{"id":6937,"date":"2025-04-24T06:49:04","date_gmt":"2025-04-24T06:49:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldarchaeologicalcongress.com\/wac10\/?page_id=6937"},"modified":"2025-04-25T01:01:40","modified_gmt":"2025-04-25T01:01:40","slug":"t14-s04-papers","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/worldarchaeologicalcongress.com\/wac10\/t14-s04-papers\/","title":{"rendered":"T14\/S04: Challenging and Changing Institutional Barriers to Diverse and Inclusive Archaeologies"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Format: Paper presentations with discussion<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Convenors<\/strong>:\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bonnie Pitblado, University of Oklahoma, US,\u00a0bonnie.pitblado@ou.edu<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Georgia Stannard, La Trobe University, Australia, G.Stannard@latrobe.edu.au<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In many regions of the world, archaeologists in the 2020s are working to decolonise the discipline\u2019s practices through community co-created research, replacement of dehumanising jargon, and increased attention to the needs of stakeholders outside the academy. This critical work must continue in the places it occurs and begin in regions where it remains uncommon. At the same time, however, archaeologists in a position to do so must also be willing to reckon with institutional structures that continue to operate in ways that for too long fostered\u2014and too often still foster\u2014Western white dominance of the profession while excluding others from its ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For better or for worse, for example, universities are the training grounds for nearly everyone who achieves \u201cprofessional archaeologist\u201d status. If universities perpetuate homogeneity (whiteness, middle- to upper-class status)\u2014and they do\u2014then archaeology will also perpetuate it. Similarly, major archaeological societies like the Society for American Archaeology and the European and Australian Archaeological Associations offer critical opportunities for professionalisation through their publications, conferences, scholarships, and other mechanisms. To the extent that they perpetuate homogeneity\u2014and many do\u2014then archaeology will be slow to change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this session, we create space for representatives of organisations founded expressly to challenge the status quo and those from universities and archaeological societies with deeply rooted structural barriers to discuss how they are fostering systemic change. We believe that most archaeologists genuinely want a discipline that welcomes and nurtures a diverse workforce. However, we also understand that archaeological training rarely includes a primer in institutional structure-busting. By sharing the barriers that plague our institutions and the measures that we have taken (or believe we should take) to dismantle them, perhaps we can hasten institutional decolonisation everywhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Papers:<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Archaeology Southwest (Tucson, Arizona, USA): Preservation Archaeology Since 1989<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stephen E. Nash, Archaeology Southwest, Tucson, Arizona, USA<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Incorporated in 1989, Archaeology Southwest, Inc., is a cultural heritage preservation non-profit organisation based in Tucson, Arizona, USA. Archaeology Southwest practices Preservation Archaeology, a holistic, collaborative, and conservation-based approach to exploring and protecting heritage places while honouring their diverse values. We compile archaeological information, make it accessible and understandable, share it with the public and decision-makers, advocate for landscape-scale protection, and steward heritage properties and conservation easements. We are committed to real and ongoing collaboration with Indigenous communities. Archaeology Southwest began \u2018barrier busting\u2019 in the 1990s with pioneering collaborative fieldwork with the Apache, Hopi, Tohono O\u2019odham, and Zuni Tribal Nations in the San Pedro River Valley of Southern Arizona (US). Those efforts led to the edited volume History is in the Land: Multivocal Tribal Traditions in Arizona\u2019s San Pedro Valley<\/em> (2006). Fast forward to 2025\u2014Archaeology Southwest just published A Model for Tribal Collaboration<\/em> (2023) and Tribal Co-Management: What Works Where and How<\/em> (2024). Staff are now working with multiple collaborators on an Indigenous data sovereignty statement and continue their everyday work in cultural heritage advocacy, conservation, education, outreach, and research. This presentation highlights the history, current work, and future barrier busting by Archaeology Southwest in North America and beyond.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Diversifying the Archaeological Workforce in Oklahoma, USA<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bonnie Pitblado, University of Oklahoma, USA<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This paper reports an effort to combat a feedback loop that has long promoted whiteness in US archaeology. \u2018Voices of Oklahoma\u2019 recruits Indigenous and high school students of colour to participate in an eight-week summer internship. Interns learn about archaeology and earn university credit and a financial stipend that compensates for lost summer earnings. Graduates join a network of alumni who mentor one another to and through college, and they receive ongoing professional mentoring from Voices staff. Students who matriculate to the University of Oklahoma with an interest in pursuing archaeology are advised to take a new course, \u2018CRM Field Methods in Archaeology\u2019. The class introduces participants to the skills needed for entry-level CRM jobs and to the Oklahoma professionals who need well trained employees. The core course requirement\u2014a paid \u2018mini-internship\u2019 with an Oklahoma CRM firm\u2014cultivates relationships between students and Oklahoma archaeologists that are expressly intended to lead to opportunities for full-time employment upon graduation. Voices is in its fifth year, and preliminary results suggest that a carefully scaffolded pipeline can counteract the feedback loop that has produced a disproportionately white US archaeological workforce.