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 a boiling point over the past few months as I’ve watched major organisations and societies that seemingly represent the field remain silent in the face of the genocide of Palestinians.
A sign from a protest in support of Palestine which reads “If you’re silent during a genocide you are complicit.”
Others have already written more eloquently than I ever could about why archaeologists in particular have a responsibility to speak out for Palestine (e.g., Emmott 2023, Blouin 2024, Leathem 2024, Sills 2024), so I won’t reiterate what has already been said. Instead, I want to think about why there seems to be such a silence from archaeologists as a whole, not just about Palestine but also in discussing the ways in which archaeology continues to enact harm against others. More specifically, I have been frustrated with what feels to be a widespread lack of interest in actually examining how the discipline’s historic contributions to colonialism and white supremacy are still fundamental to contemporary archaeology and are still causing harm today, particularly to marginalised people both inside and outside of the discipline.
Archaeologists as a whole are seemingly not afraid to call out the past sins of the discipline, with the popularisation of “decolonisation” (both accurately and performatively utilised) within academic circles leading to a more concentrated effort of archaeologists to critically re-examine the discipline and its historic roots. And there has also been increased movement to actually identify and address the lack of diversity and inclusivity in contemporary archaeological practice. But the conversation seems to get quieter when it comes to thinking about archaeology as an agent of violence in the present tense – and here I am not speaking about pseudoarchaeology undertaken by people who are, more often than not, from outside of the discipline (although pseudoarchaeologists are indeed causing much harm through their work). No, I want to specifically talk about contributions to harm by archaeology and archaeologists.
I often feel as though archaeologists want to view the most egregious forms of harm perpetuated by the discipline lie in the past, and that while archaeology has much to do as far as become more inclusive and accessible, it is otherwise “not as bad”. There is a sense that perhaps we as practitioners of archaeology can avoid complicity in the worst elements of the field through maintaining temporal distance in this matter – allowing us to disavow and condemn archaeological violence from afar, confining it to the past. Even in discourse around “decolonising archaeology”, there is a habit by some of referring to archaeological harm in the past tense, with decolonial actions as a means of making amends for historic violence (of which I am guilty of as well, to be honest).
But the truth is that we cannot confine the harms of archaeology in the past. The violent ideologies and practices that archaeology helped develop and legitimise are still here, still inflicting harm. The eugenics and racial theory that archaeological thought has historically contributed to (Challis 2016) cannot be separated from how it manifests in the continued justification for racism. The legitimisation that archaeology has given to looting and theft during colonialism (Stahn 2023, pp. 39-40) continues in the proliferation of paternalistic attitudes by museums towards demands for repatriation and sovereignty over stolen artefacts and human remains. And the weaponisation of archaeology and cultural heritage to justify mass violence (including the continuation of settler colonialism, apartheid, and genocide) has not be confined to the history books – it is happening right now.
Of course, it should be clarified that while silence is arguably widespread (particularly among organisations and societies representing the field), individual archaeologists themselves have been speaking out and making the crucial connections between the past and present (e.g., Schneider and Hayes 2020, Brunache et al. 2021, Flewellen et al. 2021, Hartemann 2022). These archaeologists are often – and perhaps unsurprisingly – from underrepresented and marginalised communities themselves who unfortunately have the lived experiences that make finding the connections between past and present harms by the discipline much more apparent. But archaeology is still a discipline made predominately of, and prioritises the voices of, white, cishet people (Heath-Stout 2020), particularly those from the imperial core – while that remains the case, the silence will likely remain.
As negative as this entire post has been, I’d like to be proven wrong. I’d really like to see more archaeologists – particularly those who have the privilege and power – to speak out against not just the past harms of our field, but the present ones as well. But unfortunately, the continued silence of the broader discipline in the face of genocide appears to reiterate that archaeologists are not ready – or perhaps not willing – to accept that archaeology’s role in colonialism and oppression is not just confined to the past, but continues today. To remain silent is to remain complicit – but archaeologists can speak up and make the decision to actively do something about the harms our field perpetuates, rather than pretend it does not exist.
There is always a choice to break the silence. Today is just as good as any day to start.
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Brunache, P. et al. (2021). Contemporary Archaeology and Anti-Racism: A Manifesto from the European Society of Black and Allied Archaeologists, European Journal of Archaeology, 24(3), pp. 294–298.
Challis, D. (2016). Skull Triangles: Flinders Petrie, Race Theory and Biometrics. Bulletin of the History of Archaeology, 26(1): 5, pp. 1–8.
Flewellen, A.O. et al. (2021). “The Future of Archaeology Is Antiracist”: Archaeology in the Time of Black Lives Matter, American Antiquity, 86(2), pp. 224–243.
Hartemann, G.O. (2022). Unearthing Colonial Violence: Griotic Archaeology and Community-Engagement in Guiana. International Journal of Historical Archaeology , 26, pp. 79-117.
Heath-Stout, L.E. (2020). Who Writes about Archaeology? An Intersectional Study of Authorship in Archaeological Journals, American Antiquity, 85(3), pp. 407–426.
Schneider, T.D., & Hayes, K. (2020). Epistemic Colonialism: Is it Possible to Decolonize Archaeology? The American Indian Quarterly, 44(2), pp. 127-148.
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.
A selection of quotes critically engaging with decolonisation efforts in institutions (from the original presentation)
Introduction
Since the 2020 revival of the Black Lives Matter movement, there has been a wave of institutional-level initiatives focused not only on equity, diversity, and inclusion, but also on decolonisation. Two years later, many of these initiatives have been shown to be simply performative in nature, prompting much critical discussion from academics and scholars in decolonial and post-colonial studies regarding the actualities of “decolonising” the university.
For example, despite the popularity of Tuck and Yang’s (2012) Decolonization is Not a Metaphor, the language associated with decolonial theory continues to be misused and co-opted to the point of being primarily metaphorical in nature. As such, decolonisation becomes a synonym for broader social justice movements in academia and is ultimately deprived of its original political and praxis-based orientation as resistance against colonisation (Pai 2021, Fúnez-Flores 2022).
Similarly, there has been much criticism with regards to the gradual decentring of decolonial work produced by theorists and scholars from the Global South. By ignoring the original historical contexts and traditions of Indigenous and African decolonial theory, those in the Global North have been able to, ironically, colonise decolonisation (Tuck and Yang 2012, Kumalo 2021 p. 163) and continue the colonial practice of extraction from the Global South (Grosfoguel 2013, Todd 2016), where research already suffers from devaluation due to inequitable practices of scholarship (Moosavi 2020).
These issues work cyclically, in that misuse of decolonial theory leads to its decoupling from its historical lineages, which in turn leads to further misuse and appropriation. Such degradation of decolonisation into something more “digestible” continues to move the concept further away from its radical roots as well, depriving it of its associated ethical and political commitments (le Grange et al. 2020, Opara 2021, Fúnez-Flores 2021a). Decolonisation is transformed into what Adebisi (2020) refers to as “tick-box exercises” that do little to disrupt “hierarchised epistemic hegemonies”, and instead act as what Tuck and Yang (2012, p.10) have referred to as “settler moves to innocence” that merely relieve settler-coloniser feelings of guilt and responsibility without actually conceding power or privilege.
Proposing a Framework of Action
Although it is vital that these critiques are seriously considered during the development of institutional-level decolonisation initiatives, there also is a sense of urgency for action within universities that has only intensified since 2020. As both Adebisi (2020) and Dhillon (2021) have both noted, while neoliberal institutions may be unable to truly decolonise, they can still cultivate environments that allow for robust discussion of colonialism and create the potentiality for decolonisation. Utilising these suggestions alongside Appleton’s (2019) recommendation that those who are not ready to commit to decolonial actions instead focus on planning on how they may do so in the future, I propose instead that we utilise a framework in which the aim is to move towards decolonisation. This framework was originally developed with regards to decolonial approaches to zooarchaeology (Fitzpatrick 2022) but has now been slightly expanded to consider the broader spectrum of institution-wide initiatives.
At one end of this framework are the performative forms of “decolonisation” that we are trying to avoid; this includes diversifying without structural change, misusing the terminology, unethical practices of citation and engaging with scholarship from the Global South, co-opting decolonial struggles for academic prestige, and producing unequal power dynamics. At the other end of this framework is decolonisation and what it would ideally entail for academia, although it is likely that we would ultimately need to move beyond the confines of our current institutions. This would include huge acts of transformation and change, such as the creation of new ways for ethical knowledge production, the dismantlement of all colonial institutions and their spheres of influence, and ultimately giving marginalised and colonised peoples autonomy over research related to culture and sovereignty over their colonised lands.
The main focus of this framework is found between these two ends, where we are avoiding performative actions and instead moving towards decolonisation using actions that are not themselves decolonial but still strive towards the values of decolonial practice. A major component of this framework would be in changing practices and structures to eliminate harmful power dynamics; this would involve reaffirming our positionality to the broader decolonial struggle, developing ways to use our resources as institutions in the Global North to support decolonial work in the Global South, and creating active and equitable partnership with marginalised and colonised peoples. In addition, the curriculum would need to be diversified and globalised, while also committing to the decentring of decolonial work situated in the Global North. Finally, accountability processes would need to be established by colonial institutions to make amends for past, present, and future harm through proactive restitution.
This framework is designed as a process because decolonisation itself is not a single event; rather, it is a complex and unsettling process of unlearning, self-reflecting, and relinquishing the powers and privileges that are obtained through colonial processes. Situated between ineffectual inaction and the complete dismantling of institutions, this framework of moving towards decolonisation encourages the maintenance of one’s positionality as an academic in the Global North while also providing ample space for developing the potentiality for decolonisation in the future.
Useful Action or Useless Semantics?
In proposing this framework, we must also consider its theoretical strengths and weaknesses in being useful to invoking change in the university. On one hand, the framework provides smaller, more actionable steps towards decolonisation while also allowing space to imagine decolonial futures that may expand beyond the confines of the university. In addition, this framework allows for acts of solidarity within our neoliberal institutions for decolonial actions occurring externally, encouraging those of us in the Global North to provide resources and support to work being done in the Global South. Ultimately, this framework echoes Adebisi (2020) in supporting the decolonisation of minds and scholars through changes in curriculum and practices, which may eventually support the development of mechanisms for decolonisation that breach the limitations of the university.
However, much of this is idealistic at best and highlights some of the weaknesses of this proposed framework. Any decolonial or decolonial-adjacent approach will ultimately be limited by the confines of the neoliberal university, which is already implicated in the “coloniality of power, knowledge, and being” (Fúnez-Flores 2021b, p.187). The risk of co-option and misuse also remains, as any decolonial theory produced through the academy ultimately feeds into what Fúnez-Flores refers to as a “political economy of ideas emanating from privileged epistemic, social, institutional, and geographic positions” (ibid, p. 193). There is also the notion that such a framework is too preoccupied with semantics, thus risking complacency and a lack of action due to its focus on curriculum and literature (Tuck and Yang 2012, p. 19).
Although the usefulness of such a framework is still unclear, I would argue that it at least highlights two important points of consideration for academics interested in decolonial approaches: that we must approach such work with honesty of intent and positionality, and that we must also accept the fact that our current institutions may inherently limit the work we attempt to do. While I would argue that we as academics in these institutions have a moral imperative to work towards decolonisation in the ways that we can, I would also stress that we must actively work against being used as tools of neo-colonialism through the appropriation of this work. Decolonisation is not a single event, but a process of struggle and if we are committed to the cause, we must also accept that it will require deep reflection of ourselves, of our work, and more importantly, of our place in the greater geopolitics of knowledge production and liberation.
References
Adebisi, F. (2020). Decolonisation is not about ticking a box: It must disrupt. University World News.
Appleton. N.S. (2019) Do Not ‘Decolonize’…if You’re Not Decolonizing: Progressive Language and Planning Beyond a Hollow Academic Rebranding. Critical Ethnic Studies.
Dhillon, S. (2021). An immanent critique of decolonisation projects. Philosophical Inquiry in Education, 28(3), 251-258.
Fitzpatrick, A. (2022) Gesturing Beyond Bones: Proposing a Decolonised Zooarchaeology. Approaches to Decolonising Research. Liverpool John Moores University.
Fúnez-Flores, J.I., (2021a). With such a pyramidal academic structure, it’s not surprising that concepts advanced by decolonial theorists in the Global South tend to be emptied of their ethical & political commitments once re-articulated in the Global North. Twitter.https://twitter.com/Jairo_I_Funez/status/1473663451696300036
Fúnez-Flores, J. I. (2021b). Toward a transgressive decolonial hermeneutics in activist education research. The Handbook of Critical Theoretical Research Methods in Education, 182–198. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429056963-12
Grosfoguel, R. (2013). The structure of knowledge in westernized universities: Epistemic racism/sexism and the four genocides/epistemicides of the long 16th century. Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge, 11(1), 73.
Kumalo, S. H. (2021). Distinguishing between ontology and ‘decolonisation as praxis’. Tydskrif vir letterkunde, 58(1), 162-168.
le Grange, L., du Preez, P., Ramrathan, L., Blignaut, S. (2020). Decolonising the university curriculum or decolonial-washing? A multiple case study. Journal of Education 25–48. https://doi.org/10.17159/2520-9868/i80a02
Moosavi, L. (2020). The decolonial bandwagon and the dangers of intellectual decolonisation. International Review of Sociology, 30(2), 332-354.
Todd, Z. (2016) An Indigenous Feminist’s Take on the Ontological Turn: “Ontology” is Just Another Word for Colonialism. Journal of Historical Sociology, 29(1), pp. 4-22.
