Yes, okay this game came out in 2019, and I actually played it for the first time in 2021, but I didn’t actually write a review then, so I’m writing one now based on a recent playthrough. So, if you haven’t played it in the past four years since it was released, beware of spoilers for the game in the blog post below.
Our main character, Aliya, is here to give you support if you’re no longer actively working in the field – once an archaeologist, always an archaeologist!
Heaven’s Vault originally came out in 2019, developed and published by Inkle Studios. In the four years since its release, many archaeologists have already written their takes on the game (e.g., Reinhard 2019, Haneuer 2021, Draycott 2022), so nothing I’ll probably say in this post will be particularly innovative, because frankly? I agree with most of these takes: that Heaven’s Vault is a fantastic addition to the catalogue of archaeology-inspired video games and is arguably the only game to produce an experience that most closely resembles the reality of archaeological investigation (albeit set in the distant future and in space with robots, something that I haven’t experienced myself!).
Deciphering ancient writing is most of the gameplay – and something I’ve literally never come across in my actual archaeological work, but it’s definitely fun!
Heaven’s Vault is very much concerned about a specific archaeological approach, and perhaps that is what makes it a more imperfect depiction of archaeology; that said, I also understand that this decision is based on developing easy-to-understand gaming mechanics, and I doubt anyone playing the game outside of the discipline wants to run lipid analysis on sherds as part of the fun (or maybe they do! I don’t know what the youth enjoy!). As I’ve written about in the past, archaeology in games is often used as an excuse for certain types of side questing mechanics like collectables; the mechanic that creates the main methodology of archaeological investigation in Heaven’s Vault is through translation. Starting with a couple of pre-translated words, you’re tasked with linguistic puzzles, using context clues and similarities between characters of script to propose translations that are often critiqued by surrounding characters as well as your player character. Over time and repeated exposure to certain characters of script, you’re able to make decisions on what is the “definitive” translation of certain words, slowly building up your dictionary of known words to help identify new ones. And although this isn’t representative of how all archaeologists work, I still find this mechanic to be accurate in the way in ultimately illustrates the process of interpretation – slow, but steadily brings the bigger picture into focus as you gather further evidence through careful consideration of artefacts, bioarchaeological investigation, and comparative information from the broader regional and temporal context. To refer to the archaeological process as “solving a puzzle” may be a bit of a cliché at this point, but it is true in my experience – it’s about finding the connections that each archaeological find has to another and recognising the way it ultimately fits into a bigger picture of how we understand the past.
Wanna have a brief existential crisis? The timeline mechanic for the game has you covered!
Perhaps the best part of the game, in my opinion, was the way it handles the concept of time. In the game’s menu, you’re able to see a timeline – not just of the in-universe history, but also of your actions so far in the game. I’ve previously written about how archaeologists conceptualise time in the past, and this timeline is such an incredible addition to that discussion. That it also includes your own actions as part of the broader narrative is also a really interesting approach to a more self-reflexive form of archaeology that considers how excavation and curation practices are ultimately connected within the history of a particular artefact (and, within the story of Heaven’s Vault, shows how the past can influence the present and future, as the information you gather during the game is meant to help you make the final decision at the end). It’s something I think real world archaeologists to reflect upon more – I think some of us often feel removed from our work (in an idealistic, scientific type of way), when in actuality, our research is just another addition to the long history of these artefacts that we excavate and handle.
As I mentioned in the preface to this blog post, I’m actually writing this review after my second playthrough of the game, which means I was able to play using a New Game+ mode. For those who may not know, this is a mechanic that’s become quite popular in the past decade to encourage replays of video games, often by allowing you to retain elements of your previous playthrough (i.e., levels, skills, experience, items, etc.). In Heaven’s Vault, New Game+ allows you to bring across some of the translations you identified in your last playthrough. In my second playthrough, I’ve not only discovered new artefacts but also made new breakthroughs including a more definitive understanding of the ancient pantheon of Gods and the events of the past that have ultimately set the Nebula on its course to where you currently are within the game. It’s a fascinating way to illustrate how our understandings of things change over time, and how each era (read: playthrough) potentially brings with it further knowledge of the past to apply towards the present and future.
