Descendant Communities Research Articles

Indigenous Archaeology in a Settler-Colonist State: A View from the North American Southwest

Collaborative, open, participatory, community-based, public, and Indigenous archaeologies are frequently discussed collectively as a paradigm shift for the discipline. As these approaches mature, we begin to understand some of their less-than-positive repercussions. However, the archaeology of Indigenous descendant communities in a settler-colonist state differs from reactionary populism. In this article, I approach these concerns from my vantage point as a Euroamerican academic archaeologist working in the Southwest United States. I first situate Indigenous archaeology within its historical context. I then explore the issues faced by archaeologists working in the ancient Indigenous Southwest United States. As Southwest archaeologists work to decolonize our discipline, there have been successes, but there are also tremendous challenges and obstacles. I conclude with an example from my own work that illustrates how archaeologists can collaborate with Native communities to fight against global capitalist and neoliberalist interests.

Conditioned Ears: How to Listen to Mohican-Moravian Hymnody

Conditioned Ears:How to Listen to Mohican-Moravian Hymnody Glenda Goodman (bio) THE digital companion to "Singing Box 331" invites readers to pursue a nonlinear path through the project, but I choose to start where the authors begin the print article: in the archive.1 Separately and at different times, Rachel Wheeler and Sarah Eyerly looked down into Box 331 and extracted remarkable booklets of Mohican hymn lyrics. The lyrics represent a dormant tradition of Moravian singing; generations have passed since the hymns, written in the 1740s, were last sung. Wheeler and Eyerly, in other words, offer us a scenario of both literal and metaphorical archival silence—silent room, silent booklets, voices fallen silent, silenced presence in the historical record.2 But the authors do not languish in the lachrymose: they usher us forward, first noting that the archive was in fact a site of energetic engagement by previous visitors, including members of the Mohican descendant community, and then bringing us into the productive world of [End Page 380] the authors' collaborative approach to unmuting these sources. They introduce us to a network of collaborators who created and used the hymns in the eighteenth century, and to the network of collaborators "re-sounding" them in the twenty-first century. In doing so, Wheeler and Eyerly make a strong case for the historical significance of hymnody for fashioning and maintaining intercultural socioreligious networks. They also demonstrate the insufficiency of textual reading; some historical sources need to be interacted with and performed. In short, this is a project of realization: it both brings music back into being and brings sounds into historical and communal consciousness. The project also raises, and does not fully answer, further questions about the reliability of interpreting historical sources, whether those are ones we read or ones we hear. Wheeler and Eyerly are not the first scholars to engage with Native Christian hymnody, nor are they the first to do so through collaboration. Michael D. McNally's work on Ojibwe hymnody and Luke Eric Lassiter, Clyde Ellis, and Ralph Kotay's scholarship on Kiowa hymnody all reflect on the powerful meaning of Native Christian music.3 In those cases, however, the subjects consisted of continuous hymn-singing traditions that had been adapted to the needs and interests of the contemporary communities. Wheeler and Eyerly confront a tradition that has been ruptured, and they address this not simply by reconstructing past soundscapes and musical practices but also by recomposing and creating new ways to engage with the materials, which, they assert, represent a new way of understanding—a historical epistemology through musical sounds. In and of itself, this interest in past soundscapes is not new: historians have acknowledged that listening constituted an important way by which people in the past experienced the world; musicologists have developed nuanced frameworks for uncovering and understanding specific historical music-making practices; and ethnomusicologists have assessed culturally diverse "acoustemologies," as Steven Feld influentially termed the epistemologies humans develop in different sonic environments.4 Yet Wheeler and Eyerly's "re-sounding" approach to re-creating Mohican-Moravian hymnody is particularly constructive and wonderfully rich in its interdisciplinary reach: they blend the musicological expertise necessary to make sense of the archival sources, historical contextualization that centers Native agency, and collaboration that attends to the [End Page 381] interests of the descendant community. That said, even as they focus on the meaning and experience of making music—of literally re-sounding the sources—they do not plumb the consequences of the new experiences of listening that they are making possible. Musical sources can serve as exceptional windows onto the past but carry with them particular challenges. As Wheeler and Eyerly state, however much one wants to enliven such a source—not simply "capture the past" authentically but hear the "aural testimony" of a diverse and complex past—resuscitating the source requires great sensitivity to one's biases and position.5 Just as historians know there is no neutral way to understand colonial encounters, so too there is no innocent way to re-create colonialist music. The hierarchies of power present in all forms of interaction were (and are) present in musical interactions as well. Facing this fact...

