Category: Archaeological Accountability
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The Call is Coming From Inside the Discipline! The Inability to Recognise Racism within Archaeology
Over the past few months, I have found myself becoming increasingly frustrated with some of the rhetoric I’ve heard from white colleagues in the archaeology sector with regards to racism. Mainly, there seems to be this sense that racism is either something that occurs outside of the field – in that there are bad faith
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Does Zooarchaeology Matter? A Case for Actionable Animal Archaeologies
The following is a transcript of my keynote talk from the Zooarchaeology Saves the World conference held in May 2022. Introduction Does zooarchaeology matter? Perhaps this is an intentionally provocative question to ask zooarchaeologists but given the status of the world today – the intensification of climate change, the rise of fascism across the globe,
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Stuck in the Past: Silence & Complicity in Archaeology’s Current Harms
I have been meaning to write a proper blog post about my frustrations regarding some of the discourse within archaeology around making amends for the discipline’s contributions to oppression and violence – in fact, this post has probably been sat unfinished in my drafts for a few years now. But these frustrations have certainly reached
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Moving Towards Decolonisation – Proposing a Framework for Action in Universities
The following transcript is from a conference paper I presented in 2022 as part of the Making Diversity Interventions Count Annual Conference at the University of Braford. It is also an expansion of a previous paper I presented on decolonising zooarchaeology, and proposes a more institutional-wide approach to moving towards decolonisation. Introduction Since the 2020
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Repairing Relations through Research: An Archival Approach to Institutional Accountability
Note: This blog post is adapted from an abandoned journal paper that I originally wrote in 2021. Introduction From the perspective of many people from marginalised backgrounds and historically looted communities, the museum continues to be a symbol of colonialism. Despite renewed calls for decolonisation, repatriation, and restitution, museums are arguably still behind in progressing
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Unearthing the Uncomfortable: Reflections on the Continued Lack of Diversity in British Archaeology
The following text is a transcript of a talk I gave in April 2022 for the Norfolk and Norwich Archaeological Society’s Community Archaeology Conference, held at the University of East Anglia. Please note that I use terminology such as BAME (Black, Asian, Minority Ethnic) throughout this talk – this is mostly done for ease of
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The Unbearable Whiteness of Being (in British Archaeology)
At this point, it’s not at all shocking to declare that there is a real problem with regards to race within British archaeology; the most recent Profiling the Profession survey shows that 97% of the field is white (Aitchison and Rocks-Macqueen 2021), and there has been a number of articles reiterating the lack of diversity
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Archaeology as Violence: Confronting the Dynamics of a Violent Practice and Theory
Note: This is part of a book chapter I wrote a few years ago for a now-defunct project. After a few attempts to submit it to several journals, I gave up on it. I recently brought it out to aid in the writing of a new paper and figured it might be worth posting it
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Archaeological Accountability
Unsurprisingly, the current pandemic has got many academics, particularly those of us who are very early in our careers, rethinking our future plans. With many job opportunities cancelled or otherwise postponed, the idea of remaining in academia feels rather pointless, or at least a much bigger risk than it used to be. I came across
Animal Archaeology 