Heaven’s Vault may not be an exact replica of what it is like to be an archaeologist, but I don’t think that’s the point at the end of the day, As an archaeologist myself, even if I was unable to relate to the approaches used to undertake archaeology in the game, I could still find relatable in the broader experience of archaeological investigation – the game perfectly illustrates why many of us become archaeologists, as well as the many ethical issues that we sometimes face along the way as we reflect upon our role in interpreting the past and how it ultimately impacts the present and the future. And frankly, as a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to video game collectables? I’m very excited to undertake my third playthrough in the near future and continue to build up my dictionary of ancient script.
Draycott, J. (2022). Not male, not pale, and definitely not stale: Aliyah Elasra and archaeology in Heaven’s Vault. In J Draycott (ed)Women in Historical and Archaeological Video Games, 9. Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, p. 341-360
Haneuer, S. (2021). Archaeogaming: How Heaven’s Vault Changes the “Game”. in A Abar et al. (eds) Pearls, Politics and Pistachios: Essays in Anthropology and Memories on the Occasion of Susan Pollock’s 65th Birthday, Heidelberg: Propylaeum, p. 631-642.
Inkle Studios (2021) Heaven’s Vault, video game, Nintendo Switch. Cambridge: Inkle.
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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 find my PayPal here, as well as myAmazon Wishlist for research material.
This blog post will contain some slight spoilers for the game ‘I Am Dead’.
A snapshot of the town museum in Shelmerston, showcasing the delightful mix of local cultural heritage and natural heritage.
As readers may remember, I absolutely loved the video game I Am Dead (Hollow Grounds, 2020) and wrote a previous blog post about how it was actually more of an archaeology game than players may actually realise. Perhaps one of my favourite parts of the game was the level centred on the town museum, of which the main character was previously the curator of and, as such, holds particular sentimentality for. The game’s fictional setting of Shelmerston seems to be based broadly on the islands of the North Atlantic, although for me it certainly brought back memories from when I excavated in the Orkney Islands of Scotland. More specifically, playing the game – and particularly the levels in the town museum – reminded me so much of Stromness Museum, which similarly has collections related to both the local fauna and flora, as well as local history. And frankly, as a museum worker-turned archaeologist-returned to museum worker, I just love spending time in these spaces where archaeology and the construction of heritage meet, where the past meets and engages with the present through the meticulous work of museum workers.
Several displays from the town museum level showcasing various aspects of Shelmerston history – this includes (from top to bottom) a display on a nearby historic shipwreck, a cabinet of curiosities representing local folklore and collectibles donated by local townspeople, and the history of migrant communities to the island.
But I think there is something particularly charming and fascinating about the “little town museum” as its own type of museum space – the independent museums that have less than a tenth of the budget of larger, internationally renowned institutions and hardly any of the sort of “flashy finds” that line the exhibition cabinets of the British Museum, yet push through curatorial practices and care to display their collections with the underlying message that they are just as important to our collective understanding of the past as any “big name” artifact or assemblage. And don’t take that as an insult against these museums either – I’ve always been fond and protective of smaller museums as an important feature of the broader heritage sector, having worked in both national and more localised museums myself.
Research on small museums have indicated their potential as producers of social capital and communal cohesion among regional communities, particularly when community members are their main stakeholders and internal goals are focused on building and sustaining a sense of social community (Burton and Griffin 2008). Other research has identified several characteristics that community members expect from their local museums, including a sense of pride in local traditions and customs, the development of cross-communal engagement that includes all members of the local community, and a consistent sense of relevancy with the local region. However, it’s not just about keeping the focus on the local either (although this is clearly important to local community groups); feedback from local stakeholders have also emphasised the need for small museums to support local tourism and to act as representative of local histories and cultures to visitors from outside of the community (Kelly 2006).
These small, localised museums are clearly key places for their associated communities to partake in developing how we illustrate and interpret local histories and heritage, and how this gets communicated to others from outside these communities. In I Am Dead, various objects on display are observed to have been donated by recurring characters in the game, placed in context with Shelmerston history – for example, one character’s camera is displayed in a exhibit about the local fictional sport of “sheller”, with the provided text explaining how that character was an avid photographer of sheller games. In another example, we see how local community donations can influence curatorial practice and design – with an entire display dedicated to a local band, filled with their donated instruments.
