From 1930 to 1939 the University of Pennsylvania’s Museum of Anthropology and Archaeology sponsored archaeological work at the ancient Maya site of Piedras Negras, Guatemala. American archaeologists contracted Indigenous workers with previous experience working in the chicle and mahogany industries. These workers provide an avenue for ‘epistemic disobedience’1 or privileging the experience of colonized peoples to see how they, as Indigenous archaeological workers, were uniting technologies, techniques, knowledge, and industries in ways that influenced the practice of archaeology. Viewing the site as a community of practice2 in which its products are extracted and interpreted through ‘braided knowledges’3 this paper explores Piedras Negras as a node of intellectual and industrial syncretism. We challenge extant scholarship about Piedras Negras that presents the research as the result of Western knowledge production, contending that site boundaries are fictive, and the epistemes of archaeological knowledge limited. Beyond them lies a thus far overlooked and more complete narrative about how archaeological knowledge is produced — and who produces it. Through archive research we argue that reading not just the results, but also how results were created, constructed, and braided with industries, machineries, and local knowledge offers windows into the intellectual groundwork of the project and re-writes the protagonists of data construction.

Women workers were a common sight on archaeological excavations in Palestine in the Late Ottoman and Mandate periods, their presence appearing in the historical record through anecdotal and ethnographic descriptions, wage lists or photographic archives. Recently, scholars have begun to explore this fact, highlighting the extent to which rural women undertook manual and waged labour, and the need to scrutinise and challenge stereotypes of archaeological labour which foreground elite white men, not only through examples of educated Western females but also of indigenous women workers. 2 Irving Bulletin of the History of Archaeology

This visual essay focuses on the visual documentation of the reconstruction of the archaeological site of Tajín from the late 1930s to the 1970s. During this period, the Mexican post-revolutionary state, motivated by the desire to forge a coherent nationality and boost mass tourism, actively supported and funded the monumental reconstruction of the Tajín pyramid and other pre-Hispanic structures across Mexico. Although the workers involved in the reconstruction of the pyramid appear in several on-site photographs, their labor remained 'underexposed:' their presence is rarely acknowledged in image labels, they are depicted in subordinated positions vis-à-vis the figure of the archaeologist or used as human scales or ethnic markers. Finally, these photographs, once consigned and buried in the archives, have rarely come into view. As a result, labor-related images are missing from the prevailing visual economy, which tends to prioritize and celebrate grandiose representations of pre-Hispanic ruins while overlooking the monumental process of their physical reconstruction. To counter this 'underexposure' of workers and labor, I unearth a selection of images from the archives and altered them by adding my own captions and descriptions, drawing from limited yet valuable information found in technical reports that shed light on the labor conditions at the site. This approach serves a dual purpose. Firstly, it aims to emphasize the significant role that Totonac workers played in the nationbuilding process by physically constructing Mexico's ancient heritage. Secondly, it aims to bring attention to the persistent inequalities perpetuated, reinforced, and concealed by the field of archaeology throughout the construction process.

This paper examines the historical role of women in German archaeology spanning the early nineteenth to the late twentieth centuries. Our investigation delves into the breadth of their activities and the multifaceted nature of archaeological practice. While conventional perceptions often associate archaeology primarily with fieldwork and a select group of male excavators, archaeological work, encompassing various approaches and tools, was actually significantly more diverse. This diversity extended to the settings and contexts in which these practices unfolded. Our aim is not only to illuminate the varied facets of archaeological endeavours but also to underscore the substantial contributions made by women to the processes of knowledge generation and dissemination. Beyond the traditional focus on fieldwork, our analysis encompasses the myriad tasks and roles associated with administration, knowledge management, publishing, and science communication. We emphasize the overarching goal of bringing visibility to the often-overlooked contributions of female archaeologists. 2 Bösl and Gutsmiedl-Schümann Bulletin of the History of Archaeology

In this Introduction, we present a special issue on Histories of Labor in Archaeology. We begin by reviewing past work on archaeological labor and advocating for a broad definition of the term. Contributors to this issue address, among other themes, divisions of labor, worker specialization, and new methodologies for the study of archaeological labor across time and space. We then introduce each of the ten contributions, which address varieties of labor involved in the archaeological process from Türkiye, Germany, Palestine, Egypt, Mexico, Guatemala, and the United States, from the nineteenth century through the 1990s. We conclude by arguing for the study of work in the past as a means of imagining labor solidarity in archaeology for the future.

This article offers a cautionary tale about exclusively relying on official archaeological reports for writing histories of archaeological labour. It investigates a small personal collection of postcards and photographs by British field assistant James Leslie Starkey to interrogate the representation of Egyptian labour in the official reports of an archaeological project run by the British School of Archaeology in Egypt (BSAE) at Qau, Egypt, in 1922–23. The postcards raise two points that the reports contest or fail to address: the Egyptian efforts of setting up camp and the Egyptian autonomy in seeking out new areas for excavation. I argue that these discursive strategies were entangled with an early 20th century style of writing reports, archaeology’s restricted self-image as primarily a field-based practice, hierarchical structures and representations, and an orientalist and colonialist discourse that sees archaeological knowledge as produced by European ‘heads’, never Egyptian ‘hands’. Unfettered by disciplinary standards, these ‘informal’ postcards give a glimpse of an archaeological project whose work was more collective and comprehensive than its official reports ever made it out to be.

Greek archaeology at the turn of the twentieth century existed at the intersection of a modern positivistic practice of scientific study and a longer-standing European fascination with the ancient world. As the continent's masses increasingly engaged with popular fin-de-siècle nationalisms, they also sought knowledge of the cultured refinement historically associated with the ancient world through empirically supported studies of the ancient past's material remnants. This paper assesses the extent to which popular national identities conditioned European public perceptions of Greek archaeology in the decades the leading up to the First World War (1890-1914). Examining news-media coverage of the French excavation of Delphi and the British excavation of Knossos from nationally-prominent publications, this article identifies the influence which paradigms of national identity exerted over public perceptions of Europe's ancient past. Concluding that these two excavations were exalted as evidential of national genius, this also posits that the particular finds associated with these sites were strongly coloured by the lens of national identity in popular periodical publications. Diffuse understandings of national heritage stretching back to the distant reaches of Europe's ancient past thereby influenced popular perceptions of Greek archaeology as a discipline inherently linked to turn-of-the-century nationalist projects, with the archaeologist being increasingly relied upon to empirically entrench and legitimize the modern nation-state in a civilizational pedigree, coinciding with the national institutionalization of archaeological study.