Decentring archaeology: Indigenizing GIS models of movement on the plains

Abstract

Avenues of travel employed by past people have often become obscured by both natural and human processes. Relocating them with traditional archaeological field methods is thus difficult, and other approaches, such as relying on historic documents or uncritically employing GIS analyses have often been found to be problematic due to their colonizing impacts. That does not mean, however, that all archaeological approaches need to be cast aside. A decolonizing lens can be applied to existing methods to reveal a past that privileges Indigenous perspectives. By incorporating the concept of relational affordances, and identifying past significant places, this paper takes just such an approach when using GIS to reconstruct past avenues of travel along the Red Deer River in southern Alberta. By critically examining archaeological data and historic documents with a decolonizing perspective, significant places to past people are discovered, and a long-forgotten river crossing is relocated.