I think the importance of local museums, and those who work in them, is summed up in the inscription of the memorial bench that your character, former local curator Morris Lupton, which simply says: “He collected stories”. Smaller museums preserve these stories that perhaps may not be as major as others in the grand scheme of things, still are important in shaping the culture and heritage of that particular region. It’s similar to how I have always viewed individual sites in archaeology – although important to view from a wider context as part of the puzzle that makes up the greater archaeological record, it’s equally as important to view the site on its own, the ways in which one specific area can have a ripple effect on the wider community and environment. And I think that also ties into the broader themes of the video game as well – that we, as living people navigating throughout the world, impact others in ways that we may not even recognise but add to the narrative that connects us all together as a larger community. And perhaps one day our stories will get told long after we’re gone, in small museums dedicated to preserving our connected histories and the cultural heritage we developed together and left behind.
Burton, C., & Griffin, J. M. (2008). More than a museum? Understanding how small museums contribute to social capital in regional communities. Asia Pacific Journal of Arts and Cultural Management.
Hollow Grounds (2020) I Am Dead, video game, Nintendo Switch. West Hollywood, CA: Annapurna Interactive.
Kelly, L. (2006). Measuring the impact of museums on their communities: The role of the 21st century museum. Intercom, 2(4).
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, as well as myAmazon Wishlist for research material.
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 find my PayPal here, as well as myAmazon Wishlist for research material.
Note: This blog post is adapted from an abandoned journal paper that I originally wrote in 2021.
Can you guess which museum’s archival collections might be depicted here?
Introduction
From the perspective of many people from marginalised backgrounds and historically looted communities, the museum continues to be a symbol of colonialism. Despite renewed calls for decolonisation, repatriation, and restitution, museums are arguably still behind in progressing towards repairing relations with people from these particular communities. As many museums continue to focus on purely representational politics through diversity and equity initiatives (e.g., Rodney, 2020; Williams, 2020; Smith, 2021), it is difficult to image these institutions moving beyond shallow change and committing to something more tangible for those in affected communities.
To resolve this issue, it may be useful to look outwards, and towards the theory and practice developed by social justice scholars and activists (see Genovese, 2016, p. 32); more specifically, we should look at the concept of accountability, and the ways in which those working within museum and heritage spaces can both make amends for harm committed, as well as counteract future instances of harm. It is important to emphasise the need for using external forms of accountability as well, as museums and other institutions will already have internal accountability structures in place for administrative purposes. For this paper, the concept of an accountability framework will be grounded in specific social justice theory and practice and will draw from activists and organisers who are utilising these approaches in their own communities. This framework will utilise archive research as part of a broader auditing of institutional collections and materials that includes the direct input from affected individuals and communities.
This proposed method for accountability can be seen in two ways: as an accountability-based approach to archival research, as well as an archival research-based approach to accountability. To be accountable for one’s own archives would mean that a museum would have a duty towards active consideration of all materials in its passion; this would include developing research into identification of all aspects of cultural objects, documents, and remains, allowing for potential reconnection with the original communities from which these materials once belonged to, with the possibility of eventual repatriation if necessary. In addition, by using a research-focused approach to deliver actions of accountability, museums and institutions can continue to uphold their status as centres of knowledge-making as well as improve their own ethical approach, while also repairing the relations between themselves and those who have been harmed in the past. Prior to further discussion of this proposed form of accountability, it may be useful to examine each component of this framework individually.
Moving Towards the Archives
Interest in archival research seems to have been renewed over the past decade, especially within and among marginalised individuals and communities (e.g., Morris & Rawson, 2013; Bishop, 2017; Araluen Corr, 2018; Henry, 2018). This is not to say that archival research has ever truly “gone away” – archival science has been a field in its own right since the 1950’s (Rumschöttel, 2001, p. 149) and continues to remain an important methodological tool in research, especially with the advent of digital approaches to collecting and analysing archival material (Duranti, 2001; S. Ross, 2012). It should be noted that for the purposes of this paper, the word “archives” will be used to refer to both archival documentation as well as collections held in storage within these institutions.
Archival research has always been rife with internal discourse regarding ethical considerations, a topic which has only become more complex as more marginalised voices are prioritised and heard within the conversation. However, it could be argued that this discourse, particularly the more critical aspects, has also revealed the existing radical potential of the archives. Researchers, many of whom could be considered what Genovese (2016, p. 38) calls “activist archivists”, are now turning their focus onto the problematic histories behind the creation and development of the archives themselves (e.g., Luker, 2017; Karabinos, 2019; Salenius, 2021), and the ways in which these processes have enacted their own forms of marginalisation, restriction, and objectification (McKee & Porter, 2012, p. 60), harms that arguably are continued within the legacies of many museums and institutions.