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Challenging Institutional Barriers through the IPIA Guide to Good Relations<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr Kisha Supernant and Talisha Chaput, Institute of Prairie and Indigenous Archaeology, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Institutional barriers in archaeology often create exclusionary practices and inequities in research and teaching. To address these challenges, the Institute of Prairie and Indigenous Archaeology (IPIA) developed the IPIA Guide to Good Relations, a values-based framework fostering ethical, inclusive, and relational approaches to archaeological practice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Initiated in February 2023, the guide was co-created via invited speaker events and a two-day workshop among IPIA Scholars in 2023 and 2024. It is structured into four sections: (1) IPIA\u2019s foundational commitments; (2) principles for engagement; (3) guidance on authorship, attribution, and data management; and (4) best practices for communication, training, and accessibility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This presentation will discuss the guide\u2019s development, its core values, and its role in challenging institutional structures that create barriers to ethical archaeological practice. By sharing the public version of the Guide to Good Relations, we aim to inspire similar initiatives across archaeology. We advocate for institutional transformation that prioritises relational accountability, Indigenous data sovereignty, and inclusive scholarship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Walk Between Two Worlds<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Deanna L. Byrd, Associate NAGPRA Director, Harvard University: Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology; Mississippi Choctaw, Enrolled Citizen of The Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, USA; Euro-Italian Descent<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In my paper, A Walk Between Two Worlds, I will explore the transition from working within my Tribe to foster relationships with over 2000 institutions across the United States for the successful repatriation of nearly 20,000 ancestors and their funerary belongings, to riding the wave of the 2004 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) regulation changes into one of the most non-compliant institutions in our country. I will candidly share my experience with deeply entrenched colonial structures, change management within a homogenous dominated core, support, or the lack thereof, for Indigenous scholars, and continued challenges as an Indigenous woman in this space. With an institution responsible for global harm to thousands of communities through collection and exploitation, it is important to ask the question: How do you measure success and inclusive archaeologies when US federal law mandated action? Exploring what genuine, lasting change looks like in decolonising prominent academic institutions and museums is warranted, as well as the hope that lies just on the horizon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Australian Archaeology Skills Passport: The Role of Allies in Foregrounding Community Leadership in Teaching and Learning<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr Georgia L. Stannard, Dept of Archaeology and History, La Trobe University, Australia<\/em>
Associate Professor Melissa Marshall, Nulungu Research Institute, University of Notre Dame Australia, Australia<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Australian Archaeology Skills Passport was first released in December 2019 and in the last five years we have distributed more than 3,500 copies. Unique to the Australian Archaeology Skills Passport is a design-focus beyond students and early career archaeologists, one which emphasises its potential as a platform to recognise and celebrate the wealth of knowledge and skills that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander heritage practitioners bring to the archaeological discipline, much of which sits outside university qualifications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This paper will discuss the role that allies can play in decolonising archaeological skills training beyond the university setting. We will discuss how this approach has been applied to the skills passport, ensuring not only inclusive but transformative processes where community leadership is afforded fundamental primacy. This process has been threefold \u2013 involvement of First Peoples in the development of passport modules; the establishment of pathways for First Peoples into heritage roles and further academic study through recognition of lived experience, knowledge and skills; and integration of processes to drive systemic change within institutions where community leadership is embedded and foregrounded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indigenist Archaeology: Exploring Taking Control of Meaning Making in Archaeological Research<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kellie