Abstract

Our research, teaching, and outreach engagements with descendant communities are identifying a therapeutic role for archaeology. We argue that community-based archaeology—meaning community-directed studies of ancestral places practiced by invitation—can improve individual and communal health and well-being. Archaeology has untapped potential to elicit and confirm connections among people, places, objects, knowledges, ancestries, ecosystems, and worldviews. Such interconnections endow individuals and communities with identities, relationships, and orientations that are foundational for health and well-being. In particular, archaeology practiced as place-focused research can counteract cultural stress, a pernicious effect of colonialism that is pervasive among indigenous peoples worldwide. A Stó:lō–Coast Salish model of health provides a baseline for assessing and guiding community-based archaeology and related pursuits. Three cases of community-based archaeological practice among the Coast Salish of southwestern British Columbia and northwestern Washington show how archaeology can promote health by connecting project participants and other community members with their territories and their heritage, both tangible (artifacts/belongings/heirlooms) and intangible (knowledge/traditions/histories).

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