Alongside this critical turn, researchers have also centred those who are not presented within archives (e.g., Gilliand, 2014; Ghaddar, 2016). These inquiries also examine the ways in which the archive is constructed, with an emphasis on who is not consider “worthy” enough for remembrance (Jimerson, 2009). This also allows for consideration of how archives themselves are not apolitical or neutral, as they are able to define individuals and cultures through decisions regarding classification and curation (Tesar, 2015). Archival research has also found a place within broader calls for decolonisation that have only intensified within the past decade, particularly with regards to institutions that have gained wealth through the transatlantic slave trade (e.g., Weale, 2019; Mullen, 2021; Ross, 2021) In addition, archives have been crucial towards reconciliation for Indigenous peoples in the occupied territories of North America and Australia (Christen, 2011, p. 208). Archives provide researchers with the ability to see the “inner life of decolonisation” (Bailkin, 2015, p. 892), showcasing the complexities of a process that is often enacted through multiple avenues that are eventually flattened into singular events (ibid, p. 885).
Clearly there is a sense among researchers that the archives have a radical potential within them and can be utilised as a liberatory tool in the hands of the marginalised, resulting in the various projects mentioned within this section. By incorporating the archives into a broader framework such as accountability, we can hopefully maximise the potential usefulness of this tool as part of transformative change.
What is ‘Accountability’ for Museums?
Similar to the renewed interest in archival research, there has been an increase in the demands for further accountability from museums and institutions, particularly in light of the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests (e.g., Litt, 2020; Trouillot, 2020; Small, 2021). However, “accountability” is a word with numerous meanings and associations (Ely Yamin, 2013), so it is necessary for the purposes of this paper to define what it is, as well as what is is not.
Accountability models already exist for museums and institutions, of course, but these primarily exist for the sake of accounting for financial and non-financial outputs between the organisations and their stakeholders (Overman, 2021). The latter often includes institutions of power, such as government subsidiaries, and this aspect of inherent political nature gives further credence to the need for an accountability framework that pushes for change within the existing system of the museum, and what is possible through this system. Alongside this framework, external work can be continued with activists and organisers pushing to move museum stakeholders to become more politically inclined towards more transformative and substantial processes of change, such as restitution and repatriation.
However, despite working within the power dynamics of the museum, it would not be helpful to attempt to utilise an existing form of internal accountability, especially if it denies transparency to the individuals and communities who have been harmed. Instead, museums should turn towards the work that has been done among social justice scholars and activists on the idea of “active community accountability”; this concept has previously been proposed for use in the adjacent field of archaeology (Fitzpatrick in Carruthers et al., 2021, pp. 14–16), and emphasises the need for the transference of power, particularly decision-making powers, from academics and professionals to marginalised groups and historically-looted communities. Active community accountability combines two different processes: “community accountability”, which calls for the strengthening of relationships across groups by addressing the specific conditions that allow for harm to occur (The Audre Lorde Project, 2010), and “active accountability”, which calls for community connections to be maintained in a pro-active way in order to avoid future harm occurring (Moore & Russell, 2011). In both processes, the focus remains on the community above all, and this should similarly be the case for an accountability framework for museums and heritage spaces. More importantly, both call into question the power dynamics at play, and how power and resources can instead be redistributed towards the community. This is particularly vital towards holding institutions accountable, as it disrupts the notion of museums as “apolitical” or “neutral” spaces, and instead correctly identifies them as active gatekeepers of memory and connection (Jimerson, 2003). These interventions also force these institutions to break out of the cycle of comfortable forgetfulness, and instead confront their complicity within colonial violence (Elkins, 2015, p. 854).
More than Auditing: Research and Reconnection
So how do we utilise archival research as part of a larger framework of accountability? Again, we must hold the concept of accountability in connection with a broader purpose towards the community and repairing relations between the institution and those who have been harmed. As previously discussed, an active community accountability framework within cultural and heritage spaces requires for a transference of power from the institution (including the researchers involved) to the affected individuals and communities; this includes the ability to make decisions, as well as the ability of refusal. This could also include renewed calls for repatriation and restitution, processes which have been intentionally left out of this framework as they are arguably the desired end point of substantial accountability; however, the proposed method in this paper is more concerned with bridging the gap between a lack of community engagement and the action of decolonisation.