Tuck, E., Yang, K.W. (2012). Decolonization is Not a Metaphor. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education, and Society 1.
My work and independent research is supported almost entirely by the generosity of readers – if you’re interested in contributing a tiny bit, you can find my PayPal here.
This is the transcript from a talk I gave in April 2022 for the Enabled Archaeology session of the CIfA2022 Conference.It is an extension of my original blog post on Digging While Depressed, which you can read here.
A slide from the original presentation detailing how we can enable archaeology for everyone by ending ableism.
Digging While Depressed (Fitzpatrick 2018, 2019) was the result of my experiences after being injured on-site during the 2018 fieldwork season, which had led to me spending the next several weeks off-site and alone, tending to my injured arm (and pride) while the rest of the excavation team were on-site. I was filled with many emotions, all of them negative – I felt embarrassed at my ineptitude, guilty that I had let my PhD supervisors down, and ashamed that I could not face my newfound fears that the traumatic event instilled in me. Perhaps the strongest emotion I felt during this period was loneliness as well – not only being away from my colleagues for most of the day as they excavated, but also from friends and loved ones during the fieldwork season. Unsurprisingly, these emotions led me into a major depressive episode, and so I took to Twitter to express these feelings while using the hashtag #DiggingWhileDepressed. To my surprise, other archaeologists from around the world shared their own stories and experiences, indicating that this was a much larger issue than I may have previously imagined. Through these brief discussions on Twitter, as well as some follow-up discussions via email and in-person, several shared factors where identified among these stories. For example, fieldwork is inherently isolating and creates periods of inconsistency in an archaeologist’s daily routine. Employment is similarly inconsistent, with casualisation rampant in commercial sectors across several countries; this creates a sense of precarity, particularly around income, which can cause anxiety. Fieldwork is labour-intensive, often working in poor climates and with similarly poor off-site accommodations. This all culminates in a general notion that discussing mental health among colleagues is “taboo,” that archaeologists should just “get over it,” and that suffering “validates” the work they are doing. I ended my original paper with a call for more concrete actions and practices in place to support the emotional and mental well-being of archaeologists as part of a broader initiative for making the field more accessible for those with disabilities, chronic illnesses, and neurodivergence in the field.
Although the hashtag itself never become particularly popular or really survived beyond 2018, the discussion it generated seems to have continued since then. For example, there seems to be more standardised practices in place to support mental health in the field (e.g., Davis et al. 2021), and calls for treating accommodations and accessibility as part of embedded a more ethical practice into archaeological work (e.g., Peixotto et al. 2021). There has also been work exploring other elements adjacent to the original discussion, including research into how isolation from social media factors into mental health (Eifling 2021) and the pressure to “pass” as non-disabled in the field when you have an invisible disability (Heath-Stout 2022). In my own work, I have continued to explore the ways in which archaeology as it is currently practiced encourages ableist attitudes, and how these elements are further connected to problematic parts of the field, such as its entrenched notions of toxic masculinity, racism, and colonialism (Fitzpatrick 2020). Ultimately, this has led me to conclude that there is still much work to be done with regards to expanding inclusivity in the field, which has only been further emphasised by the events of the last three years.
Much has drastically changed since I originally wrote about Digging While Depressed, both globally as well as personally. In early 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic saw major national lockdowns across the world, with restrictions lifted and placed intermittently due to fluctuations in hospitalisations and the rise of new variants. At the same time, the Black Lives Matter movement has seen a revival which has spread from the United States to across the globe, causing a flurry of public discussion on equality, diversity, and inclusion, and spurring the creation of many EDI initiatives across sectors and organisations, including some that tackle issues of accessibility and disability due to the interventions of Black disabled activists and other disabled people of colour. Through 2020 and 2021, many accommodations for flexible working and socialising were made during periods of lockdown, which not only highlighted the general lack of accessibility of many workplaces and events pre-pandemic, but also allowed for many disabled people to finally participate in these previously inaccessible environments (Beery 2020). However, despite cases continuing to happen in the thousands around the world, many countries have initiated a “return to normalcy,” dropping nearly all restrictions and health requirements. As such, many disabled people once again feel as though they are being excluded from everyday life (Barbarin and Dawson 2021).
As for me, I have continued to be treated for depression through medication and occasional bouts of therapy. This lead to a breakthrough in 2021 that my anxiety disorder was ultimately the underlying factor behind most of my depressive episodes, which led to my treatment being adjusted. However, I began to see a decline in my physical health at the same time (Fitzpatrick 2022); this included worsening mobility issues which has resulted in more frequent use of mobility aids (e.g., canes, limb braces), the inability to do physically demanding activities, and the recent realisation that my chronic pain was actually abnormal. I am currently in the process of getting a diagnosis from various specialists, with joint hypermobility syndrome and anaemia recently identified. As such, I have been recognising that my ability to “do” archaeology (as it is widely understood) is constantly diminishing and has exacerbated my anxiety as I enter an already-dwindling job market after graduating during a pandemic.
Looking at the last three years in both a global and personal context, there are several recurring themes that we can extrapolate into a discussion on ableism and enabling archaeology for everyone. To start, the almost immediate shift in practice across many workplaces to focus on flexible working and homeworking indicates that change is possible. Unfortunately, we have also seen how quickly these accommodations can be taken away, and how disabled people are still considered an afterthought throughout this planning. At the same time, there has also been an increased awareness for the need for further inclusivity and diversity across sectors, no doubt due in part to the Black Lives Matter movement instigating public discourse on existing inequalities, particularly for Black disabled people and other disabled people of colour. From a personal perspective, I am quickly learning just how inaccessible archaeology is, which has also been further emphasised by the removal of pandemic accommodations for many sites and workplaces. In addition, I have realised just how easy it is to become disabled in the context of how society views disability, and how quickly it has changed my perspective of what I can and cannot do in archaeology, which in turn limits my ability of doing archaeology in the ways in which it is widely practiced today.
With the context from the last few years in mind, we can return to highlighting this major issue of ableism in archaeology, one of the many remnants of the colonialist toxic masculinity that was foundational to the development of the field and its public perception. Ableism is perpetuated through a continued lack of accessibility, which lends to poor environments and workplaces that exacerbate poor mental health and well-being – and not only just for disabled archaeologists, either.
A lack of inaccessibility can lead to feelings of isolation and “Imposter Syndrome,” which can worsen poor mental health and lead to people ultimately leaving the field. But by creating inclusive and accessible spaces, we can make the field more welcoming to everyone – and we should be moving beyond the notion that archaeological fieldwork must be about hard labour, physical risk, and danger, as this perpetuates the notions of a toxic masculinity which is emboldened and measured in strength by its ableism.
That said, we should still be centring disabled archaeologists in discussions of accommodations and accessibility; in addition, it should be noted that not everyone who has poor mental health or mental health conditions identifies as disabled, that many disabled people do not have mental health conditions, and that there are many people (such as myself) who consider themselves to be multi-disabled with mental health conditions and other forms if disability. Although our individual experiences and conditions will vary, ultimately we are all impacted by the perpetuation of ableism in the field. And although I have used the word “accommodating” and “accommodations” in this paper, I want to stress that, in actuality, we need to be moving beyond “just” accommodating – instead, we should be striving towards removing the remnants of entrenched ableism in archaeological practice and theory, expanding our conceptions of what entails fieldwork and research, and reconceptualising our assumptions of what “doing archaeology” actually means.
To end this paper, I would like to propose several ways to move towards a more enabling form of archaeology for everyone, with a focus on eradicating ableism in the field. To start, I want to reiterate that we must centre the needs and experiences of archaeologists affected by ableism and inaccessibility in the field. We must move the goalposts from “just” accommodating needs and actually move towards making spaces fully accessible to everyone. And although I know that accessibility can require a substantial amount of resources, at this point there is no excuse for it to not be part of any early planning or considerations for a project or organisation – if you are committing to diversity and inclusion, that means you must be tangibly and materially committing. I also want to return to a concept I introduced in my original paper (Fitzpatrick 2019): awareness over avoidance. In other words, we should be normalising discussion of disability and mental health, which can be supported through the creation of more inclusive spaces where discussions can occur freely and without the fear of retaliation. We must also be taking an intersectional approach to accessibility as well, as the needs of BlPOC and/or LGBTQ+ disabled archaeologists may differ from white and/or cis-heterosexual disabled archaeologists. In addition, there are also issues specific to these marginalised groups that will exacerbate poor mental health, such as racism, homophobia, transphobia, and queerphobia. Finally, we need to commit to ending the normalisation of casual ableism in the field – this includes ending the celebration of suffering during fieldwork as some sort of “rite of passage,” and of pushing excavation as the only means of doing “real” archaeology. Archaeology as a field must transform and progress to meet the needs of everyone – otherwise we will continue to lack in diversity, and archaeology will truly suffer for it.
Davis, K. E., Meehan, P., Klehm, C., Kurnick, S., & Cameron, C. (2021). Recommendations for Safety Education and Training for Graduate Students Directing Field Projects. Advances in Archaeological Practice, 9(1), 74-80.
Eifling, K. P. (2021). Mental Health and the Field Research Team. Advances in Archaeological Practice, 9(1), 10-22.
Fitzpatrick, A. (2019). #DiggingWhileDepressed: A Call for Mental Health Awareness in Archaeology. Presented at the Public Archaeology Twitter Conference.
Heath-Stout, L. E. (2022). The Invisibly Disabled Archaeologist. International Journal of Historical Archaeology, 1-16.
Peixotto, B., Klehm, C., & Eifling, K. P. (2021). Rethinking Research Sites as Wilderness Activity Sites: Reframing Health, Safety, and Wellness in Archaeology. Advances in Archaeological Practice, 9(1), 1-9.
My work and independent research is supported almost entirely by the generosity of readers – if you’re interested in contributing a tiny bit, you can find my PayPal here.
This is a transcript from a talk I gave in April 2022 as part of the ARCHON workshop “Digging Archaeology through Social Media”.
A slide from the original presentation detailing my extremely weird journey into social media as an archaeologist.
Introduction
Archaeology still has a diversity problem.
It is difficult to find up-to-date demographic information regarding the archaeological workforce across the world, but the information that is available does not present a progressive image of the discipline. In the United Kingdom, for example, results from a 2020 survey revealed that only 3% of archaeologists are not white. In addition, only 18% identify as non-heterosexual, and only 11% consider themselves disabled (Aitchison et al. 2021). Data from a 2014 survey showed that among European archaeologists, only 1.1% considered themselves disabled (Aitchison et al. 2014). The last survey of the United States archaeological workforce indicated that only 2% identified as non-white (Zeder 1997); however, it should be noted that this survey was administered in 1994 and that there has likely been some progress, as the last survey for membership demographics in the Society of American Archaeology (2011) showed that 16% identified as non-white.
Although we can recognise that the field has become more diverse in comparison to prior decades, it is also painfully obvious how slow progress has been. There is a myriad of reasons as to why archaeology has been slow to diversify, of course – it can be difficult to get into the field to begin with, as many jobs require at least an undergraduate level degree. Universities themselves come with their own barriers as well, and not all of them will even offer archaeology as a degree. Even if you do find a place on an archaeology course, there are further barriers to gaining experience – for example, not all programmes will give you fieldwork training, and will expect you to pay separately for field school, which can often be prohibitively expensive. Once in the workforce, archaeology can be difficult to maintain employment in as well, with low pay and difficult working conditions in commercial sectors, and few tenure-track or otherwise stable positions in academia.
Outside of the logistics of working in archaeology, another issue that hampers diversity efforts is the lack of visibly representation – arguably the most well-known practitioners of the discipline (outside from fictional ones) with the biggest platforms are already well-represented individuals in the field: white, cis-heterosexual, non-disabled men. It is difficult for marginalised people to imagine themselves in a field that does not seem to have anyone else like them.
But perhaps the biggest factor that lends itself to such a lack of diversity in the field is that archaeology still maintains many problematic attitudes that can be traced back to its roots as a colonialist and imperialist endeavour. Archaeology is still seen by many outside of the field as a discipline empowered by looting and violence and has been weaponised in both the past and present to oppress and marginalise others. Unsurprisingly, this can be seen as a significant turn-off for marginalised people, particularly those who come from historically looted communities and formally colonised territories. Archaeology is seen as a very “white” field as well, not just in its lack of racial and ethnic diversity, but also in how little importance is given to non-white, non-western histories in the western/European institutions that serve as major epicentres for the discipline. On a more interpersonal level, problematic attitudes that serve to empower the notion that archaeology is only for white, cis-heterosexual non-disabled men are still prevalent through sexism, homophobia, queerphobia, transphobia, racism, ableism, and classism. These attitudes have historically shaped the way the field is practiced and taught and encourages problematic behaviours in the workplace as well – as such, it is difficult to imagine that the environment it creates is appealing to marginalised people.
Diverse Archaeology in Social Media
However, this issue of diversity and representation is slowly being tackled – particularly by the marginalised people in the field who are underrepresented. Perhaps the place where this is most apparent is on social media. As mostly accessible platforms in the digital space, social media has allowed for many underrepresented archaeologists to become more visible and express their perspectives and opinions in a medium without the restrictions often imposed by more “formal” methods of dissemination and communication. These formal platforms, such as academic journals, can also be seen as gatekeepers, often led by those who are already over-represented within the field whose biases shape the way archaeology is presented through publications. Social media, for the most part, lacks many of these institutional barriers, although this obviously lends itself to dangers in pseudoarchaeology and misinformation. But again, this means that those who do not fit the archetype of an archaeologist, as dictated by the problematic attitudes entrenched in the field, can actually find platforms for their unique voice and perspective that is sorely lacking in archaeology.
