Decolonizing/Indigenous Archaeology: A Literature Review

Another example comes from Sonya Atalay's book Community Based Archaeology:

Research with, by, and for Indigenous and Local Communities. While this book covers a huge spectrum of issues relating to the theoretical and methodological sides of decolonizing archaeology, the only part that will be discussed from the book is Atalay's work with the Indigenous community closest to the site Çatalhöyük in modern day Turkey, as many of Atalay's views on the other issues are presented earlier in this paper using one of her articles. This example is a very good one to discuss, as this was a project that had already been going on for several years before Atalay became involved with the community outreach side, showing that even pre-existing projects can have an element of Indigenous archaeology added to them. The first step that Atalay discusses is the choosing of a community to work with. While this may seem like a non-essential part of the process she believes it is one of the most important and often time most controversial steps, of a project. This is because there might be what she has termed "multiple stakeholders" who might all have legitimate reasons for being the Indigenous communities involved with the project, and picking one or the other could lead to hostilities between the separate communities or the communities and the archaeologists. To help overcome these potential problems Atalay started out by "conducting a series of interviews with residents from the six…communities [geographically closest to the site]" (Atalay 2012:13).

Through these interviews Atalay found that all of the six communities agreed that one particular village, Küçükköy, was the best suited and had the most legitimate claim for being included in the research project. By doing this, Atalay and the research team was able to avoid any potential conflicts that may have arisen over any perceived "favoritism" towards that community.

The next step this author identifies was distributing materials about the site to help educate community members about it, as well as to get the word out that the team wanted to involve the community in the project. This was accomplished through "a regular newsletter, informational kiosks, site and lab tours, a comic series for children, and an onsite annual community festival" (Atalay 2012:14). In addition to this, she continually conducted interviews and encouraged feedback, comments, and criticisms from the Indigenous communities about how they thought the project was succeeding, failing, or on potential areas of research and community development they wished to see involved with the project. From this feedback mechanism Atalay says that they have been able to increase "local involvement in the management, protection, and heritage tourism at the Çatalhöyük site" as well as a number of projects that directly give back to the community such as "a traveling archaeological theatre troupe…a women's craft co-operative…using the dig house buildings…to create handicrafts with archaeological designs to sell…an internship research training program …and a village based community cultural heritage board is in place to participate in regional site planning and management making decisions" (Atalay 2012:15).

Although the author admits that "this collaboration did not follow the path I expected…it has made incredible strides and continues to grow" which she is happy with as the community was involved in deciding the path the project would take and what they wanted or needed to get out of it (Atalay 2012:15).

One of Atalay's main benefits Atalay says that the archaeologists at Çatalhöyük are getting from their connection with the local community is the dispelling of long held misconceptions about the field of archeology. She notes that several members of the community believed that the research team was "using the flotation machine to recover gold from the mound" and thus get rich off their heritage (Atalay 2012:217). She goes on to explain that their "local interns were able to assure them that this was not the case" and says that it was important to let the local interns tell the community this as "it means something very different when community members hear this sort of explanation from…someone they know and trustrather than from an archaeologist" (Atalay 2012:217). Another misconception that was overturned was that archaeologists were selling the artifacts they recovered for personal gain, which she says is not just a problem at this site, but across mot of Turkey. The last major idea that the collaboration helped to correct was that "local community members thought archaeologists were simply digging up bodies and dumping them in a mass grave" and what was most disheartening about this revelation was that the man who asked what was actually happening to the bodies "had been part of the daily excavation process for years, yet was completely unaware of what happened to the human remains after they were excavated" (Atalay 2012:218). While to many this may not seem like a big "benefit" to understanding what went on at the site, Atalay feels that archaeologists everywhere can benefit from correcting these long held misconceptions, because it will help to break down the barriers and build trust between the archaeologists and the communities they wish to work with.

The last example of a project that used archaeology in a decolonized way comes from the far north east of the United States. In Frederick Wiseman's book Reclaiming the Ancestors:

Decolonizing a Taken Prehistory of the Far Northeast the author shows how the most recent archaeological evidence can be used to dispel stereotypes about the ancient Wabanaki peoples.

The long held belief was that the Wabanaki were backward to far inferior to surrounding peoples such as the Iroquois or other Northeastern and even Midwestern cultures. The author terms this idea the "Dumb Abenaki" model and says that it is based off of diffusionist ideas that the Wabanaki people were only passive recipients of many other cultures original ideas (Wiseman 2005:14). What is most perplexing to the author is that this idea is still prevalent even though "well dated archaeological data reveals that the Wabanakis were not a cultural 'backwater'" (Wiseman 2005:15). This book was of particular interest to me as it moves from the purely methodological and theoretical discussions, and actually presents the analysis of the sites that he uses to dispel the "Dumb Abenaki" model. He actually discussed the archaeological evidence and presents it in light of Wabanaki oral histories and origin stories. One very neat thing he included was "historical reconstructions" in which he blends the current archaeological The main area where this author's research is helping out his Native community is in providing evidence for the possible upcoming land claims cases surrounding the Wabanaki people. He says that the "state of Vermont and the Province of Quebec will certainly attempt to "prove" in court that ethnic Iroquois settled Vermont and Southern Quebec, leaving the Wabanaki as transients…and Wabanaki claims to the area may be invalidated" (Wiseman 2005:235). This author states that should a court case actually arise in which the Wabanaki claim to their land is challenged he will most assuredly "use all of my knowledge, all of my heart, and all of my cunning …to defeat the settler governments [of Vermont and Quebec]…and to defend my homeland" (Wiseman 2005:35). Only time will tell if a court case will actually come about, but if it should Indigenous archaeology such as this study will be over immense importance to supporting the Wabanaki peoples, its rights, and its traditional land use area. With the regional discussions over, we can now move onto the second area of this topic, that is the one of Indigenous archaeological field schools. I feel the best example comes from Gonzalez et al.'s article called Archaeology for the Seventh Generation. This paper discusses a field school at Fort Ross in Sonoma County California, provided by the University of California-Berkley in collaboration with the Kashaya Pomo tribe. The ultimate goal of this project was to produce an interpretive trail around the sight that would show the importance of the fort to the Kashaya people and the surrounding economy. What seemed to me to be the most important aspect of this project is that it "did not consciously set out to decolonize archaeology" but ended up doing so anyway (Gonzalez et al. 2006:396). I see this as a very positive direction for archaeology because it was just "natural" for the principal investigators to carry out the field school in this way showing that a decolonized archaeology is slowly moving away from being a "specialized field" and towards being the dominant form of archaeology practiced.