But who exactly is the community in question? This will vary, of course, based on the materials at hand. Some materials may still pertain to a living or recently living individual, which makes this process of identification simple. However, there is also the instance in which ownership, which is already a contentious topic within archival research (McKee & Porter, 2012, pp. 67–68), is less clear. This may require its own form of research and investigation, but ultimately the goal should be to find the contemporary communities which may share “continuities” with those from the (recent or otherwise) past (Royster in ibid, p. 74). Even if the archival materials in question are related to the long dead, an ethical approach to the archives should consider the ways in which adjacent groups could benefit from this research (Subotic´, 2021, p. 349).
By involving the community within the act of archival research, we move beyond simply “auditing” collections, but begin to “reframe” them. This may include more accurately contextualising materials in accordance with cultural values and traditions held by the community, as well making decisions as to what is allowed to be displayed (if at all). In giving them equal space to engage with archival material, we can begin to “braid knowledge” together (see Christen, 2011; Atalay, 2012), using institutional resources and tools (including methodology and theory) as a means of supporting the community’s appraisal of the material. Moving beyond auditing in this sense also means that we are avoiding the objectification of archival material that echoes Césaire’s (2001, p. 42) view of colonialization as “thingification”; again, this accountability framework asks us to see this material as embodied, and so demands the level of respect and courtesy one would give to an individual or community. Where auditing means to produce a quantifiable consideration of collections, this accountability framework instead moves to encourage engagement with the material in conjunction with the broader community, as well as foster reconnection and reconciliation.
Although this may seem no different than a form of community engagement, the contrast again lies in the power dynamics at play; whereas most contemporary forms of community engagement involve a hierarchy of power and control that places the institution above all (Morse, 2018, p. 171), this framework demands that this is flipped, allowing for the community to hold more power than what would customarily be given to them. This would allow for communities to make decisions on aspects of research that may not have been accessible to them, such as ethical considerations and curation practices, both of which are currently based on very Eurocentric cultural ideas (Christen, 2011, p. 189; McKee & Porter, 2012, p. 73; Genovese, 2016, pp. 32, 40). This framework should not be mistaken as an attempt at sideling professionals, or disrupting what some may consider to be “traditional” archival practice (O’Neal, 2014, p. 135). Archival skills are key to this approach, and professionals will be vital to its success; however, this collaboration must be reframed as a service towards the communities that are finally being centred in these conversations, in which professionals use their skills in accordance with the needs and desires of the community in question. Here, considerations can also be made regarding the need of diversifying the professional pool available, as it would be ideal to have archivists from the particular communities as part of the conversation and research.
It should be noted that each archive is unique, and it could be problematic to generalise a particular single approach to handling archives overall (L’Eplattenier, 2009, p. 68), just as it is problematic to assume that one particular approach is suitable for every group or community (Christen, 2011, p. 209). However, as McKee and Porter (2012, p. 60) suggest, all archival materials can and perhaps should be seen as the embodiment of people and communities, both living and dead. As such, the institution that holds the archives must still be held accountable to these people and communities and would likely necessitate some form of accountability framework similar to the one proposed in this paper, regardless of the unique particulars. Perhaps if there is one variable to consider in planning research, it may be that some archival materials are more sensitive in nature than others and will require a more thoughtful approach in engagement; more specifically, in who gets to engage with the material, and why. Again, this is an area in which the transference of decision-making powers to the affected communities will be vital, as cultural sensitivities and traditions will need to be acknowledged above all. In addition, there is always the risk of negative exposure from archival research that will affect the most vulnerable (MacNeil, 1992, p. 166); as such, the very act of archival research may need to be placed in question and discussed with the communities beforehand.
Ultimately, this framework necessitates a constant dialogue between the institution and the community, turning the archives into what Gilliand (2014, p. 1) calls a “negotiated space” which can also allow for collective identity work to flourish (Butler, 2009). Such dialogue is arguably vital for the building (and rebuilding) of any relationship, particularly one in which adversity and harm is involved (DeTurk, 2006); however, in the case of accountability, it is essential that this dialogue and engagement persists beyond the confines of any particular research project, as the final goal of this framework should be the avoidance of any future harm as well. Accountability will not erase harm, but in practicing it, institutions can become more pro-active in reducing its impact (Bonsu, 2018).