Such diversity among social media presence in archaeology can be separated into two main types: groups/accounts that are specifically dedicated to supporting and uplifting individuals from a particular marginalised identity, or individuals from certain marginalised backgrounds that are outspoken about their honest experiences in the field, and often discuss these experiences at length through a variety of mediums (e.g., vlogging, blog posts, podcasts). So although many social media accounts are specifically created to “represent” specific perspectives that are underrepresented in the field, others are simply speaking their truths in public. They are not asking to be seen as representatives of their particular background, of course, but by sharing their experiences and problems they have faced in the field, their input shapes the demands for archaeology to be better. Ultimately, their visibility on social media can serve as both evidence for the ways in which the field is lacking, as well as inspiration for others to strive towards success regardless; both of these outputs can potentially help in increasing the diversity of archaeology.
On social media, disabled archaeologists, for example, have been to amplify the need for a more accessible approach to archaeology and push for further consideration of accommodations as part of everyday archaeological practice. In the meantime, many disabled archaeologists have taken the initiative and created their own means for accessibility, using social media to promote them and lobby for wide adoption of similar practices – this includes Theresa O’Mahoney and the creation of the Enabled Archaeology Foundation, as well as Amelia Dall’s translation of archaeological terminology into American Sign Language. By promoting these practices via social media, disabled archaeologists are able to normalise the provision of accommodations and greater accessibility of archaeology as a practice and as a discipline.
For archaeologists who are part of the LGBTQ+ community, social media allows them to call out issues with regards to how sexuality is handled in archaeological interpretation and theory. In addition, social media allows for the creation of safe (digital) spaces for LGBTQ+ archaeologists to discuss their particular needs in the field, especially given the rise in hostility against LGBTQ+ individuals across the world. This includes advice for closeted or newly out individuals, as well as warnings against spaces that may be dangerous for them to work in. Organisations such as Queer Archaeology are able to not only act as a network for people working in queering archaeology (as a theory) to discuss ideas, but also provide support and resources to those who also identify as queer or otherwise LGBTQ+.
Similarly, there are many groups and organisations on social media for archaeologists of marginalised genders. Most are centred around women in archaeology, with TrowelBlazers being one of the most well-known organisations on social media for their work on promoting the work of women archaeologists who have otherwise been obscured by patriarchal interpretations of history. However, there has also been attention given to examining the issues faced by other archaeologists of marginalised genders, such as non-binary, gender-fluid, and gender-nonconforming archaeologists. Ultimately, these archaeologists have helped to bring more nuanced interpretations to conversations regarding gender in archaeology and how we view gender in the past, as well as call for further discipline-wide support in combatting patriarchal harm and violence in the field.
For BlPOC in archaeology, social media provides an opportunity to challenge the overtly white narrative of the past, especially with regards to histories of colonialism and enslavement. Having a platform on social media allows BIPOC to disrupt predominately white spaces and set the foundation for other racially minoritized archaeologists to enter the field, showcasing that archaeology isn’t just for white people. Their vital contributions to online discussions on racism in the field allow for white archaeologists to self-reflect on how their biases and actions may be perpetuating racism in the field and help push for a more anti-racist discipline.
Of course, these groups are not the only ones underrepresented in general discourse surrounding archaeology – other prominent individuals on social media have been able to express their experiences in being first generation academics, non-academics, volunteers, commercial workers, ex-archaeologists, hobbyists, and migrants. Social media allows anyone to discover what it is like to be an archaeologists from various regions, religions, and cultures, studying across different periods of time, different regions, different groups of people, and different materials. Archaeologists are able to tell their own stories and experiences and showcase how varied the world of archaeology can be.
My Social Media Story: Breaking the Archaeologist Archetype
Social media has also played a significant role in my development as an archaeologist as well. In 2017, only four months into my PhD, I had a nervous breakdown that lasted for another few months and completely disrupted my studies. After receiving the medical help I needed, I realised that I needed to make up for lost time and decided that perhaps the best way to do so was to “get myself out there” and create a Twitter account specifically for promoting my research. At the same time, I also started a WordPress website and Instagram – I wanted to create as much of a presence as possible, knowing that I was already at a disadvantage in British archaeology as a queer, disabled Chinese American migrant woman and that I would ultimately need to make my own opportunities if I wanted to find any form of success in the field.
I will admit that it took a while to find my own voice on social media – I mostly wrote about basic things about zooarchaeology and updates on my PhD studies. But around 2018, I developed more confidence in my ability to express myself and my opinions, leading to more blog posts and Tweets on more serious and personal topics, such as racism, ableism, and immigration. Finding my voice was arguably the most important part of my journey as an archaeologist, as I not only was able to realise that I had the skills to write in a way that was accessible to non-specialists, but that I could also tackle serious and complex topics and convey them in a nuanced manner. This visibility has ultimately led to many opportunities – in 2018 I was asked to create a zooarchaeology-themed podcast for the Archaeology Podcast Network, and since then I have also been invited to write articles for various websites, speak at events, and even won awards for content I’ve created for YouTube and for my blog.
Of course, there has been some downsides to having a social media presence. During my PhD studies, there was often concern from my supervisors that my outreach and communication work on social media was a distraction from my actual research. And I also experienced extensive harassment from others, including racist and sexist comments on Twitter and on my website, as well as threatening emails from strangers. But despite this, social media has always been vital to my development as an archaeologist and has only increased in its importance as I move outside of archaeology due to the lack of employment opportunities. I still want to remain in the field, of course, but in the meantime, I am happy to be able to still engage with archaeology through social media.
Social Media Solutions: Is It Worth It?
So, with all of these examples in mind, we come to the final question – is social media a worthy tool for diversifying the field? On one hand, social media is relatively accessible, in that it is often free and relatively easy to use if you have an Internet connection. Although building up a following and developing an audience will take time and dedication, it can be done through social media without the need for dealing with disciplinary gatekeepers who do not share the same priorities as you and your community. In addition, social media allows for you to not only connect with people from across the world, but also make relationships and potentially develop an invaluable support network. You can also find your own community online, consisting of others with similar experiences who can provide support and comfort when you may be feeling otherwise isolated in the field. By becoming more visible online, you may eventually find yourself acting as a source of inspiration for others from similarly marginalised background, continuing a cycle of increasing diversity. More practically, a social media presence can lead to opportunities for further work – this may include collaborations with other social media accounts, consideration for projects, and invitations to participate in events. And perhaps most importantly, once you have achieved a formidable following, you can act as a voice for change and bring further attention to issues in archaeology that those who are already well-represented in the field may not have been able to identify.
On the other hand, social media is not accessible for everyone – not only from a disability perspective (e.g., transcriptions, captions, alternative text), but also with regards to language barriers as well. In addition, there is still a significant amount of digital poverty throughout the world. As such, this creates biases in who actually has access to the Internet, which is furthered by the biases in what sort of content gets popularised online – often English language content, from the West, or at least from the Global North. Perhaps the biggest risk in increasing your visibility online is the fact that you may be left open to increased harassment from others, especially strangers. Although there a mechanisms in place across most social media platforms to deal with negative comments and trolling, there is still risk for more harmful forms of harassment, such as having private information revealed online. Finally, it should be noted that there is still a degree of stigma associated with social media, particularly among senior professionals and academics – many still do not take social media seriously as a form of dissemination and communication and may even look down upon those who utilise it as part of their professional persona. Although these attitudes seem to be changing given how many projects and institutions now focus resources on their social media management, it is still apparent that not everyone in the field considers social media to be something worth investing time or expertise into.
Ultimately, social media is a platform, and as such it comes with the risks involved whenever you decide to publicly present yourself. However, if used wisely, social media can not only help promote yourself and your work but empower you to push for tangible change in the field and make archaeology more equitable for everyone.
Social Media Solutions: Diversify Your Feed!
So, how can you utilise social media to both promote and support a more diverse archaeology? The answer depends on your positionality and power within the field. For those of you who are already well-represented in the field, my advice would be to follow those from backgrounds different from yours – this includes groups and projects dedicated to sharing and exploring different perspectives on archaeology. In exposing yourself to differing opinions and experiences in the field, you can begin to do some self-reflection on how your own experiences may already be well-represented in archaeology, and how these experiences may turn into biases that effect your interpretations and research. Similarly, consider how much space you take up in archaeological discourse, and determine if you have the ability to provide a platform to someone more underrepresented in the field – for example, you could retweet material from someone else with a smaller follower count, lets someone else take over your account for the day and use your platform for their needs, or even sponsor and/or organise online events that centre marginalised people and promote it on your account. In addition, if important conversations are occurring online, instead of immediately jumping in with your opinion, you can stop and reflect on whether or not you could instead uplift the voice of someone else who is more relevant to the discourse. Perhaps most importantly, you should think of how to translate your online allyship into tangible support and promotion of underrepresented people outside of social media.
For those who are from marginalised backgrounds, my advice would be to find your people first. As I previously mentioned, my own experiences in developing my social media presence would have ended prematurely due to isolation and harassment if it wasn’t for the friendships I made, as well as the broader support network I’ve developed with archaeologists from similar backgrounds and experiences. In addition, it is useful to find organisations and groups that are dedicated to supporting certain marginalised backgrounds – not only can they provide resources and advice, but there could also be opportunities there to volunteer with them and further increase your visibility in the field as part of a larger group. In developing your approach to social media, you should also think about what you want to represent – are you focusing on your research and work in archaeology? Do you want to present the viewpoints and experiences of people with your background? Although it is not necessary to have a “niche”, it is useful with regards to how you want to present and market yourself and your social media persona. You should also consider what your expectations are for developing an online presence – are you aiming to spread awareness, or developing a gigantic following? These things will take time, so don’t be discouraged! But also recognise that any goals or expectations you may have will require dedication and time, so plan accordingly. In the meantime, try and take as many opportunities as you have capacity for – even if it is something as small as writing a guest blog post, opportunities that allow you to expose yourself to other audiences are vital in developing a following. And finally, don’t be afraid to speak your truths online – by being honest in our experiences in the field, we can identify the areas in need of further work and growth. But at the same time, you need to recognise your own personal boundaries and where you feel most comfortable in taking risks.
Social media is not a magical solution to all of archaeology’s problems, of course, and there is much to be done to make the field more progressive and inclusive. However, social media can be a powerful tool for change, if used correctly. As archaeologists, we need to accept the vital role that social media plays in our everyday lives, as well as the influence it wields over society and culture today. Archaeology must adapt with the changing times if it wants to survive as a discipline – and that may include learning exactly what a “TikTok” is.
References
Aitchison, K., German, P., and Rocks-Macqueen, D. (2021) Profiling the Profession 2020. Landward Research Ltd.
Aitchison, K., R, Alphas., V, Ameels., M, Bentz., C, Borş., E, Cella., K, Cleary., C, Costa., P, Damian., M, Diniz., C, Duarte., J, Frolík., C, Grilo., Initiative for Heritage Conservancy., N, Kangert., R, Karl., A, Kjærulf Andersen., V, Kobrusepp., T, Kompare., E, Krekovič., M, Lago da Silva., A, Lawler., I, Lazar., K, Liibert., A, Lima., G, MacGregor., N, McCullagh., M, Mácalová., A, Mäesalu., M, Malińska., A, Marciniak., M, Mintaurs., K, Möller., U, Odgaard., E, Parga-Dans., D, Pavlov., V, Pintarič Kocuvan., D, Rocks-Macqueen., J, Rostock., J, Pedro Tereso., A, Pintucci., E.S, Prokopiou., J, Raposo., K, Scharringhausen., T, Schenck., M, Schlaman., J, Skaarup., A, Šnē., D, Staššíková-Štukovská., I, Ulst., M, van den Dries., H, van Londen., R, Varela-Pousa., C, Viegas., A, Vijups., N, Vossen., T, Wachter., and L, Wachowicz. (2014). Discovering the Archaeologists of Europe 2012–2014: Transnational Report. York Archaeological Trust.
Society for American Archaeology. (2011). 2010 Needs Assessment Survey. Association Research Inc.
Zeder, M. A. (1997). The American archaeologist: a profile. Rowman Altamira.
My work and independent research is supported almost entirely by the generosity of readers – if you’re interested in contributing a tiny bit, you can find my PayPal here.
The following text is an expanded version of a Twitter conference paper I presented in 2019 for the Public Archaeology Twitter Conferenceon ‘zine making as an alternative form ofscience communication for archaeology.
Setting the mood with one of the coolest looking slides I’ve ever made (from the original Twitter presentation)
Over the past two decades, archaeology has seen a shift towards “outside-the-box” thinking. From queer theory to archaeogaming, the discipline has begun to embrace non-traditional approaches to the ways in which archaeologists engage with the theory and practice of archaeology. And yet, can we say the same for our methods in archaeological outreach and communication?
In some ways, we can; with the popularity of platforms such as YouTube and Twitter, archaeologists are now able to utilise multimedia, in particular visual media, to increase their outreach and experiment with new forms of engagement. However, I would argue that there are some methods that have been mostly ignored by the archaeological community as a whole, despite the huge potential these methods have as tools for public archaeology. With a growing interest in alternative approaches to the discipline (Morgan 2015), perhaps it is time that archaeologists learn how to become ‘zine makers.
