contributing to a more relevant, rewarding, and responsible archaeology. This is essential reading for anyone who asks why we do archaeology, for whom, and how best can it be done." - George Nicholas, author of Being and Becoming Indigenous Archaeologists "Sonya Atalay shows archaeologists how the process of Community Based Participatory Research can move our efforts at collaboration with local communities beyond theory and good intentions to a sustainable practice. This is a game-changing book that every archaeologist must read." - Randall H. McGuire, author of Archaeology as Political Action

Presenting examples from the fields of critical race studies, cultural resource management, digital archaeology, environmental studies, and heritage studies, Trowels in the Trenches demonstrates the many different ways archaeology can be used to contest social injustice. This volume shows that activism in archaeology does not need to involve radical or explicitly political actions but can be practiced in subtler forms as a means of studying the past, informing the present, and creating a better future. In case studies that range from the Upper Paleolithic period to the modern era and span the globe, contributors show how contemporary economic, environmental, political, and social issues are manifestations of past injustices. These essays find legacies of marginalization in art, toys, houses, and other components of the material world. As they illuminate inequalities and forgotten histories, these case studies exemplify how even methods such as 3D modeling and database management can be activist when they are used to preserve artifacts and heritage sites and to safeguard knowledge over generations. While the archaeologists in this volume focus on different topics and time periods and use many different practices in their research, they all seek to expand their work beyond the networks and perspectives of modern capitalism in which the discipline developed. These studies support the argument that at its core, archaeology is an interdisciplinary research endeavor armed with a broad methodological and theoretical arsenal that should be used to benefit all members of society. Contributors: |Christopher P. Barton | Stephen A. Brighton | Tiffany Cain | Stacey L. Camp | Kasey Diserens Morgan | Yamoussa Fane | Daouda Keita | Nathan Klembara | Ora V. Marek-Martinez | Christopher N. Matthews | Bernard K. Means | Vinod Nautiyal | Kyle Somerville | Moussa dit Martin Tessougue | Kerry F. Thompson | Joe Watkins | Andrew J. Webster

Pedagogy and Practice in Heritage Studies presents teaching strategies for helping students think critically about the meanings of the past today. In these pragmatic case studies, experienced teachers discuss ways to integrate the values of heritage studies into archaeology curricula, illustrating how the two fields enrich each other and how perspectives drawn from teaching public archaeology invite such engagement. The contributors argue for encouraging empathy, which can lead to awareness of the continuity between past and present; for reflecting on contemporary cultural norms; and for engagement with current issues of social and climate justice. These practical examples model ways to introduce diverse perspectives on history in pre-college, undergraduate, and graduate contexts while frankly assessing the challenges and pitfalls of these approaches. Emphasizing the importance of heritage studies principles and active learning in archaeological education, this handbook and its companion, History and Approaches to Heritage Studies, provide tools to equip archaeologists and heritage professionals with collaborative, community-based, and activist approaches to the past. Contributors: Susan J. Bender | Richard Effland | Ricardo J. Elia | Frances Hayashida | A. Gwynn Henderson | Elizabeth Kryder-Reid | Meredith Anderson Langlitz | Nicolas Laracuente | Shereen Lerner | Alicia Ebbitt McGill | Lewis C. "Skip" Messenger, Jr. | Phyllis Mauch Messenger | Amalia Pérez-Juez | Thomas Pluckhahn | Charles S. White Volumes in the series Cultural Heritage Studies, edited by Paul A. Shackel

This volume provides a powerful alternative to the Western paradigms that have governed archaeological inquiry and heritage studies in Africa. Community-based Heritage Research in Africa boldly shifts focus away from top-down community engagements, usually instigated by elite academic and heritage institutions, to examine locally initiated projects. Schmidt explores how and why local research initiatives, which are often motivated by rapid culture change caused by globalization, arose among the Haya people of western Tanzania. In particular, the trauma of HIV/AIDS resulted in the loss of elders who had performed oral traditions and rituals at sacred places, the two most recognized forms of heritage among the Haya as well as distinct alternatives to the authorized heritage discourse favored around the globe. Examining three local initiatives, Schmidt draws on his experience as an anthropologist invited to collaborate and co-produce with the Haya to provide a poignant rendering of the successes, conflicts, and failures that punctuated their participatory community research efforts. This frank appraisal privileges local voices and focuses attention on the unique and important contributions that such projects can make to the preservation of regional history. Through this blend of personalized narrative and analytical examination, the book provides fresh insights into African archaeology and heritage studies.

Virtual heritage has been explained as virtual reality applied to cultural heritage, but this definition only scratches the surface of the fascinating applications, tools and challenges of this fast-changing interdisciplinary field. This book provides an accessible but concise edited coverage of the main topics, tools and issues in virtual heritage. Leading international scholars have provided chapters to explain current issues in accuracy and precision; challenges in adopting advanced animation techniques; shows how archaeological learning can be developed in Minecraft; they propose mixed reality is conceptual rather than just technical; they explore how useful Linked Open Data can be for art history; explain how accessible photogrammetry can be but also ethical and practical issues for applying at scale; provide insight into how to provide interaction in museums involving the wider public; and describe issues in evaluating virtual heritage projects not often addressed even in scholarly papers. The book will be of particular interest to students and scholars in museum studies, digital archaeology, heritage studies, architectural history and modelling, virtual environments.

This volume provides new insights into the distinctive contributions that community archaeology and heritage make to the decolonization of archaeological practice. Using innovative approaches, the contributors explore important initiatives which have protected and revitalized local heritage, initiatives that involved archaeologists as co-producers rather than leaders. These case studies underline the need completely reshape archaeological practice, engaging local and indigenous communities in regular dialogue and recognizing their distinctive needs, in order to break away from the top-down power relationships that have previously characterized archaeology in Africa. Community Archaeology and Heritage in Africa reflects a determined effort to change how archaeology is taught to future generations. Through community-based participatory approaches, archaeologists and heritage professionals can benefit from shared resources and local knowledge; and by sharing decision-making with members of local communities, archaeological inquiry can enhance their way of life, ameliorate their human rights concerns, and meet their daily needs to build better futures. Exchanging traditional power structures for research design and implementation, the examples outlined in this volume demonstrate the discipline’s exciting capacity to move forward to achieve its potential as a broader, more accessible, and more inclusive field.

Archaeological practice is currently shifting in response to feminist, indigenous, activist, community-based, and anarchic critiques of how archaeology is practiced and how science is used to interpret the past lives of people. Inspired by the calls for a different way of doing archaeology, this volume presents a case here for a heart-centered archaeological practice. Heart-centered practice emerged in care-based disciplines, such as nursing and various forms of therapy, as a way to recognize the importance of caring for those on whom we work, and as an avenue to explore how our interactions with others impacts our own emotions and heart. Archaeologists are disciplined to separate mind and heart, a division which harkens back to the origins of western thought. The dualism between the mental and the physical is fundamental to the concept that humans can objectively study the world without being immersed in it. Scientific approaches to understanding the world assume there is an objective world to be studied and that humans must remove themselves from that world in order to find the truth. An archaeology of the heart rejects this dualism; rather, we see mind, body, heart, and spirit as inextricable. An archaeology of the heart provides a new space for thinking through an integrated, responsible, and grounded archaeology, where there is care for the living and the dead, acknowledges the need to build responsible relationships with communities, and with the archaeological record, and emphasize the role of rigor in how work and research is conducted. The contributions bring together archaeological practitioners from across the globe in different contexts to explore how heart-centered practice can impact archaeological theory, methodology, and research throughout the discipline.