Pollard, Charles Darwin University, Australia<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This paper explores how the theory and method of Indigenist archaeology in Australia facilitates the empowerment to Indigenous people the interpretation of meaning of objects, material culture and historical and present evidence in the archaeological record. Specifically, Indigenist archaeology proposes to challenge the meaning and definition of the \u2018archaeological record\u2019 itself as a starting point of Indigenous empowerment. This is a different approach to conceptualising meaning making in that it privileges the epistemologies, ontologies, and axiologies of Indigenous worldviews and philosophies in archaeological research methodology to generate new understandings that resonate with cultural logics. Indigenist archaeology in Australia does this work in a third space for intercultural communications to decolonise colonial epistemological, hegemonic positivist, and dominant ethical practices that deny Indigenous agency in the rigour of meaning making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mechanisms to Stimulate Change: A Career Confronting Institutional Barriers<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Peter G. Stone, UNESCO Chair in Cultural Property Protection & Peace, Newcastle University, UK<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have been, unintentionally, in confrontation with \u2018institutional barriers\u2019 throughout my career. This began when I wanted to use the historic environment when teaching history in schools in England. Later, in 1984, I was drawn in to the confrontation around academic freedom and Apartheid which helped develop a new socially relevant archaeology that became epitomised by WAC. Later still, my attempts to protect the archaeological heritage in Iraq, following the 2003 invasion of that country by a coalition led by the USA and UK, led to a confrontation with the British political establishment. An establishment that, between 2004 and 2015, reiterated almost annually that \u201cHer Majesty\u2019s Government was utterly committed to the ratification of the 1954 Hague Convention on the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict as soon as Parliamentary time allowed\u2026\u201d. Most recently, I have been involved in the emergence of an organisation first envisaged as the \u201cRed Cross for cultural property\u201d by the Director General of UNESCO in 1953, only established in 1996, and only provided with limited funding in 2017, and now under serious threat. This presentation will explore similarities between these barriers and perhaps suggest some mechanisms to stimulate change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Teaching an Archaeology of the Oppressed<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beatriz Barros and K. Anne Pyburn, Dept of Anthropology, Indiana University, USA<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The shifting racial and gender balance of the academy in recent decades has begun to alter the character of the Ivory Tower, though perhaps not as expected and not exactly as many scholars had hoped. As the purpose of disciplines like archaeology that have deep colonial roots has come into question, the goals of teaching and research have begun to reorient, undermining some of the most sacred pillars of academic privilege. In this paper we will discuss how the patriarchal traditions of the student teacher relationship might be reconfigured to improve not only the quality of research and the success of students, but the whole of academic life. In particular, we rely on innovative concepts of pedagogy from anthropological theorists and from non-western methods of knowledge production, paying homage to the legacy of Paolo Freire to hypothesise a better archaeology.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Format: Paper presentations with discussion Convenors:\u00a0 Bonnie Pitblado, University of Oklahoma, US,\u00a0bonnie.pitblado@ou.edu Georgia Stannard, La Trobe University, Australia, G.Stannard@latrobe.edu.au In many regions of the world, archaeologists in the 2020s are working to decolonise the discipline\u2019s practices through community co-created research, replacement of dehumanising jargon, and increased attention to the needs of stakeholders outside the academy. This […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1157,"featured_media":276,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":{"0":"post-6937","1":"page","2":"type-page","3":"status-publish","4":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"pmpro-has-access","7":"czr-hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldarchaeologicalcongress.com\/wac10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6937","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldarchaeologicalcongress.com\/wac10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldarchaeologicalcongress.com\/wac10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldarchaeologicalcongress.com\/wac10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1157"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldarchaeologicalcongress.com\/wac10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6937"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/worldarchaeologicalcongress.com\/wac10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6937\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7411,"href":"https:\/\/worldarchaeologicalcongress.com\/wac10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6937\/revisions\/7411"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldarchaeologicalcongress.com\/wac10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldarchaeologicalcongress.com\/wac10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}