Conclusion
Archival research is not the one answer to achieving a more accountable form of museum practice; as previously mentioned, accountability comes in many forms, and there are many that could be utilised in order to minimise harm within this particular setting. In addition, the pathway towards accountability should be multi-faceted and multi-vocal, allowing for multiple voices to take precedence in conversation as well as multiple forms of action to occur concurrently. For example, the proposal discussed in this paper did not touch upon other adjacent avenues of inquiry, such as auditing collections on display. This paper, in that case, should perhaps be seen less as a tutorial towards accountability, and more of a provocation for museums and institutions to begin the urgent and necessary task of rethinking their goals and values, and the ways in which these notions can be reframed within a broader sense of community and communal benefits. In addition, this paper asks that museums view the concept of community as synonymous with more ethical practices, particularly in the case of greater transparency and open dialogue. However, institutions must also refrain from getting stuck at just conceptualising means of accountable, and instead take action towards accountability – as Shara (2020) writes, it is moving from “feeling sorry” to “doing sorry”.
The main goal for holding institutions accountable for past and present harms should be repatriation and restitution, but these processes will likely never happen with the promptness and speed that is demanded of them, particularly given the complexity of decision-making processes within museums (Morse, 2018, pp. 173–174). In the meanwhile, this proposed framework can be utilised as a way to pro-actively engage with the affected individuals and communities and begin to mend and strengthen relations. In focusing on the archival material held within institutions, this framework is targeting one of the more problematic aspects of the museum as a whole. Collections are ultimately the continuation of colonial hoarding and are already the cause of recent disputes (e.g., Nwakunor, 2021; Salisbury, 2021; Winters, 2021). This also does not take into consideration the amount of material that is unknown to the public, as seen in more recent cases of repatriation (e.g., Justinvil & Colwell, 2021; Pilkington, 2021; Veal, 2021). Following Nakata (2012, p. 103), we can instead transform archives from storehouses into points of access. We can (perhaps literally) reveal these “skeletons in the closet”, and at least provide a starting point for difficult conversations to occur, as well as provide a way forwards for tangible action to make amends.
McKee and Porter (2012, p. 60) suggest that the archives exist as a liminal space between people/artefacts and researchers, building upon Glenn and Enoch’s (2008, p. 24) conception of the archives as a place in which “reciprocal cross-boundary exchange” can occur. With this in mind, as well as Hicks’ (2020, p. 234) assertation that the museum cannot truly decolonise but instead become a transformative place of thinking and doing, perhaps we can set a destination upon which accountability may take us, in which these institutions are no longer colonial hoarders or gatekeepers, but instead contemplative spaces in which once hidden away materials can be reunited with the communities from which they came, reconnections can continue to be made, and conversation can occur. For if we cannot undo the harm that has been inflicted by museums and institutions for hundreds of years, then we can at least repair the relations and move forward together for a better future.
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It’s been a tough year…for everyone, to be honest! But for me, it’s been a bit of a wake-up call after finding myself somewhat comfortably situated in grad school life since 2015. At the end of 2021, I graduated with my PhD and had secured my first proper research position at a university (albeit in a field far from archaeology). Although it wasn’t exactly how I envisioned my post-PhD life to begin, I also knew that I was quite lucky to land a research job so quickly after finishing my PhD and that the road ahead would be far from the dream I had as a newly minted Doctor of Archaeology.
Image Description: A close-up photo of my blue work lanyard covered in badges and pins, from top down: a yellow pin that says “Archaeologist”, a cloud-covered blue badge that says in rainbow text “Invisible Disability Club”, a badge with the colours of the pansexual pride flag behind a wolf skull, a blue pin that says “Science Communicator”, a silver badge bearing the logo of the University of Bradford, a dark blue badge with a red and yellow heart on it, with white text on top that says “Surviving Purely Out of Spite”, a pink pin that says “Researcher”, a black ping that says “she/her” in white text, and a bright green pin that says “Doctor”.
And boy, did I underestimate how rocky that road will be (and still is!).
I’ve never been the most consistent blogger (although my 2023 resolution is to get better – which, funny enough, was also my 2022 and 2021 resolutions…), but as readers may notice, I’ve been particularly spotty over the past few months. Frankly, it’s just exhaustion – I had said “yes” to a lot of things this year and it was finally catching up to me. But also, I was exhausted of the constant “no’s” as well – I spent most of 2022 job searching as my research contract was set to end, and it was a huge wake-up call for me. I’ve written about this more in-depth on here, but basically I was faced with the reality that perhaps, despite years of studying and research, I might not have a career in archaeology after all.
