Archaeology in 2021: Repatriation, reclamation, and reckoning with historical trauma

Abstract

Archaeology in 2021 was characterized by a continued call to use the tools of the discipline to document the violence of settler colonialism in the past and present, pushing anthropology to reckon with its own role in perpetuating historical trauma. The tension between disciplinary reflection and reform was most clearly articulated in the use of archaeological geophysics to detect the unmarked graves of incarcerated Indigenous children who died at residential and boarding schools in Canada and the United States. The highly publicized investigation of these schools has brought renewed attention to issues of repatriation and historical reclamation for many communities impacted by settler colonialism. These discussions have reverberated throughout the discipline, prompting revisions to the Society for American Archaeology's “Statement Concerning the Treatment of Human Remains,” reopening conversations around an African American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, and informing debates around the ethics of DNA research. These conversations are part of a larger movement toward decolonizing the field by using archaeological methods to explore marginalized histories and support communities most impacted by the violences of settler colonialism.

Thematic Analysis of Indigenous Perspectives on Archaeology and Cultural Resource Management Industries

“…Physical Artifacts and Linking Indigenous People with the Past: "It Gives You a Connection" Archaeologists argue that the incorporation of Indigenous peoples in archaeological practice-or the transformation of people from objects of study to participants of study (Colwell-Chanthaphonh 2012:274)-has changed the theoretical trajectory of the discipline (see Cipolla et al 2019). Indigenous perspectives have impacted the methods of the discipline (see Gonzalez and Edwards 2020) and popularized the use of technology, such as ground-penetrating radar, which archaeologists use to identify potential unmarked residential school burials in Canada (see Montgomery and Supernant 2022;Simons et al 2021;Whiting 2023). Scholars have written less about the transformative effect archaeology has on Indigenous community members who practice in academic and CRM industries (see Watkins [2005] for a similar approach, or Cole and Harris [2022] for Indigenous perspectives on UNDRIP).…”

Caring labor and the affective economy in the making of the Caribbean

“…Indeed, Harris (2021, 233–34) sees one of the jobs of archaeology to actualize virtual pasts in the present, a politics of knowledge that cultivates alternative understandings of the world. A shared commitment to opening up narrow conceptions of history can be seen across anthropology and archaeology in exploration of futures, the virtual, and various speculative positions (Blaser, 2014; Crellin et al., 2021; Escobar, 2020; Harris, 2021; Montgomery and Supernant, 2022; Puig de la Bellacasa, 2011; Reilly, 2019; Richard, 2019; Rizvi, 2019; Salazar et al., 2017; Scott, 2014). An interest in past care and anticipated futures shifts the relations between ourselves and the subjects of our inquiries, not changing the “facts on the ground” but changing the way we observe and present things (Puig de la Bellacasa, 2011), in this case to more emancipatory and inclusive archaeologies.…”

Archaeology in 2022: Counter‐myths for hopeful futures

“…Aside from the obvious example that European “expansion” led to entire homelands being stolen from Indigenous and First Nations peoples, modern nation‐building has included myriad deliberate and atrocious attempts to ethnically and culturally cleanse Indigenous cultures from the face of the earth, for example, by forcibly removing Indigenous children from their families and incarcerating them in boarding schools, where countless numbers died (cf. Montgomery and Supernant, 2022). Magnani and Magnani (2022) similarly observe the harms proliferated by colonial arrangements in relation to Sámi populations just north of the Arctic Circle.…”

“…Bruchac, 2018). But as Montgomery and Supernant (2022, 801) concluded in the last American Anthropologist year‐in‐review article on archaeology, “While there remain areas of tension and backlash, our review of archaeology in 2021 indicates that the discipline is at a threshold, poised to make meaningful contributions to a hopeful future.” To achieve our aims for this year‐in‐review article, we ask the following questions: How do myths and grand narratives define our values inside and outside of our discipline? From where do these epistemologies come?…”

“…Hopeful, future‐oriented approaches to archaeology, including anarchist models, Black and Indigenous futures, or social movements like Landback, are often ridiculed as impossibly utopian, only workable on a small scale, and distractions from the “real” science of archaeology (cf. Montgomery and Supernant, 2022, 808). They are habitually and reflexively labeled as “imaginary” futures, in contrast to capitalist and colonialist ones that are naturalized as being more “realistic” attempts to foresee social possibilities (Fisher, 2009).…”