Creating Community and Engaging Community: The Foundations of the Estate Little Princess Archaeology Project in St. Croix, United States Virgin Islands

Abstract

This article discusses how Co-Principal Investigators that designed and executed the Estate Little Princess Archaeology Project (ELPAP) came together as a community, to demonstrate how such a formation within the discipline, with all its ups and downs, facilitates the skills needed to conduct community archaeology. By using the ELPAP as a case study, this article provides a multiscale examination of the ELPAP, expanding the discourse on community archaeology to include community building practices among archaeologists, between organizations, and with communities impacted by archaeological work.

The future of archaeology is (still) community collaboration

“…The small but growing number of Black archaeologists in the field has changed not only who is involved in archaeology but also how collaborative research is conducted with African Diaspora communities (Flewellen et al 2021(Flewellen et al , 2022Reid 2022;White 2022). For instance, this new generation of researchers have renewed pressing questions about the ethical treatment of African American human remains (Dunnavant et al 2021), while bringing attention to systemic forms of anti-Blackness within the discipline (Franklin et al 2020).…”

Indigenous Archaeologies, Shell Heaps, and Climate Change

“…This is one of a handful of field schools (globally) that covers these types of costs for students. Flewellen and colleagues (2022:162, 164–165) note that the high cost of field schools is often a barrier to participation, especially for students from marginalized communities. According to the Institute of Field Research, on average, participating in an archaeological field school costs approximately $4,300 just for attendance (Flewellen et al 2022:162, 164–165; Heath-Stout and Hannigan 2020).…”

Introduction

“…Of late, Indigenous, African diasporic, and community‐centric approaches in archaeology have led the charge in attempts to right the abuses archaeologically oriented heritage practices have long perpetuated (see, for example Smith, 2006). The growing number of projects taking these approaches as their central ethos (Colwell, 2016; Wylie, 2014, 2019) is causing what might be the most significant paradigm shift in the field since the postprocessual movement (e.g., Acabado and Martin, 2020; Cipolla and Quinn, 2016; Cowie, Teeman, and LeBlanc, 2019; Diserens Morgan and Leventhal, 2020; Flewellen et al., 2022; Fryer and Raczek, 2020; Gonzalez, 2016; Lyons, 2013; McAnany and Rowe, 2015; Schmidt and Pikirayi, 2016; Sesma, 2022; Surface‐Evans and Jones, 2020). There's ample overlap between those projects utilizing community collaborative methodologies and those projects whose aims center on repairing injustices and combating the epistemic violence permeating our field—a result often of our tendencies to prioritize archaeological understandings of the past while excluding other voices and perspectives (Gnecco, 2009; Schneider and Hayes, 2020).…”