‘Zines can be traced back to as early as the 1930’s in the form of “fanzines”; these booklets were produced by science fiction fans and circulated across clubs as a means of distributing critiques of recent literature and publishing new works. The ‘zine format as we understand it today, however, was popularised during the 1980’s with the development of “do-it-yourself” (DIY) and punk subcultures that emphasised pushing against the mainstream, corporate media through creating your own material (Duncombe 2008: 11-12). To the general public, ‘zines are arguably most associated (at least, aesthetically) with the “Riot Grrrl” movement of the 1990’s, which combined the punk scene with the burgeoning third wave of feminism (Piepmeier 2009: 2).
Today, ‘zines live on defiantly against a society whose media intake can now be found almost entirely online. Many ‘zines are distributed and published digitally through websites, such as sproutdistro.com and zinedistro.com. Online shopping platforms, such as Etsy, have also become hot spots for small, independent ‘zine makers to peddle their wares. And, perhaps in spite of our overall reliance on the Internet, there are still in-person ‘zine fairs and swaps organised around the world.
But what exactly is a ‘zine? Given the free nature of expression that is central to the concept of a ‘zine, it can be hard to pinpoint a definition that can broadly encompass all media that identifies as such; over the last decade, this has become even more difficult, as the Internet allows for ‘zines to overcome the restrictions of cut-and-pasted paper publications and become full-fledged multimedia pieces. Perhaps the best definition of the ‘zine comes from the forefather of ‘zine studies himself, Stephen Duncombe (2008: 18): “’zines are decidedly amateur”. While this may sound dismissive, Duncombe quickly clarifies that this is not the case at all; to say that ‘zines are “amateur” is to say that they are made with love, from love, and by love. ‘Zine makers are not making a profit, nor are they professionals working within a professional context – instead, they are working against the cult of professionalism and formality through the emphasis on their individuality and amateurism.
Since their first iteration, ‘zines have been produced and distributed with the intent of education the masses – whether it’s about the best science fiction stories of 1935 or the main tenets of anarcho-communism, ‘zines are hyper-focused pieces of media that allows for free and further exploration of certain subjects. With this in mind, it should come as no surprise that ‘zines have been experimented with in an academic context.
The application of ‘zines within the classroom goes beyond just reading material, however. The process of writing and creating a ‘zine has been observed to be a useful activity in students applying and expressed learned knowledge (Wan 1999: 18-19). As a final project, ‘zine making can also be used as a creative outlet through which students can synthesize an entire course worth of information and express their own conclusions (Desyllas and Sinclair 2014: 300). For subjects that are entwined with political activism and social justice, ‘zines can be a meeting ground between the educational and the personal; additionally, the informal format of ‘zines can also create a space where students feel as though they can harness and express their own, individual voice (Creasap 2014: 155), in contrast to the more formal, standardised publications in academia (i.e. journals, edited volumes, etc.). Perhaps most importantly, ‘zines can be weaponised against an increasingly neoliberal, commodified academy and help in returning focus to a relationship based on knowledge exchange between student and teacher (Bagelman and Bagelman 2016).
Although ‘zines are becoming more popular within academic circles, there have been very few written specifically on archaeology. Artist Peter Driver (2013) has produced a series of ‘zines as part of his work as artist-in-residence for the Basing House excavations. These booklets, which were ultimately distributed as souvenirs for the archaeological team, captured Driver’s thoughts and observations as a non-archaeologist watching the process unfold over a span of three weeks; the resulting artwork included drawings of the excavators at work, diagrams of the stratigraphy reflected in the trenches, and even some speculative illustrations of what the Basing House may have looked like prior to its destruction.
Over the past two years, archaeological ‘zines have been used as a means of introducing more radical, alternative archaeology into the zeitgeist. For example, in 2017, Meghan Walley (2017) edited together a ‘zine called “inDIGnant”, which was distributed at that year’s Society for American Archaeology conference. Walley’s initiative was inspired by a collective frustration she and other students felt at the lack of radical, social justice-oriented literature in archaeology. The resulting ‘zine is a collection of essays, poetry, and visual media that tackle topics such as queer archaeology, Indigenous rights, and ableism, with the hopes that publication in this format will lead to further exposure and discussion of these important subjects in the larger archaeology community (Crocker 2017). Possibly the most recently published archaeology ‘zine comes from the relatively new sub-discipline of archaeogaming. Florence Smith Nicholls and Sara Stewart (2018) have published a ‘zine that is both an introduction text into the basics of archaeogaming theory as well as space of exploration for both the author and illustrator, allowing them the freedom to elaborate and illustrate concepts of archaeogaming that interests them.
‘Zines are clearly ripe for utilisation in the academic sector, but more specifically, within archaeology. Although there are some examples of archaeological ‘zines in distribution, I would argue that the format is still underestimated not only as an alternative form of communication and education, but also as a way to involve others in engaging with archaeology. ‘Zines can become highly collaborative projects, especially within public and community archaeology, and allows for both archaeologists and non-archaeologists alike to flex their various skills and expertise. As more academics become less enchanted with normative methods of publication and communication, perhaps we are due for an “alternative turn”, where ‘zines and DIY culture help usher in a new period of accessible and creative exchanges of knowledge.
References
Bagelman, J. and Bagelman, C. (2016) Zines: Crafting Change and Repurposing the Neoliberal University. ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies 15 (2).
Creasap, K. (2014) Zine-Making as Feminist Pedagogy. Feminist Teacher 24 (3), 155-168.
Crocker, E. (2017) Getting the Dirt on Punk Archaeology: InDIGnant Zine Hopes to Change Archaeological Culture. The Overcast,
Desyllas, M. C. and Sinclair, A. (2014) Zine-Making as a Pedagogical Tool for Transformative Learning in Social Work Education. Social Work Education: The International Journal 33 (3), 296-316.
My work and independent research is supported almost entirely by the generosity of readers – if you’re interested in contributing a tiny bit, you can donate here.
The following text is an expanded version of a Twitter conference paper I presented back in 2018 (remember the world pre-pandemic?!) for the Computer Applications in Archaeology Twitter Conference. As such, it’s a bit out of date – however, I think some ideas from the paper are still worth considering, particularly as Open Access and digital engagement both become bigger topics in academic discourse across disciplines.
A brief overview of what an open access, world wide digital reference collection could look like (from the original presentation).
Social media platforms such as Twitter have allowed for a substantial increase in collaboration between academics, allowing access to information and advice from one side of the world to the other. This is especially true among both archaeologists and zooarchaeologists, who often turn to Twitter with faunal bones that they have been unable to identify so that another pair of zooarchaeological eyes can help. In many cases, Twitter has allowed access to reference collections that would have otherwise been inaccessible due to distance and monetary reasons.
Based on numerous experiences in using the zooarchaeology community on Twitter to successfully identify archaeofaunal bones, this paper proposes that the next logical step for continuing collaboration among zooarchaeologists to is to develop an international digital database of faunal bone references, crowdsourced from reference collections of zooarchaeologists and institutions around the world. This database could bring zooarchaeology into the Open Access movement that will arguably define the future of archaeology in the digital world.
With the rise in popularity and use of social media networks such as Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter, it has never been easier to collaborate with academics across the world. This is especially true for the archaeology community on Twitter, in particular with zooarchaeologists. There are many instances of interactions on Twitter where zooarchaeologists and others in zoology-related fields have helped in the identifications of faunal remains based on photos posted by others. This has led to a common practice when faced with a mystery bone to tag photos with the hashtag #Zooarchaeology to get the attention of this community on Twitter. Of course, this is not only limited to one website – even before the rise of social media, the zooarchaeology community was helping each other with identifications and other issues through the JISCMail emailing list, which is still in use today with an online archive of answered questions. On Tumblr, another social media network specifically catering to bloggers, there are resources such as “Bone Identification”, which has readers send an anonymous Tumblr user photos of bones to be identified. This Tumblr blog has been in use since 2014 and is still actively identifying mystery bones, arguably due to the continuous interest in the identification, care, and collection of faunal bones often referred to as “vulture culture” online. With these examples in mind, I propose that the natural progression of these resources is an international digital reference collection that is open access to everyone.
There is precedence for such a large scale project in the form of numerous individual digital collections; some examples include BoneID (Abel and Butler 2016) and the University of Nottingham’s Archaeological Fish Resource. With advances in virtual technology, there have also been interactive, 3D references, such as the free paleontological models available from the Witmer Lab at Ohio University (Witmer 2015) and the specimen models available from the Virtual Zooarchaeology of the Arctic Project (Maschner et al. 2017).
The foundation for this hypothetical project has also been laid recently with Historic England’s project, led by David Orton and Eva Fairnell with consultation from other zooarchaeologists in Britain, called the National Zooarchaeological Reference Resource (NZRR); this online database hosts information regarding several British collections, including what kind of specimens are available, policies for access, and location and contact details. This allows for a “shortcut” of sorts, where zooarchaeologists and others in need of a specific specimen for reference can easily locate nearby collections that may be useful for their needs. Orton and Fairnell have stated that future plans for the NZRR may include consultation and support for further digitisation of collections and resources (Fairnell and Orton 2016; Fairnell and Orton 2017).
A future platform like that is clearly in demand, but I would suggest that the final goal should take the concept a step even further, based on the recent push for open access resources in archaeology: the creation of an internationally-sourced, digital reference collection. I propose that this occurs in stages, as I understand that such a large scale digitisation project will be logistically difficult to not only organise, but maintain over time. However, in this hypothetical case of having the time and labour available for such a project, I would first suggest that the existing NZRR continue to be built upon by supporting and encouraging digitisation projects, as suggested by Orton and Fairnell. By creating a database of these digital resources, hopefully other institutions will follow, seeing the increase in popularity and use of such resources. The ideal goal should be that this, in turn, leads to a collaborative effort between institutions around the world to synthesize digitised collections into one, all-inclusive one – not only would this promote the institution’s collection by providing the sort of details, but also increases the accessibility to the collection. Open access means that the resource needs to be able to be used by anyone, no matter their situation; as of now, some archaeologists are unable to physically visit reference collections that may be vital to their research. A digital reference collection would be vital in increasing this accessibility. Ideally, success in this sort of endeavour could create opportunities for the creation of more specific digital databases: paleopathology, butchery, taphonomy, etc. For zooarchaeologists, this would be a particularly useful collaborative effort, as it could help unify a lot of research around such topics that may otherwise cause confusion due to differences in opinion (i.e. the vague use of the word taphonomy, no real uniform definitions for types of butchery marks).
It is understandable that there could be concerns that the existence of such a database would render zooarchaeologists redundant and ultimately unnecessary. On the contrary, I’d argue that such a resource would help increase the interest in zooarchaeology. Again, the increased accessibility would not only aid in current research, but it may also introduce the field to others and allow for greater collaboration with what some may consider a relatively “niche” discipline. As older textual resources become harder to access, creating more open access databases will become more important to survive in the future.
Of course, the actual logistics of a large scale collaborative project like the one proposed in this paper would be difficult, if not impossible without many resources, time, and labour. And in truth, I do not have the answers to questions on how this should specifically be undertaken (although I am always open for suggestions and collaborations). However, I believe that this is a worthy goal that we, as zooarchaeologists, should try to achieve in the future. As the Internet continues to move us all closer together in the electronic world and allows us to work alongside each other despite the physical distances, I think archaeology as a whole must be fully committed to progressing towards a more open access future, lest the discipline is left in the past with the materials it studies.
My work and independent research is supported almost entirely by the generosity of readers – if you’re interested in contributing a tiny bit, you can donate here.
The following text is a transcript of a talk I gave in 2019 for the Decolonising Science Narratives workshop held at the Science Museum in London, UK. Although I have since changed my mind a bit on the topic (see my follow-up seminar talk I gave here), I feel like its important to have my original thoughts archived and accessible here on the blog.
Some important questions regarding the relationship between colonialist thought and zooarchaeological theory from the original presentation.
Archaeology is a discipline derived from colonialist thought. Originally supported and even encouraged by colonial enterprises, archaeology still maintains much of these Western/European methodologies and frameworks today; this is particularly pervasive in this discipline as much of this colonialist thought is foundational to many archaeological approaches, often excused as being “products of their time” (Atalay 2006: 280-282). In response, many archaeologists (specifically archaeologists of colour) have become critical of the discipline as a whole and have called for archaeology to be decolonised in theory and in practice.
It should come as no surprise that much of the current decolonisation movements stems from Indigenous archaeologists, particularly those from the unceded territories that are commonly referred to as the United States. The history of North American archaeology is a violent one, involving the theft and desecration of land, culture, and ancestors from Indigenous communities. Despite some improvements on the federal level, including the installation of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) in 1990, there is still much tension between Indigenous peoples and institutions that continue to retain and re-appropriate Indigenous remains and cultural objects (Nash and Colwell-Chanthapohn 2010). This, of course, is not unique to North America. Calls for repatriation of objects and remains now held in mostly European institutions have since dominated archaeological discourse for the past few decades (Hitchcock 2002; Curtis 2006; Aldrich 2009).
Archaeology is getting its needed reckoning, but not all of archaeology has been discussed. If we are to truly decolonise the discipline, we need to interrogate all parts of archaeology, regardless of how tenuous its connection to colonialism may seem. With that in mind, let us now turn to zooarchaeology.
The lack of attention that zooarchaeology has received in the decolonisation discourse is understandable; the subfield is, by definition, the study of faunal remains within the archaeological record. Decolonisation as an approach in archaeology has mainly targeted subfields that are more associated with humankind, such as bioarchaeology and material remains research – and for good reason. With so many ancestors and objects stolen from colonised communities and still held in Western/European museums and universities to this day, repatriation has been at the forefront of the decolonisation movement (Thornton 2016). I would argue, however, that zooarchaeology needs to be examined through the lens of decolonisation at some point.
