Tag: politics
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Mattie Lubchansky’s ‘Simplicity’ and Weaponising the Museum of the Future
The following blog post will contain spoilers for Mattie Lubchansky’s recent book Simplicity, which is out now and I highly recommend folks – especially those of you who work in the museum and anthropology fields – read it first! Simplicity (Lubchanksy, 2025) is not about museums. I mean, it kinda is – but it’s more
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The Dangers of ‘Dialogue’ in Violent Times: Obscuring Power Dynamics in the Heritage Sector (and Beyond)
A few weeks ago, I attended a conference that included a session on what the organisers referred to as ‘the Israel-Palestine Conflict’. Now, of course, this in itself was full of warning signs (are we really going to minimise genocide by referring to it as a ‘conflict’?), but given the silence of many parts of
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Finding Hope in Archaeology at the End of the World
At the time of writing this, it is 10am in the United Kingdom on the 6th November 2024. As an American migrant over here, I’ve unsurprisingly been watching with dread as the results begin to trickle in and despite my deep criticisms of electoral politics, its hard not to feel very depressed and worried about
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The Call is Coming From Inside the Discipline! The Inability to Recognise Racism within Archaeology
Over the past few months, I have found myself becoming increasingly frustrated with some of the rhetoric I’ve heard from white colleagues in the archaeology sector with regards to racism. Mainly, there seems to be this sense that racism is either something that occurs outside of the field – in that there are bad faith
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Does Zooarchaeology Matter? A Case for Actionable Animal Archaeologies
The following is a transcript of my keynote talk from the Zooarchaeology Saves the World conference held in May 2022. Introduction Does zooarchaeology matter? Perhaps this is an intentionally provocative question to ask zooarchaeologists but given the status of the world today – the intensification of climate change, the rise of fascism across the globe,
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Stuck in the Past: Silence & Complicity in Archaeology’s Current Harms
I have been meaning to write a proper blog post about my frustrations regarding some of the discourse within archaeology around making amends for the discipline’s contributions to oppression and violence – in fact, this post has probably been sat unfinished in my drafts for a few years now. But these frustrations have certainly reached
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Moving Towards Decolonisation – Proposing a Framework for Action in Universities
The following transcript is from a conference paper I presented in 2022 as part of the Making Diversity Interventions Count Annual Conference at the University of Braford. It is also an expansion of a previous paper I presented on decolonising zooarchaeology, and proposes a more institutional-wide approach to moving towards decolonisation. Introduction Since the 2020
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Repairing Relations through Research: An Archival Approach to Institutional Accountability
Note: This blog post is adapted from an abandoned journal paper that I originally wrote in 2021. Introduction From the perspective of many people from marginalised backgrounds and historically looted communities, the museum continues to be a symbol of colonialism. Despite renewed calls for decolonisation, repatriation, and restitution, museums are arguably still behind in progressing
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Gesturing Beyond Bones: Proposing a Decolonised Zooarchaeology
This is the text from a talk I gave at the Approaches to Decolonising Research event organised by the Decolonising the Curriculum Working Group at 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. The call to decolonise archaeology is
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You Will Never Be Indiana Jones: How Toxic Masculinity Spurs Sexism and Ableism in Archaeology
The following post is an article that was originally written and published for Lady Science, a wonderful online magazine that has now sadly ended its publication . I am very grateful for the chance to originally publish with the amazing team behind Lady Science, who gave me the confidence and the support necessary to write
Animal Archaeology 