Of course, it’s still quite early on in my career to say that with certainty – after writing that blog post, I received a lot of kind messages from current and former early career researchers and archaeologists who faced similarly tough journeys in the first few years post-PhD, and that unfortunately its a common reality that isn’t always articulated to PhD students. But I think my cohort of graduates, and those who come after me, are likely to face a more difficult time at properly starting our post-PhD careers, with many of us stuck in an extended period of precarious contracts than perhaps other cohorts.
Precarity isn’t necessarily new to me – as a migrant descended from migrants, precariousness has been embedded into my life and has often felt like its own rite of passage, particularly as someone who now faces precarity within the Hostile Environment of the UK’s immigration system. As a migrant, precarity is pervasive – any change to immigration laws, even the smallest one, can completely make or break your ability to remain in the country. But its only been recently that I have really faced the reality of career precarity – something I knew existed, of course, as I watched year after year of friends and colleagues in academia strike against the further spread of precariousness within higher education in the UK. Although I am currently in a postdoc position that I genuinely enjoy in the wider heritage sector, it is also my second fixed contract research position – and it won’t be my last. As someone who truly enjoys researching and expanding my intellectual horizons, the idea of being able to move from project to project is somewhat exciting…but of course, the fact that I will be facing the dreaded job search after every contract and risking periods of unemployment (that I cannot afford) is terrifying.
So, for 2023 I choose two things: I choose to embrace liminality, but at the same time I also choose to fight precarity. Liminality (the concept of in-betweenness that constituted much of the abstract interpretations for my PhD research) has been something I’ve been thinking about with regards to myself for a while now, particularly as a mixed race, queer migrant. Finding my personal identities within the in-between spaces has been a difficult but important journey of self-realisation and reflection, and I think it has also begun to seep into the ways I view my professional life as well. Archaeology is, of course, a formalised discipline, but I also think that its margins are somewhat liminal – there is an interdisciplinary nature that is inherent in all archaeological research, and I think it isn’t too difficult to expand the boundaries of what entails archaeological work. As someone who has worked across different subfields within archaeology and have delved into other fields during my research, I think I’ve already experienced that sort of disciplinary liminality – I do refer to myself as a zooarchaeologist, of course, but realistically I’ve worked beyond that subfield as well, doing funerary archaeology and human osteology, even dipping back into anthropology in parts of my PhD.
As I brace myself to work more and more outside of archaeology, I choose to embrace existing in a sort of liminal space as a researcher – not quite an archaeologist, but not quite anything else. One of the most difficult things to grapple with during 2022 was my professional identity crisis – if I’m not paid to do archaeology, am I an archaeologist? But I still work to inform and shift archaeology, and much of the tools and frameworks I’ve developed and learned in my career will be useful in other fields as well. In this liminal space of research, beyond disciplinary borders, I can see the ways in which my work informs each other, and I think that’s a healthier way to view my career progression moving forward. At heart, I’m still an archaeologist – but my professional research and work exists to be embedded across disciplinary lines, emanating from this liminal space.
But on the other side of the coin from liminality is perhaps precarity as well, and that is why I also choose to fight precarity as much as I can in 2023. On one hand, I will admit that I will likely have to take on more short-term contracts just to survive – but that doesn’t mean I can’t continue to support existing movements working to end precarious contracts in academia and research. I have ended 2022 completely burnt out from saying “yes” to so many things, most of which were unpaid. As such, 2023 is my year of “no” – no to unpaid labour, no to being exploited by institutions who should know better, no to creating further precariousness to myself by burning myself out and making myself seem vulnerable to exploitation by others.
2023 is a year of getting comfortable in the unknowable – in the liminal spaces between professional identities and academic signifiers – yet not allowing the unknowable to harm me. It is about living across boundaries of expertise and discipline, but also allowing myself the freedom to set boundaries as well when I need to protect myself. It is about being me, a researcher who loves to research and carries with her a strong sense of responsibility and humanity that years of training and struggling in archaeology has instilled in me, and not letting the unkind and hostile worlds of academia and research chip at this complicated sense of self I’ve developed over the years.
To 2022, I say good riddance. To 2023, I say good luck.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Tuck, E. and Yang, K. W. (2012) Decolonization is Not a Metaphor. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education, and Society 1 (1).
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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.
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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
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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 find my PayPal here, as well as myAmazon Wishlist for research material.
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 find my PayPal here, as well as myAmazon Wishlist for research material.
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 find my PayPal here, as well as myAmazon Wishlist for research material.
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