Zooarchaeology has primarily been used to examine past economies and subsistence strategies (Crabtree 1990), a logical conclusion to finding animal remains scattered amongst an archaeological site. This utilitarian approach is somewhat all-encompassing within interpretation, however; although there is plenty of research into the more “abstract” or symbolic applications of non-human species in the past, usually the first questions that most zooarchaeologists ask are utilitarian in nature. Were these animals eaten? Were they hunted? Was their pelts and meat used? After that, human agency is often removed from the equation entirely. Were these remains from a natural death? Is this the result of predation? The more abstract interpretations, such as ritual or religious activity, are often one of the last considerations if not already evident by associated finds, such as human remains and material goods (Hill 1995; Morris 2008).
With this perspective, I posit that zooarchaeologists continue to perpetuate Western/European bias by centring utilitarian, anthropocentric approaches to the zooarchaeological record that uphold human/non-human binaries specific to the Western/European colonial experience. To further investigate the need for a decolonised zooarchaeology, let us continue to examine how ritual and religion, amongst other similarly related concepts, are often overlooked, perhaps in part due to the reliance of colonial views of human-animal relations.
Case Study: Zooarchaeologies of Ritual and Religion
Are ritual and religious activities just so unlikely to be found in the zooarchaeological record? Not necessarily, but ritual/religion studies in archaeology often errs on the side of caution. There is a familiar phrase that is jokingly said amongst archaeologists: “everything is ritual!” This comes from the idea that anything that cannot be suitably interpreted in the archaeological record can simply be ascribed to ritual; the definition of “ritual” in general is so vague that it could easily be formatted to reflect any particular assemblage that an archaeologist comes across. It is a fair critique, of course, but I believe that it creates a bias in which archaeologists are naturally inclined to push back against notions of ritual or religion when confronted with an unusual assemblage. Some archaeologists have even interrogated with this source of bias – Brück (1999) has written about the effect that post-Enlightenment rationalism has had on how archaeologists attempt to differentiate between the ritual and the non-ritual, arguing that it has created a bias in which anything that is seen as non-functional or impractical is associated with ritualisation (ibid 317-319), and that past peoples may have not even conceptualised a dichotomy in which ritual is opposed to the non-ritual.
With this in mind, I would argue that zooarchaeologists ultimately approach past animal-human relations in a very Western/Eurocentric way – non-human species are immediately objectified and quantified into numbers of identified species (NISP) and minimum numbers of individuals (MNI), caloric intake percentages and population models. Directly anthropogenic features, such as butchery marks, is ascribed to functionality, which is “normal”. Anything non-normative is assumed under the category of ritual, with as many caveats as necessary. And even then, ritual deposits are again scrutinised under the lens of functionality – what animals are used to incur which outcomes? Can we correlate these remains to a particular activity?
A decolonised zooarchaeology would need to take notice of similar decolonisation movements in natural history and animal studies. Indigenous scholars are reclaiming ancestral knowledge and “Indigenizing” these fields and others by returning to notions of human-animal relations that their Indigenous communities encourage and engage in (Todd 2014: 218-219). This also includes confronting and rejecting anthropocentrism which is pervasive within Western/European human-animal relations (Belcourt 2015: 4-5); humans are elevated and prioritised, animals non-humans are objectified and used.
Western/European approaches to human/non-human relations are based on a binary that separates the two (similar to the nature/culture binary), which ultimately leads to an often exploitative nature (Hovorka 2017: 388). When we utilise a Western/European perspective in zooarchaeology, we focus on an idea of the past that emphasises concepts such as domination and commodification of non-human species by our human ancestors, resulting in our anthropocentric narrative that persists within archaeology. And if anthropocentrism has its roots in colonialist thought, then colonialism is still pervasive within zooarchaeology – and it is here that our tangible changes to zooarchaeological theory and practice can begin. A non-anthropocentric zooarchaeology could be a fruitful starting point in the move towards decolonisation, although this would require a lot of restructuring of how we understand animal histories through the archaeological record (Fitzpatrick 2019).
To end this paper, I would like to contextualise the central argument in the greater picture of decolonisation: although I believe that further interrogation of zooarchaeology as the remainders of a colonialist enterprise is warranted if we want to further progress in our understanding of non-human pasts, I am also aware that this is far from the most important task in the movement of decolonising archaeology as a whole. The decolonisation of zooarchaeology will come in time, but it must be part of a grander movement to decolonise the entire discipline.
We have come to a point in the discourse where the word “decolonisation” is often used interchangeably with other defanged terminology such as “diversity” and “equity”, where calls for such change are superficial at best, a plastic bandage covering a gaping wound. As Tuck and Yang wrote (2012), “decolonization is not a metaphor” – a decolonised archaeology cannot be just theorised and debated, but put into direct action. It may require a complete restructuring of the discipline as we know it, but if we must give up the Western/European canon in order to establish a truly liberated framework, then so be it. A better archaeology is possible, but we must commit to doing the work.
References
Aldrich, R. (2009) Colonial Museums in a Postcolonial Europe. African and Black Diaspora: An International Journal 2 (2), 137-156.
Atalay, S. (2006) Indigenous Archaeology as Decolonizing Practice. American Indian Quarterly 30 (3/4), 280-310.
Belcourt, B. (2015) Animal Bodies, Colonial Subjects: (Re)Locating Animality in Decolonial Thought. Societies 5, 1-11.
Brück, J. (1999) Ritual and Rationality: Some Problems of Interpretation in European Archaeology. European Journal of Archaeology 2 (3), 313-344.
Crabtree, P. J. (1990) Zooarchaeology and Complex Societies: Some Uses of Faunal Analysis for the Study of Trade, Social Status, and Ethnicity. Archaeological Method and Theory 2, 155-205.
Curtis, N. G. W. (2006) Universal Museums, Museum Objects, and Repatriation: The Tangled Stories of Things. Museum Management and Curatorship 21 (2), 117-127.
Fitzpatrick, A. (2019) Should We Respect Rover’s Remains? A Discussion on Ethics, or the Lack Thereof, in Zooarchaeology. In Animal Remains Conference. University of Sheffield.
Hill, J. D. (1995) Ritual and Rubbish in the Iron Age of Wessex: a Study on the Formation of a Specific Archaeological Record. BAR British Series 42.Oxford: Archaeopress.
Hitchcock, R. K. (2002) Repatriation, Indigenous Peoples, and Development Lessons from Africa, North America, and Australia. Pula: Botswana Journal of African Studies 16 (1), 57-66.
Hovorka, A. J. (2017) Animal Geographies: Globalizing and Decolonizing. Progress in Human Geography 41 (3), 382-394.
Morris, J. (2008) Associated Bone Groups; One Archaeologist’s Rubbish is Another’s Ritual Deposition. In Davis, O., Sharples, N., and Waddington, K. (editors) Changing Perspectives on the First Millennium BC: Proceedings of the Iron Age Research Student Seminar 2008. Oxford: Oxbow Books. 83-98.
Nash, S. E. and Colwell-Chanthapohn, C. (2010) NAGPRA After Two Decades. Museum Anthropology 33 (2), 99-104.
Thornton, R. (2016) Who Owns the Past? The Repatriation of Native American Remains and Cultural Objects. In Lobo, S., Talbout, S., and Morris, T. L. (editors) Native American Voices: A Reader.3rd edition. New York: Routledge. 311-320.
Todd, Z. (2014) Fish Pluralities: Human-Animal Relations and Sites of Engagement in Paulatuuq, Arctic Canada. Etudes/Inuit/Studies 38 (1-2), 217-238.
Tuck, E. and Yang, K. W. (2012) Decolonization is Not a Metaphor. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education, and Society 1 (1).
My work and independent research is supported almost entirely by the generosity of readers – if you’re interested in contributing a tiny bit, you can donate here.
This is the text from a talk I gave at the Approaches to Decolonising Research event organised by the Decolonising the Curriculum Working Groupat Liverpool John Moores University. If you’re interested in reading the talk that formed the basis of this one, you can find that transcript here.
A proposed framework for moving towards decolonisation (from the original presentation).
The call to decolonise archaeology is perhaps as old as the discipline itself, born as soon as colonised peoples began to fight back against the colonisers who intended to loot their land and culture. But the push for decolonising the theory and practice of the discipline from within is somewhat more recent, having become a topic of broader interest during the past few decades. Much has been done with regards to moving away from Eurocentric, white perspectives of archaeological theory and practice which perpetuate colonialist thought by embracing Black and Indigenous approaches to archaeology (Smith and Wobst, 2005; Atalay, 2012; Schmidt and Pikirayi, 2016; Battle-Baptiste, 2017). The emergence of community-based archaeology has encouraged the development of more ethical and equitable partnerships and relations between archaeologists and Indigenous communities (e.g., Byrne, 2012; May et al., 2017), as well as the “braiding” of local and academic knowledge to develop more holistic and inclusive interpretations of the past (Atalay, 2012, p. 27).
With the re-emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement in the summer of 2020, the push for decolonising archaeology has only intensified. Groups such as the Society of Black Archaeologists, the Indigenous Archaeology Collective, and the European Society of Black and Allied Archaeologists have formed to support and encourage the work of Black and Indigenous archaeologists. This has also led to a long overdue reckoning of the racial dynamics of archaeology, including the continued lack of diversity within the field and the need for a commitment to anti-racism and anti-Blackness (Franklin et al., 2020; White and Draycott, 2020; Brunache et al., 2021; Flewellen et al., 2021).
Although the decolonisation movement continues to expand within archaeology as a whole, there has been very little work done in the subfield of zooarchaeology from a decolonial perspective. This is somewhat understandable; zooarchaeology, as the study of animal remains in the archaeological record, is sometimes seen as disconnected from the study of human culture, and thus not likely to be seen as something in need of “decolonising”. And yet, adjacent fields such as animal studies and natural history studies have begun to develop a long body of literature and research dedicated to applying decolonial theory. This includes the vital work that Indigenous scholars have done in “Indigenising” these fields, particularly in re-examining human-animal relations from an Indigenous perspective (Todd, 2014, pp. 218–219). There has also been a movement within natural history studies to recontextualise research within the colonial context from which they derive from; this has also been reflected in recent work being done in decolonising natural history collections, such as the powerful “Displays of Power” exhibition at the Grant Museum of Zoology.
This is not to say that zooarchaeology is completely devoid of research that engages with colonialism and decolonisation; on the contrary, zooarchaeological analysis has been used to examine colonialism within the archaeological record (e.g., Kennedy and VanValkenburg, 2016; Delsol, 2020; Wallman, 2020), with more recent research grappling more explicitly with decolonial theory as part of interpretation and application (e.g., Moss, 2020; Van Litsenburg, 2021; Gruntorad, 2021; Laurich, 2021). But compared to the amount of decolonial interventions in archaeology as a whole, this critical perspective is lacking within zooarchaeology.
In 2019, I originally posited my own hypothetical approach to a “decolonised” zooarchaeology (Fitzpatrick, 2019). My interest in decolonial theory was inspired by my own personal struggles as a Chinese American woman attempting to make space for myself and my work in British archaeology as a graduate student; this was unsurprisingly difficult in a field where 97% of its practitioners are white. In understanding that I was working in a discipline not meant for myself, I recognised the need for dismantling these limitations and expanding beyond the white, Euro-Western notion of archaeological practice and theory.
As I begun to train as a zooarchaeologist, I noticed how much of the literature was focused on very utilitarian interpretations of faunal remains; in some ways, there is some sense to this, as domestication and subsistence through the consumption of animals make up a significant amount of the zooarchaeological record. However, this is not the only relation that humans had with non-human species, and to narrow this relationship to a purely utilitarian standpoint is reflective of a Euro-Western perspective. Indeed, social zooarchaeology was developed to work against the assumption that human-animal relations could only be representative of such utilitarian motives, and further explore the way this relationship could be interpreted by looking at the use of animals in ritual, symbolism, and companionship in the past (Russell, 2012).
This connects to a broader attitude of anthropocentrism that is prevalent within zooarchaeology; again, this is unsurprising, as the discipline is often defined as utilising animal remains to develop an understanding of human life in the past (Albarella, 2017, p. 4). Such anthropocentrism has also been connected to the Euro-Western, settler-coloniser understanding of human-animal relations that has often been at odds with Indigenous perspectives (Belcourt, 2015, pp. 4–5). Overton and Hamilakis (2013) have proposed using social zooarchaeology as a means of decoupling the subfield from this perspective by adopting philosophical approaches such as Cary Wolfe’s “zoontology” (2003, pp. x–xiii) and the post-humanist analyses of interspecies relations and interactions by scholars such as Jaques Derrida (2008)and Donna Haraway (2007) in order to examine non-human lives as sentient beings with autonomy and agency in the past.
Zooarchaeology has also be used to perpetuate other Euro-Western binaries that are not universal; this includes the view that nature and culture are opposed to one another, as well as humans and animals. It is through these dichotomies that exploitation and domination are rationalised (Hovorka, 2017, p. 388). Similarly, when invoked in zooarchaeological interpretation, we continue to perpetuate an anthropocentric idea that human-animal relations have always been grounded in domination and commodification of one species over another.
My proposal for a decolonised zooarchaeology focused on decentring these Euro-Western perspectives, moving away from utilitarian, anthropocentric approaches to interpretating the zooarchaeological record that perpetuated Euro-Western binaries that likely did not even exist in the past. We could instead broaden our conceptions of non-human experience in the past, and further expand and enrich our understanding of human-animal relations without burdening our interpretations with the need to reframe them within our limited concepts of functionality and practicality, or by insisting on an anthropocentric focus. It would necessitate a massive restructure of zooarchaeological theory and practice, but it also had the potential of being a powerful shift in interpretation and understanding.
Since I originally posited these ideas in 2019, much has changed; with the global pandemic, the continuation of colonial violence is laid bare, as systemic racism is further invigorated by governments more concerned with collapsing capitalist systems and the Global South is completely abandoned by countries hoarding vaccines in the Global North. At the start of the pandemic, we saw the revival of the Black Lives Matter movement, which ultimately set off a wave of institutional level “equity, diversity, and inclusion” initiatives, often under the guise of “decolonising”; although it was (and still is) hoped that many of these initiatives, regardless of the actuality of their sincerity, will make way for tangible change in academia, some have already proven to have been performative in nature. For example, in 2021 the University of Leicester was accused of using its “decolonising the curriculum” initiative as an excuse to remove modules in medieval literature and English language and make 145 staff members redundant (Regan, 2021). More recently, three Cameroonian academics were blocked from entering Germany to present their research on artefacts from Cameroon than are presently part of the Bavarian Royal Collections (Hickley, 2022).
Against this setting, it is unsurprising that there has been further discourse surrounding the current status of the decolonisation movement in the academy. Similar to the critiques of the sudden popularity of EDI work in neoliberal institutions, scholars well-versed in decolonial theory and praxis have noted that decolonisation has been emptied of its radical potential for performative purposes (e.g., le Grange et al., 2020; Opara, 2021); instead, it has turned into what Foluke Adebisi (2020) refers to as a “tick-box exercise” that does not actually disrupt “hierarchised epistemic hegemonies”.
Despite the popularity of Tuck and Yang’s (2012) Decolonization is not a Metaphor, we continue to see the term used more metaphorically as it gets watered down and deradicalised through misuse. Decolonisation has, ironically, become colonised, particularly by scholars from the Global North who have not truly engaged with decolonial work from the Global South and continue to misuse these theories outside of the original Indigenous and African frameworks. This leads us to echo a question posed by African scholar Chisomo Kalinga: “Who is decoloniality for? The coloniser, or the colonised?” (as quoted in Pai, 2021).
Another specific critique of “decolonising” within the academia has revolved around the imprecise use of language. The misuse of the terminology by those in the Global North has further compounded the misunderstanding that decolonisation is a synonym for the broader “social justice” movement within academia, thereby disengaging the concept from its origins as a force of resistance against colonisation (Kalinga in Pai, 2021). And as Jairo Fúnez reminds us (2021), by decoupling decolonial theory from its origins among scholars in the Global South in order to refigure it as a digestible concept within the Global North, we risk equally decoupling it from its associated ethical and political commitments.
In revisiting the idea of decolonising zooarchaeology today, my own opinion has changed. That is not to say that I am against the idea of decolonising zooarchaeology; on the contrary, I still think it is something to aspire to. But I struggle to truthfully see myself or my work as actively decolonising, and I believe that to call it such may unintentionally lend itself to the reactionary movement that aims to dilute the word. That call for a precision of language by decolonial scholars and activists is a powerful one that we must heed, even if it requires some difficult self-reflection and introspection of our own work and where it truly lies – if at all – within the paradigm of decolonisation.
Today, I have begun to experiment with situating myself and my work as moving towards decolonisation, following Nayantara Sheoran Appleton’s suggestion that academics not ready to decolonise instead focus on planning how they will do so in the future, providing the time and space necessary to properly engage with prior and current work. Similarly, I do not think of my prior or current work as “decolonising”; rather, I instead view it as part of the progression that will eventually lead to decolonisation. And this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, either – indeed, as many scholars have pointed out, decolonisation is not a single event; it is a complex process that will be painful and push us beyond the colonial limits that some have become accustomed to and comfortable within, as well as necessitate many academics to relinquish their power and privileges to those who have been marginalised and harmed by our work. In moving towards decolonisation, I now place emphasis on developing meaningful support for accountability, on dismantling power dynamics within community engagement, and on examining the usefulness of archaeology as a tool for supporting the sovereignty of Black, Indigenous, historically looted, and otherwise marginalised communities over their land and culture, as well as increasing their autonomy over research and knowledge production and dissemination.
For zooarchaeologists intent on decolonising, perhaps the best way forward has already been demonstrated in recent work by zooarchaeologists such as Moss (2020) and Gruntorad (2021) in citing the usefulness of zooarchaeological research for Indigenous food sovereignty. Utilisation of applied zooarchaeology has already merited some success in modern day conservation efforts (e.g., Wolverton and Lyman, 2012; Nagaoka et al., 2016); similarly, we could apply zooarchaeological analysis and interpretation to supporting Indigenous land and resource sovereignty and decolonising conservation and wildlife management. Beyond this movement to action, I still maintain that my original proposal has some merit as part of an agenda towards decolonisation; again, it may not be decolonising work in of itself, but the decentring of Euro-Western, anthropocentric perspectives of non-human species can help further develop a foundation of theory upon which a decolonising form of zooarchaeology can be built.
By adopting a framework of moving towardsdecolonisation, I believe that archaeologists can continue to do vital work in recognising harmful practices and developing sustained and tangible means for repairing relations and holding ourselves and our research accountable, while also staying vigilant of falling backwards into performative acts of “decolonisation”, which actively hurts the movement under the guise of performative progressiveness. Remaining in a phase of moving towards decolonisation means that archaeologists are aware of our positionality towards the cause, relinquishing space to those actively decolonising theory and practice, but also continuing to support the movement through adjacent acts of change, such as diversifying our curriculum and developing meaningful relationships with marginalised peoples who were once objectified and harmed by our research.
This follows a recent proposal from Schneider and Hayes (2020) which posits that perhaps the way to decolonise archaeology is to decentre it; in this framework, archaeologists are actively encouraged to refrain from assuming and encouraging the centring of Western epistemologies as being vital to decolonisation, and instead consider how we can use the tools and resources granted to us due to our place in Western hierarchical power structures to support decolonial work outside of our institutions. In moving towards decolonisation, we create the spaces necessary to dismantle surviving colonial structures and nurture a form of archaeology that is actually radical, liberatory, and decolonial. It is work that is vital to ushering in decolonisation, even if it isn’t exactly an act of decolonising.
That all said, I still do not know if archaeology can truly “decolonise”, especially from within these institutions not only located in the Global North, but from within the heart of a dying Empire as well. Perhaps the only way we can truthly decolonise is by destroying these remnants of colonialism and rebuild from the ashes. But what is not “decolonising” our work is ignoring the decolonial struggles that exist outside of the walls of the academy, nor is it “decolonising” to ignore or superficially engage with the work of writers and scholars from the Global South, extracting their labour and knowledge for academic gain. Not only do we do a disservice to and potentially harm others through this misuse of terminology, but we also provide ample space for the movement to be further watered down into performative, shallow-level acts of respectability and reformation, instead of an act of radical transformation.
As academics (and more specifically, as archaeologists), we need to be honest with ourselves in our intents to decolonise, and whether we are truly doing decolonial work. There is nothing wrong with not doing decolonial work yourself, and indeed, it would make for a more ethical approach to research if academics were more honest with their positionality and their place within the greater geopolitics of knowledge production and appropriation. But we cannot become complacent, either, and ignore the necessity for decolonisation in our current world. We have a moral imperative to work towards decolonisation in the ways that we can, through meaningful and proactive action and change. But at the same time, we cannot allow ourselves to be tools of neoliberal and neo-colonial institutions through the appropriation of radical, liberatory work. Decolonisation necessitates a re-examination of ways of doing, and perhaps for academics, that also includes ways of doing decolonisation.
To conclude, I want to reiterate that this should not be taken as a damnation of the decolonisation movement in academia, nor as a warning against taking on decolonising work. Instead, I hope this is seen as a reminder that decolonisation is not an academic fad, or a buzzword that can be simply slotted into your next project or publication. It is a process of decoupling from and ultimately dismantling the colonialist structures upon which all of our research has been built. We can join the struggle with intention and critical re-examination of ourselves and our work, or we can co-opt it through carelessness and appropriation. It is imperative that if we choose to move, we move with purpose and as decolonisation transforms our understandings of knowledge, we transform with it as well – otherwise we risk perpetuating the same harms that necessitated the decolonisation movement to begin with.
References
Adebisi, F., 2020. Decolonisation is not about ticking a box: It must disrupt. University World News.
Albarella, U., 2017. Zooarchaeology in the Twenty-First Century: Where We are Now, and Where are We Going, in: Albarella, U. (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Zooarchaeology. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 3–24.
Atalay, S., 2012. Community-based Archaeology. University of California Press, Oakland, CA.
Battle-Baptiste, W., 2017. Black Feminist Archaeology. Routledge.
Brunache, P., Dadzie, B., Goodlett, K., Hampden, L., Khreisheh, A., Ngonadi, C., Parikh, D., Sires, J., 2021. Contemporary Archaeology and Anti-Racism: A Manifesto from the European Society of Black and Allied Archaeologists. European Journal of Archaeology 24, 294–298. https://doi.org/10.1017/eaa.2021.21
Byrne, S., 2012. Community Archaeology as Knowledge Management: Reflections from Uneapa Island, Papua New Guinea. Public Archaeology 11, 26–52. https://doi.org/10.1179/175355312X13311392295513
Delsol, N., 2020. Disassembling cattle and enskilling subjectivities: Butchering techniques and the emergence of new colonial subjects in Santiago de Guatemala. Journal of Social Archaeology 20, 189–213. https://doi.org/10.1177/1469605320906910
Derrida, J., 2008. The Animal that Therefore I Am. Fordham University Press, New York.
Fitzpatrick, A., 2019. Beyond Domestication and Subsistence: A Call for a Decolonised Zooarchaeology, in: Decolonising Science Narratives. https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/CU4ET
Flewellen, A.O., Dunnavant, J.P., Odewale, A., Jones, A., Wolde-Michael, T., Crossland, Z., Franklin, M., 2021. “The Future of Archaeology Is Antiracist”: Archaeology in the Time of Black Lives Matter. Am. Antiq. 86, 224–243. https://doi.org/10.1017/aaq.2021.18
Franklin, M., Dunnavant, J.P., Flewellen, A.O., Odewale, A., 2020. The Future is Now: Archaeology and the Eradication of Anti-Blackness. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 1–14.
Fúnez, J.I., 2021. With such a pyramidal academic structure, it’s not surprising that concepts advanced by decolonial theorists in the Global South tend to be emptied of their ethical & political commitments once re-articulated in the Global North. Twitter . https://twitter.com/Jairo_I_Funez/status/1473663451696300036
Gruntorad, K., 2021. Recreating and Rethinking Pot Polish: an Experimental Analysis and Zooarchaeological Approach to the Taphonomy of Cooking Fauna (MA Thesis). Northern Arizona University. https://doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.20886.06727
Haraway, D.J., 2007. When Species Meet. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis.
Hovorka, A.J., 2017. Animal Geographies: Globalizing and Decolonizing. Progress in Human Geography 41, 382–394.
Kennedy, S.A., VanValkenburg, P., 2016. Zooarchaeology and Changing Food Practices at Carrizales, Peru Following the Spanish Invasion. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 20, 73–104.
Laurich, M.S., 2021. Archaeological Pets: A Pathological Examination of the Human-Dog Relationship in the American Southwest (MA Thesis). Northern Arizona University. https://doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.35080.34562
le Grange, L., du Preez, P., Ramrathan, L., Blignaut, S., 2020. Decolonising the university curriculum or decolonial-washing? A multiple case study. Journal of Education 25–48. https://doi.org/10.17159/2520-9868/i80a02
May, S.K., Marshall, M., Domingo Sanz, I., Smith, C., 2017. Reflections on the Pedagogy of Archaeological Field Schools within Indigenous Community Archaeology Programmes in Australia. Public Archaeology 16, 172–190. https://doi.org/10.1080/14655187.2018.1483123
Moss, M.L., 2020. Did Tlingit Ancestors Eat Sea Otters? Addressing Intellectual Property and Cultural Heritage through Zooarchaeology. Am. Antiq. 85, 202–221. https://doi.org/10.1017/aaq.2019.101
Nagaoka, L., Rick, T.C., Wolverton, S.J., 2016. Applied Zooarchaeology: Five Case Studies. ISD LLC.
Overton, N.J., Hamilakis, Y., 2013. A Manifesto for a Social Zooarchaeology: Swans and Other Beings in the Mesolithic. Archaeological Dialogues 20, 111–136.
Pai, M., 2021. Decolonizing Global Health: A Moment To Reflect On A Movement. Forbes.
Regan, A., 2021. Anger at University of Leicester’s “decolonised curriculum” plans. BBC News.
Russell, N., 2012. Social Zooarchaeology: Humans and Animals in Prehistory. Cambridge Press, Cambridge.
Schmidt, P.R., Pikirayi, I., 2016. Community Archaeology and Heritage in Africa: Decolonizing Practice. Routledge.
Schneider, T.D., Hayes, K., 2020. Epistemic Colonialism: Is it Possible to Decolonize Archaeology? American Indian Quarterly 44, 127–148. https://doi.org/10.5250/amerindiquar.44.2.0127
Smith, C., Wobst, H.M., 2005. Indigenous Archaeologies: Decolonising Theory and Practice. Routledge, New York.
Todd, Z., 2014. Fish Pluralities: Human-Animal Relations and Sites of Engagement in Paulatuuq, Arctic Canada. Etudes/Inuit/Studies 38, 217–238.
Tuck, E., Yang, K.W., 2012. Decolonization is Not a Metaphor. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education, and Society 1.