Several ways that this field school was decolonized was that, first of all, all people were in continual contact with local tribal members. And by all people, they really mean all, including undergraduate and graduate students, volunteers, and the field directors interviewed, spoke with, and were constantly collaborating with the Kashaya tribal members. This helps to break down existing power barriers between not just the archaeological team and the tribe, but also within the archaeological team as well, making all participants feel like they have something important to contribute to the project. In addition they did things like hiring on local women to cook the meals for the field school, and while they note that this is usually seen as an inferior position in most field school, "among the Kashaya cooking for large groups of people is a highly respected and dignified activity" thus placing the women in a high status role. (Gonzalez et al. 2006:400). They also respected the tribes concerns over women's menstrual cycles and what the women participants could or could not do on the site during their cycles. This led to a better understanding of the tribal customs as well as building a stronger relationship and trust between the research team and the tribe. Another area of tribal custom they observed was the abstention from consuming alcohol while on or near the site, or by anybody who would be digging the site that day. By following these and other guidelines, the team helped "make the field camp a place in which the Kashaya elders felt comfortable" again strengthening the bonds between the team and the tribe.

The main benefit the authors feel that the archaeologists received from this decolonized field school was learning about the traditional customs and beliefs of the Kashaya people. They also were invited to participate in tribal ceremonies regarding the site, leading to a greater appreciation and understanding as to why the Kashaya do and believe what they do. On this the authors say "by spending time with Kashaya elders and hearing their oral traditions, the students and staff…gained a deeper insight into the…Kashaya cultural resources and landscapes around Fort Ross and how they might be interpreted to general audiences" (Gonzalez et al. 2006:409). Indeed the authors believe that if the only thing the students took away from this project was learning how to interact with, understand, and respect the ideas and beliefs of another culture then the field school had been successful.

The final piece of literature to be examined is the book Collaborating at the Trowel's Edge: Teaching and Learning in Indigenous Archaeology edited by Stephen Silliman. This book is a collection of essays, papers, and articles that deals with multiple case examples of decolonized field schools from all over the United States. The editor states that one of his goals is for archaeologists to quit worrying so much about "the sharpness of the trowel's edge-a favorite obsession in North American field archaeology- [and] should worry more about who grips he trowel's handle and whether their voices are heard" (Silliman 2008:5). Since discussing every article is far beyond the scope of this paper, I will instead focus on several of the main ideas that this book talks about. The first is what Mills et al. call "field schools without trowels" in which the field school focuses more on "mapping equipment, GPS receivers, cameras, computers, data recorders, and the concepts of community collaboration" rather than actually excavating (Mills et al. 2008:35). While they note that some excavations did take place, they say that "trowels were one of the least used tools that students became familiar with" (Mills et al. 2008:34).

Other areas of interest in this collection were ethics classes held at various field schools which, from personal experience and communications, are not usually included in the run of the mill field school. These classes included different topics like discussing the pros and cons of current ethics codes of several major professional archaeological groups like the Society for American Archaeology and the World Archaeological Congress, to legislated ethics, and how Indigenous ethics might be different from other's ethical codes. One important area of interest was the call for archaeology to be accepted as a "craft" given that "archaeologists craft a product-history-through a combination of…archaeological information…and a responsiveness to communities" (Silliman and Dring 2008:69). This helps to decolonize the field by implying the Indigenous histories are not discovered by archaeologists, but are rather created by the archaeologists in collaboration with the Indigenous communities that they work with.

The final area of this book, and indeed this paper, to be discussed is one that I feel is of the upmost importance to a decolonized archaeology. This is what author Jack Rossen calls his "expanded identity" that came about in the course of his work. He says an expanded identity would be characterized by the archaeologist being an "advocate for contemporary Native issues, constructing a relationship with Native people that transcends archaeology" (Rossen 2008:107).

He says that to him personally this means that "whether or not people approve of my research activities, my advocacy and community involvement have somewhat submerged my identity as an archaeologist" (Rossen 2008:108). He says that this should not be used to hide research data or processes, but rather place them "within the broader framework and identity of the community activist" (Rossen 2008:108). I believe that all archaeologists involved in Indigenous archaeology should take on this expanded identity and even when their project with a particular community is over, that they should still be involved with that community, its needs, wants, desires, and political struggles. If all archaeologists can do this, I believe our field will begin to be recognized as one that "does some good, instead of one that does no harm" (Watkins 2000: