Abstract
This forum builds on the discussion stimulated during an online salon in which the authors participated on June 25, 2020, entitled “Archaeology in the Time of Black Lives Matter,” and which was cosponsored by the Society of Black Archaeologists (SBA), the North American Theoretical Archaeology Group (TAG), and the Columbia Center for Archaeology. The online salon reflected on the social unrest that gripped the United States in the spring of 2020, gauged the history and conditions leading up to it, and considered its rippling throughout the disciplines of archaeology and heritage preservation. Within the forum, the authors go beyond reporting the generative conversation that took place in June by presenting a road map for an antiracist archaeology in which antiblackness is dismantled.
Highlights
This forum builds on the discussion stimulated during an online salon in which the authors participated on June 25, 2020, entitled “Archaeology in the Time of Black Lives Matter,” and which was cosponsored by the Society of Black Archaeologists (SBA), the North American Theoretical Archaeology Group (TAG), and the Columbia Center for Archaeology
We reflect here on the immediate response to the events of 2020, gauge the history and conditions leading up to it, and lay out what we see as the challenges in moving forward. This forum builds on the discussion stimulated during an online salon in which we participated on June 25, 2020, entitled “Archaeology in the Time of Black Lives Matter,” and which was cosponsored by the Society of Black Archaeologists (SBA), the North American Theoretical Archaeology Group (TAG), and the Columbia Center for Archaeology
How might we find ways to engage concretely with the longstanding problem of systemic antiblack racism and examine our own practice—whether through personal and disciplinary activism, teaching and research, or within cultural resource management (CRM), museums, and heritage preservation? These questions set the context for the virtual salon
Summary
As part of the online session, panelists engaged as if they were sitting around a table to converse about the everyday practices of racism—both covert and overt—that shape the profession at every level of engagement. During the two-hour virtual gathering, panelists welcomed attendees to have a seat at this table. It is important to note that, in 1980, Singleton was the first Black woman archaeologist to receive a PhD in the United States. In gathering at this figurative table, we recognized that the project to undo ingrained practices of systemic antiblack racism rests on the work of Indigenous scholars and their accomplices, who began and continue to fight against injustice within North American archaeology (Atalay 2006, 2010, 2012; Colwell-Chanthaphonh 2009; ColwellChanthaphonh et al 2010; Gonzalez 2016; Gonzalez et al 2006, 2018; Lippert 2008; Schneider and Hayes 2020; Watkins 2000).
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