Van Litsenburg, Z., 2021. How Can We Decolonize Caribbean Zooarchaeology? A Call for Conversation. Presented at the ARCHON Day 2021, Allard Pierson Museum.
Wallman, D., 2020. Subsistence as Transformative Practice: The Zooarchaeology of Slavery in the Colonial Caribbean. Journal of African Diaspora Archaeology and Heritage 9, 77–113. https://doi.org/10.1080/21619441.2021.1902228
White, W.A., Draycott, C., 2020. Why the Whiteness of archaeology is a problem. Sapiens.
Wolfe, C., 2003. Introduction, in: Wolfe, C. (Ed.), Zoontologies: The Question of the Animal. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, pp. ix–xxiii.
Wolverton, S., Lyman, R.L., 2012. Conservation Biology and Applied Zooarchaeology. University of Arizona Press.
My work and independent research is supported almost entirely by the generosity of readers – if you’re interested in contributing a tiny bit, you can donate here.
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 understanding as this term is used widely and I am addressing the issue of racial and ethnic diversity broadly, but I also acknowledge that it is a problematic term that erases the individual experiences of racialised people. That said, I want to stress that I can only present my perspective on issues of diversity in the field, and that the individual experiences and opinions from racialised archaeologists will vary on these issues.
Some questions I posed at the end of my talk for white archaeologists to consider as part of tackling the lack of diversity in the field (from the original slides).
British archaeology has a diversity problem.
More specifically, British archaeology has a racial/ethnic diversity problem – the most recent Profiling the Profession survey has revealed that as of 2020, 97% of archaeologists in the United Kingdom are white (Aitchison et al. 2020). It’s a shocking percentage, but also technically a small sign of improvement, as the last survey from 2013 indicated that 99% of the workforce was white (Aitchison and Rocks-Macqueen 2013). As though to further highlight this severe lack of diversity within the field, the authors have noted that numbers for BAME archaeologists were so low that, for the sake of keeping anonymity for respondents, responses could not be publicly published for specific ethnic groups (Open Past 2021). Similar low numbers can be seen in adjacent sectors such as museums, where 93% of the workforce is white (Arts Council England, 2021), and in heritage spaces such as Historic England, which reported that 96% of its staff was white in 2016 (Singh 2016).
The diversity problem in British archaeology is also not just a representational problem, either. As White and Draycott (2020) acknowledge, a lack of diversity is not only indicative of barriers in education and employment for BAME students and workers, but also has larger implications for how archaeology influences the narrative of the past as it is currently understood. A non-diverse archaeology is liable to perpetuate attitudes that harken back to the discipline’s colonial roots; it lacks the accountability to avoid shaping our understanding of the past in a way that can be weaponised for oppression, it lacks the cultural intelligence to tackle sensitive subjects in a nuanced manner, and ultimately sets the discipline back decades, if not centuries, in progress. More importantly, we now understand that the British past is far more diverse than was previously thought – we lose out on truly exploring the complexities of the past when the people who are shaping our understanding of it lack diversity of thought and experience.
With these low percentages of BAME archaeologists in mind, it is perhaps unsurprising that there are few diversity initiatives specifically centred on British archaeology that focus on racial and ethnic diversity. Arguably the most relevant group is the European Society of Black and Allies Archaeologists (ESBAA), although their work covers the entirety of Europe. Similarly, there are many other organisations with more international coverage, such as the Society of Black Archaeologists (SBA) and the Indigenous Archaeologist Collective (IAC). But with regards to British archaeology specifically, there are no currently existing initiatives or organisations to represent or support BAME archaeologists.
Of course, this isn’t to say that there are no diversity initiatives in the United Kingdom at all for archaeologists – but these tend to be either very broadly focused on equality, diversity, and inclusion strategies and/or almost entirely led and populated by white archaeologists. Again, this is not surprising as there is already such a lack of BAME archaeologists in the field. But white people – even those who are from marginalised backgrounds – are still white, and thus able to perpetuate racism and uphold white supremacy, even unconsciously. As such, it may be difficult for BAME archaeologists to feel comfortable, or even welcome, in “diversity” spaces that are not only predominantly white, but also predominantly led and shaped by white people.
I have spoken many times at length in the past regarding my personal experience in British archaeology and the ways in which I have experienced various forms of marginalisation as a queer, disabled Chinese American migrant woman. Instead of discussing the details of my journey, I instead want to frame my experiences with the resistance I have faced in trying to make space for myself in a discipline that was never originally made for people like me.
Unsurprisingly, I have received a fair amount of harassment, both online and in-person. Although it has come in a variety of “flavours” (ableism, sexism, queerphobia), I will focus on the racism that I’ve experienced in relation to my presence in archaeology. At its worst, I have been called slurs, faced general anti-Chinese sentiments and mockery, have been told outright that I do not belong in the field, that I am ruining archaeology and should be deported, and have also been referred to as an “anti-white racist” and a “bully”.
These examples are outrageous, perhaps, but they are supplemented by the many microaggressions I have faced as well – surprised reactions at my presence at conferences (especially when I am the only ethnic minority attendee), disbelief at my credentials or expertise, questions regarding my “real” place of birth, scolding me for being too angry or bitter, or attempting to goad me (and only me!) into debate regarding racism, colonialism, or cultural appropriation.
Although some of these interactions have been in-person, it bears emphasising that most have been through digital communications – Tweet replies, website comments, direct messages, and emails. In fact, this has ultimately resulted in all of the contact features on my website being shut down. And although it is tempting to simply dismiss this harassment as the work of anonymous Internet trolls or other non-archaeologists, some of these interactions have actually been with people working in the field.
These experiences are mine and mine alone, of course, but they are not too dissimilar to certain experiences shared with me by BAME colleagues. That said, I want to reiterate that I can only speak for my own experience with racism in British archaeology, and that my experience is one of specifically anti-East Asian racism – I cannot say that I speak for all BAME archaeologists, although I sometimes feel as though that is expected of me when I am asked to speak on diversity in British archaeology. And perhaps this microaggression is the most painful of them all, as it places a heavy burden on my shoulders to “represent” a diverse set of experiences in a way that is “respectable” to majority white audiences. Perhaps it is not something that others think about, but these talks can often feel as though you have to constantly compromise with yourself – how much of your actual ethical and moral obligations to you ignore in order to present such a sensitive topic in a way that is more palatable to people who have never experienced the sort of marginalisation you constantly face in the field?
I wanted to frame my personal experiences through this lens of resistance against my work (or, in some cases, just against my existence in the field) because I do not want to present a whitewashed version of what it feels like to be a minority in British archaeology. To be honest, I have tried this approach in the past, catering towards audiences who do not want to be unsettled or made uncomfortable, and it ultimately does not achieve anything besides perpetuating the continuation of doing the bare minimum without addressing the pervasiveness of racism and how deeply entrenched it is into our field since its conception. I no longer want to dismiss my own experiences – and the experiences of others – by saying that it is only a few bad apples, that it is only a few uncomfortable moments here and there. It is the constant feeling of having to fight for your own space, to know that you are already placed at a severe disadvantage compared to some of your peers, that you are being asked to justify why you are here, in this field, that is not for you. I do not set out to make my own struggles my identity, but how else do I get people to care beyond a shallow-level understanding? What more can any marginalised archaeologist have to say to get others to not only sympathise, but move beyond that towards tangible action?
To end this paper, it would be expected perhaps that I would have to discuss the potential solutions to this major problem – but in writing this, I reflected upon the amount of times I’ve been asked this question myself. And frankly? It is very often – particularly as I think about how many times I’ve been asked to sit on panels to discuss the issues I face as a multi-marginalised person in archaeology. So instead, I want to frame these potential solutions with questions that I think white archaeologists should be reflecting upon…
Is your “diversity” initiative led entirely by white people?
In the aftermath of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020, many diversity initiatives began to appear across disciplines and sectors; since then, however, there has been much scrutiny and criticism of these initiatives – that many were simply tokenistic and performative (Afrifa-Tchie 2021), that many still centred whiteness (Gassam Asare 2021), and similarly, that many were predominately white spaces (Phipps and McDonald 2021). Many of the criticisms could also apply to initiatives in British archaeology, but I do want to focus on the last point – that diverse spaces primarily populated and led by white people can be more problematic and harmful than helpful.
A relevant example of this is white feminism, which has permeated most mainstream discourses on sexism and patriarchal harm. White feminism ignores the intersection of race in discussions of gender, centring the experiences of white women as universal in a way that erases women of colour, as well as the racism of white women and how they perpetuate white supremacy (Moon and Holling 2020). This is not to say that all white feminists are guilty of producing “white feminism”, but that it is potentially far more likely to slip into white feminist thought without the input of women in colour in a diversity initiative.
Of course, this should not be misconstrued as a demand that there are no white people in diversity initiatives – obviously this is not even feasible in British archaeology given how few BAME archaeologists are in the field. That being said, if you are a white person in a diversity initiative, you should be constantly reflecting upon and challenging your positionality in the larger power dynamics and whether or not your actions are working in favour of increasing and supporting diversity in British archaeology. For example, if you are working in a leadership capacity, is your position more suitable for a BAME archaeologist with similar experience in leading? Can you give your platform up to someone who would not be given a chance to speak their truth elsewhere?
That said, we must also avoid putting all of the responsibility for “solving” British archaeology’s diversity problem on the shoulders of BAME archaeologists, an issue that has also been observed in diversity initiatives elsewhere (Bhopal 2022). And if they do take on this work, we must consider how we compensate that work fairly, which leads us to the next question to consider.
Are you actually paying people to do diversity work?
Again, this is an issue that extends beyond British archaeology, but is important to consider. Diversity labour is often unpaid, physically and emotionally draining, and expected to be done on top of other work commitments (e.g., Nance-Nash 2020; Doharty et al. 2021, pp. 237-238). Such unpaid labour is extractive in practice, and thus only continues to perpetuate marginalisation. Equality should not, and cannot, come from exploitation. Resources and funding need to be set aside and dedicated to the support and progression of diversity initiatives, as well as for properly compensating people for their work.
Do you still get offended by people talking about whiteness?
I previously discussed the pressure to present issues of diversity and racism in a way that is palpable to white audiences, which is connected to this question regarding what is often referred to as “white fragility” (Di Angelo 2011), or the defensiveness of white people in reaction to the “minimal amount of racial stress” (ibid, p.57).
To be blunt, we cannot continue to centre white feelings in this work. These feelings, which include indignation and guilt, are not helpful. Instead, it may be more productive to turn inwardly and self-reflect over why you feel this way, and begin to reconsider the ways in which whiteness has been able to inform your perspective of the world, and how it ultimately frames your archaeological theory and practice.
Diversity work and anti-racism work is uncomfortable work, and to feel otherwise means that you might not be doing the work as deeply as you should be. And I can sympathise with feeling reluctance in working through entrenched notions that will cause discomfort as you progress – for example, I am still working to unpack the anti-Blackness and anti-Indigenous racism that are deeply entrenched in my upbringing as a non-Black, non-Indigenous settler on Massapequas land. It is uncomfortable work, yes, but it is necessary work.
What are you doing besides telling Black, Asian, and minority ethnic archaeologists how “brave” they are?
This is something I have often experienced, particularly after participating in diversity panels or events. And while it is appreciated…it does not do much to combat racism in our field. So, in other words, what are you, as a white archaeologist, doing to materially and tangibly support anti-racist initiatives and diversity initiatives, as well as the BAME archaeologists who are entrenched in the work?
The European Society of Black and Allied Archaeologists have already proposed some solutions to this question in their recent manifesto (Brunache et al. 2021), which I highly recommend that everyone reads. They highlight the need to make changes to the recruitment and internal structural support of BAME archaeologists in order to actually retain them, including mentorship programmes, better pay and working requirements, and better mechanisms for reporting harassment. Providing tangible and material support to BAME archaeologists to not only be successfully recruited into the field, but to remain in the field as well, should be centred in diversity initiatives that seek out to address the lack of diversity in British archaeology. We have moved far beyond just words – we must be taking action.
Do you know why it is important to diversify British archaeology?
With this question, I would like to return to the start of the talk. Diversity is much more than representation, particularly for archaeology – it is about the way in which knowledge is produced, shaped, and shared by our field, which in turn colours our collective understanding of the past. A more diverse archaeology is not the end of all problems in the field, of course, but it provides us with further means to combat the perpetuation of archaeology’s colonial characteristics, to decentre white perspectives that have controlled the narrative of the past for far too long, and to let archaeology develop and grow into a field that is actually transformative and perhaps even radical in its praxis.
References
Afrifa-Tchie, A. (2021) Are performative allies blocking your progress towards race equality. HR Magazine.
Aitchison, K. and Rocks-Macqueen, D. (2013). Profiling the Profession 2012-2013. Landward Research Ltd.
Aitchison, K., German, P., and Rocks-Macqueen, D. (2021) Profiling the Profession 2020. Landward Research Ltd.
Arts Council England. (2021). Equality, Diversity, and the Creative Case: A Data Report 2019-2020.
Bhopal, K. (2022) ‘We can talk the talk, but we’re not allowed to walk the walk’: the Role of Equality and Diversity Staff in Higher Education Institutions in England. Higher Education.
Brunache, P., Dadzie, B.E., Goodlett, K., Hampden, L., Khreisheh, A., Ngonadi, C.V., Parikh, D. and Sires, J.P. (2021). Contemporary Archaeology and Anti-Racism: A Manifesto from the European Society of Black and Allied Archaeologists. European Journal of Archaeology, 24(3), pp. 294-298.
Di Angelo, R. (2011) White Fragility. International Journal of Critical Pedagogy 3(3), pp. 54-70.
Doharty, N., Madriaga, M., & Joseph-Salisbury, R. (2021) The university went to ‘decolonise’ and all they brought back was lousy diversity double-speak! Critical race counter-stories from faculty of colour in ‘decolonial’ times. Educational Philosophy and Theory 53(3), pp. 233-244.
Gassam Asare, J. (2021) Why DEI and Anti-Racism Work Needs to Decenter Whiteness. Forbes.
Henderson, H., & Bhopal, K. (2021). Narratives of academic staff involvement in Athena SWAN and race equality charter marks in UK higher education institutions. Journal of Education Policy, pp. 1-17.
Nance-Nash, S. (2020) How corporate diversity initiatives trap workers of colours. BBC Worklife.
My work and independent research is supported almost entirely by the generosity of readers – if you’re interested in contributing a tiny bit, you can donate here.
The following text is a transcript of a conference paper I presented in 2019 for the Animal Remains Conference at the University of Sheffield.
A summary of the sort of ethical considerations we might potentially consider with regards to zooarchaeology (from the original presentation)
Archaeology is currently in the midst of an ethical crisis. From pseudo-archaeological “fake news” (Halmhofer 2019; Wade 2019) to the longstanding fight for repatriation of artefacts and remains (Gilyeat 2019; Kremer 2019), archaeologists continue to find themselves at the heart of a struggle to radically improve and restructure a discipline that has often been at the front of problematic and harmful practices itself. However, not every facet of archaeology is contemplating ethical concerns – zooarchaeology, which primarily focuses on faunal remains within the archaeological record, rarely finds itself considering ethical dilemmas.
To preface this discussion on zooarchaeological ethics, let us first briefly examine the current discourse in archaeology as a whole to provide some further context. With the discipline’s progression into the Digital Age, for example, there has been much discussion on the ethical considerations of the digital and public sphere (Dennis 2016; Hassett 2018; Richardson 2018). However, perhaps the biggest problem that archaeologists now face in the virtual world is the proliferation of pseudo-archaeological conspiracies and “fake news”; one pertinent example is the debate on human remains recovered from the Atacama Desert in Chile. The non-normative appearance of the remains was controversial and eventually cited as evidence of aliens by conspiracy theorists (Zimmer 2018). This was inevitably debunked by a recent study which claimed that while the skeleton was human, it has several “abnormalities” and “mutations” of significance (Bhattacharya et al. 2018). This was, in turn, further debunked by an additional study that also cited a massive overstep in ethics by the original researchers (Halcrow et al. 2018).
This brings us to the focus of most ethical debates: human remains, particularly those of Indigenous and colonised ancestors. Repatriation, for example, is still a major component of discourse on archaeological ethics. Despite becoming partially integrated into laws through acts such as the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act in the United States (Nash and Colwell-Chanthapohn 2010), many marginalised communities are still fighting to claim their deceased from museums and institutions. This fight has also progressed to individual collectors (Katz 2019), in particular due to the burgeoning market for human remains on social media (Huffer and Graham 2017). More generally, archaeologists continue to wrestle with the ethical considerations of the presentation of human remains – should it be banned entirely (Swain 2016; Overholtzer and Argueta 2017; White 2019)? Does it require content warnings beforehand (Pollard 2016; Williams 2016)? As archaeologists become more aware of the ways in which socio-cultural and political factors interact with each other within our research, we will need to constantly re-evaluate how we approach these sensitive topics.
The ethical reconsideration of human remains is, of course, vital to further decolonising our discipline and I do not wish for this paper to be seen as arguing against this. Nor do I want this paper to be seen as a manifesto or particular platform for my own political views. Rather, I want to focus on zooarchaeological ethics as a deeper analysis of the anthropocentrism within the discipline itself, and an examination of how we approach animal remains so differently from human remains.
Ethical considerations in zooarchaeology are, for the most part, non-existent. Unlike their human counterparts, faunal remains do not require ethical review of their use in research. Although debate continues on content warnings, most archaeologists have at the very least adopted the use of a warning prior to showing images of human remains in their work; animal remains, on the other hand, rarely necessitate a warning. For example, in writing about the recent debate on content warnings in archaeology, zooarchaeologist Emily Johnson (2016) reflects on a personal experience in which she was only significantly affected by remains when coming across human bones amongst her faunal assemblage. As most zooarchaeological assemblages deal with defleshed bone, there is often less of an emotional connection between the archaeologist and the recovered remains (Fitzpatrick 2018). In addition, further examination of commonly used content warnings suggest that people’s main concerns are with alive or recently-alive animals, demonstrated by the terms “animal cruelty” and “animal death” (LSA.Inclusive.Teaching.Initiative 2017). The few discussions regarding ethics amongst zooarchaeologists appear to be focused on applied zooarchaeology; much has been written about zooarchaeological contributions to current conservation projects (Lyman 1996; Braje et al. 2012; Peacock 2012). However, it seems that this ethical analysis is rarely turned inward.
Perhaps the main reason for such a lack of ethical consideration in the discipline is that the heart of zooarchaeology is still a human one. Despite an emphasis on non-human remains, zooarchaeology is still defined by its usefulness in understanding human life in the past (Albarella 2017: 4). Those outside of the zooarchaeological sphere may go so far as to literally “objectify” animal remains and label them as “artefacts” during excavation and curation.
This is not to say that there has not been attempts to change this; the last two decades have seen the focus of zooarchaeological research move from the quantification of human economies and societies using faunal remains (Crabtree 1990: 155) to the consideration of relations between human and non-human species as part of a “social zooarchaeology” (Russell 2012; Overton and Hamilakis 2013) in a bid to move the discipline away from an anthropocentric perspective. Is this movement the key to developing an ethics within zooarchaeology? I would argue that it is.
Outside of archaeology, ethical considerations of animals have often proposed a framework in which animals are given the same respect and rights as other humans (Singer 1973; Berry 1997; Cavalieri 2003). I posit that a similar framework is necessary to begin to consider how we can approach faunal remains more ethically – that perhaps we need to change our focus in order to equally consider the non-human perspective as much as the human one.
There have been some efforts within zooarchaeology to manage non-anthropocentrism as a theoretical framework. For example, social zooarchaeologists have become more concerned with animal agency, with many utilising Cary Wolfe’s concept of “zoontology”; this concept acknowledges that animals work within their own agency in interspecies relationships, including those with humans (Wolfe 2003: x-xiii). Moreover, it argues against the inherent “speciesism” entrenched in human led studies of non-human species and seeks to rectify this by subverting the definition of the word “animal” as it is currently used – to designate the non-human and separate it entirely as beneath us through our own cultural frameworks (Maltby 2008: 133). Social zooarchaeologists have taken this approach to further explore processes that have only been understood through an anthropocentric lens; for example, there has been discussion of an animal facet to the domestication process that emphasizes non-human agency (Russell 2002: 285-286).
Assuming a non-anthropocentric perspective, however, can be problematic. There is a fine line between empathising with a non-human subject and anthropomorphising them. A zooarchaeology rife with anthropomorphism would be at risk of overt projection of “human” qualities that may unnecessarily obscure any scientific advancements in further understanding the cognitive behaviours of non-human species (Russell 2012: 2-3). A balance would need to be struck at the onset.
With this new framework in place, we can now begin to face ethical concerns that come with this change in worldview. Ultimately, these concerns will be similar to those associated with human remains: what are the rights of the deceased? Should we display their remains? Do we have the ethical right to retain these remains? That these remains are non-human also throws into sharp relief an additional issue that is sometimes brought up with regards to the research and display of ancestors by non-descendants: are we imposing our own (human) perspectives upon those who may have had a completely differently worldview?
These are not easy questions to answer, nor are they meant to be. However, I believe that radically changing our perspective, and with that, our ethics, may ultimately lead to a reassessment of how we interpret and engage with faunal remains, both in the past and in the present.
To end this paper, let me reiterate that I am not suggesting that these are ethical considerations that are pertinent to the progress of zooarchaeology; I recognise that, given archaeology’s historical complicity with colonialization and white supremacy, there are certainly more important issues at hand that still need to be reckoned with. However, I hope that the points brought up in this paper spark conversations and debates on the current trajectory of zooarchaeology as a discipline and how our human perspectives ultimately shape not just our interpretations of the past, but the way we engage with remains in the present and future. And who knows? Given how much our relationship to animals have changed over time, perhaps future zooarchaeologists will one day find it necessary to adopt better ethics for our non-human brethren.
References
Albarella, U. (2017) Zooarchaeology in the Twenty-First Century: Where We are Now, and Where are We Going. In Albarella, U. (editor) The Oxford Handbook of Zooarchaeology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 3-24.
Berry, B. (1997) Human and Nonhuman Animal Rights and Oppression: an Evolution Toward Equality. Free Inquiry in Creative Sociology 25 (2), 155-160.
Bhattacharya, S., Li, J., Sockwell, A., Kan, M. J., Bava, F. A., Chen, S., Avila-Arcos, M. C., Ji, X., Smith, E., Asadi, N. B., Lachman, R. S., Lam, H. Y. K., Bustamante, C. D., Butte, A. J. and Nolan, G. P. (2018) Whole-Genome Sequencing of Atacama Skeleton Shows Novel Mutations Linked with Dysplasia. Genome Research 28, 423-431.
Braje, T. J., Rick, T. C. and Erlandson, J. M. (2012) Rockfish in the Longview: Applied Archaeology and Conservation of the Pacific Red Snapper (Genus Sebastes) in Southern California. Applied Zooarchaeology and Conservation Biology, 157-178.
Cavalieri, P. (2003) The Animal Question: Why Nonhuman Animals Deserve Human Rights. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Crabtree, P. J. (1990) Zooarchaeology and Complex Societies: Some Uses of Faunal Analysis for the Study of Trade, Social Status, and Ethnicity. Archaeological Method and Theory 2, 155-205.
Dennis, L. M. (2016) Archaeogaming, Ethics, and Participatory Standards. SAA Archaeological Record 16 (5), 29-33.
Fforde, C. (2003) Collection, Repatriation, and Identity. The Dead and Their Possessions. London: Routledge. 43-64.
Gilyeat, D. (2019) Pitt Rivers: The Museum that’s Returning the Dead. BBC News,
Halcrow, S. E., Killgrove, K., Robbins Schug, G., Knapp, M., Huffer, D., Arriaza, B., Jungers, W. and Gunter, J. (2018) On Engagement with Anthropology: A Critical Evaluation of Skeletal and Developmental Abnormalities in the Atacama Preterm Baby and Issues of Forensic and Bioarchaeological Research Ethics. Response to Bhattacharya et al. ‘Whole genome sequencing of Atacama Skeleton shows Novel Mutations Linked with Dysplasia’ in Genome Research, 2018, 28: 423-431. Doi: 10.1101./gr223693.117. International Journal of Paleopathology 22, 97-100.
Katz, B. (2019) The F.B.I. is Trying to Return Thousands of Stolen Artifacts, Including Native American Burial Remains. Smithsonian.com,
Kremer, D. (2019) The Need to Return Hoa Hakananai’a: The Repatriation of Indigenous Artefacts as a Human Rights Issue. International Public Policy Review.
Lyman, R. L. (1996) Applied Zooarchaeology: The Relevance of Faunal Analysis to Wildlife Management. World Archaeology 28 (1), 110-125.
Maltby, P. (2008) Fundamentalist Dominion, Postmodern Ecology. Ethics and the Environment 13 (2), 119-141.
McManamon, F. P. (2000) Archaeological Method and Theory: An Encyclopedia. New York: Garland Publishing Co.
Nash, S. E. and Colwell-Chanthapohn, C. (2010) NAGPRA After Two Decades. Museum Anthropology 33 (2), 99-104.
Overholtzer, L. and Argueta, J. R. (2017) Letting Skeletons Out of the Closet: The Ethics of Displaying Ancient Mexican Human Remains. International Journal of Heritage Studies 24 (5), 508-530.
Overton, N. J. and Hamilakis, Y. (2013) A Manifesto for a Social Zooarchaeology: Swans and Other Beings in the Mesolithic. Archaeological Dialogues 20 (2), 111-136.
Peacock, E. (2012) Archaeological Freshwater Mussel Remains and their Use in the Conservation of an Imperiled Fauna. In Wolverton, S. and Lyman, R. L. (editors) Conservation Biology and Applied Zooarchaeology. Tucson: The University of Arizona Press. 42-67.
Pollard, T. (2016) Trigger Warnings about War Graves Do Not Molly-Coddle Archaeology Students, They Are Essential.
Richardson, L. J. (2018) Ethical Challenges in Digital Public Archaeology. Journal of Computer Applications in Archaeology 1 (1), 64-73.
Russell, N. (2002) The Wild Side of Animal Domestication. Society and Animals 10 (3), 286-302.
Russell, N. (2012) Social Zooarchaeology: Humans and Animals in Prehistory. Cambridge: Cambridge Press.
Singer, P. (1973) Animal Liberation. In Garner, R. (editor) Animal Rights. London: Palgrave Macmillian. 7-18.
Swain, H. (2016) Museum Practice and the Display of Human Remains. In Williams, H. and Giles, M. (editors) Archaeologists and the Dead: Mortuary Archaeology in Contemporary Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 169-183.
White, L. (2019) Conflicts over the Excavation, Retention, and Display of Human Remains: An Issue Resolved? Competing Values in Archaeological Heritage, 91-102.
My work and independent research is supported almost entirely by the generosity of readers – if you’re interested in contributing a tiny bit, you can donate here.
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