O ENSINO DA GEOGRAFIA COMO REAFIRMAÇÃO DE IDENTIDADES QUILOMBOLAS NA COMUNIDADE DE ARAQUEMBAUA – BAIÃO –PARÁ

The present research work whose general objective is to investigate or the content and methodology that has been used in the Geography classes of the 6th grade classes, with an emphasis on quilombola issues, having as objectives: during the classes; to understand if there are relations between the teaching of geography and the descent of the Araquembaua community. As for the methodology, it was based on a bibliographical and documentary survey of several works by authors that address geographic themes and concepts related to quilombola communities in the Lower Tocantins, fieldwork at school, with general studies, data collection on the work of include a school with a photographic record in order to characterize the physical and pedagogical space using a questionnaire application with objective questions, aimed at 54 students. Regarding the results, the percentage of students with the largest number of students does not come with geographic knowledge, with respect to quilombola issues, despite being a descendant community of quilombolas, a population of Vila de Araquembaua that does not identify as such, and this it distances the student from this reality.

Toward a just and inclusive environmental archaeology of southwest Madagascar

In this paper, we advocate a collaborative approach to investigating past human–environment interactions in southwest Madagascar. We do so by critically reflecting as a team on the development of the Morombe Archaeological Project, initiated in 2011 as a collaboration between an American archaeologist and the Vezo communities of the Velondriake Marine Protected Area. Our objectives are to assess our trajectory in building collaborative partnerships with diverse local, indigenous, and descendent communities and to provide concrete suggestions for the development of new collaborative projects in environmental archaeology. Through our Madagascar case study, we argue that contemporary environmental and economic challenges create an urgency to articulate and practice an inclusive environmental archaeology, and we propose that environmental archaeologists must make particular efforts to include local, indigenous, and descendent communities. Finally, we assert that full collaboration involves equal power sharing and mutual knowledge exchange and suggest an approach for critical self-evaluation of collaborative projects.

Landscape Structural Violence: A View from New Orleans’s Cemeteries

“Structural violence” is a term used to describe inflicted systematic violence on a disenfranchised group by an established order, usually framed as a government or the social majority. The disenfranchised groups are marginalized and not provided with the same access to resources such as healthcare or food, the effects of which can be observed directly in their death. Bioarchaeologists often can detect the visible effects of this violence on skeletal remains, which provide a visual representation to and reinforcement of social prejudices inflicted in life and death. Discussed here is how the same concept of structural violence can be inflicted on the landscape through damage to or obliteration of cemeteries. We propose a definition of “landscape structural violence” exhibited through cemetery erasure as a reinforcement of preexisting social prejudices in death where the governments or the social majority, intentionally or passively, destroy, remove, or obscure a cemetery without consultation with the descendant community. This definition is applied to several examples of New Orleans cemeteries to determine the functionality of the definition and what activity is and what is not structural violence inflicted on the landscape.

Autoarchaeology at Christiansborg Castle (Ghana): Decolonizing knowledge, pedagogy, and practice

ABSTRACTIn the African postcolony, archaeological research and fieldwork engage with a variety of communities of connection. Therefore, a decolonizing archaeological heritage inquiry seeks a deeper engagement with an archaeological site’s living direct descendant constituencies. Privileging Danish-Ga direct descendant communities in a collaborative archaeological heritage project at Christiansborg Castle in Osu, Accra, Ghana, this essay introduces the experimental, work-in-progress approach I term ‘autoarchaeology’. This is an analytical approach whereby the roles and subject positions of researcher, practitioner, and descendant are held by the same person, and foreground the Self. Autoarchaeology excavates multiple layers, namely: the politics of knowledge production, historiographical traditions, historical inquiry, colonial realities, and postcolonial legacies. Autoarchaeology at the castle attempts to challenge current dominant Western archaeological heritage orthodoxy concerning the study, use, and management of the past, and in so doing, offer possibilities for a decolonizing practice.

Archaeological reconnaissance through multi-method geophysical and geochemical survey at two Iroquoian village sites, southern Ontario, Canada

Only in the last decade have archaeologists working on Iroquoian sites in Ontario, Québec, and New York State begun to seize upon the potential of geophysical prospection and soil chemistry for identifying settlement features. Recent studies employing magnetic gradiometry, magnetic susceptibility, and soil phosphate analysis demonstrate that multi-method approaches have the potential to overcome the limitations imposed by intrusive historic features, soil composition, and underlying geology. We consider how specific aspects of the Iroquoian built environment, such as longhouses, palisades, and middens, might be visible in datasets produced by magnetic gradiometry, magnetic susceptibility, and soil phosphate analyses and apply these methods to two Iroquoian sites: Trent-Foster (BcGr-5), a late 16th-century Wendat village and Hamilton-Lougheed (BbHa-10), an early-to-mid 17th-century Tionontate village. At Trent-Foster, we interpret certain anomalies as potential longhouses, but suggest that a band of low magnetism cutting through the site may be due to underlying geology. At Hamilton-Lougheed, we identify a potential palisade and a likely habitation area. We conclude by acknowledging that the biggest imperative moving forward is the need for more ground-truthing to verify the presence or absence of built environment features suggested by geophysical and soil chemistry methods. We advocate for continued use and development of geophysical and geochemical methods on Iroquoian sites, particularly in the cultural resource management context, as they strike an important balance between preserving archaeological heritage and learning from that which is preserved, issues that are of the utmost importance to descendant communities and First Nations research partners.

The Past Is a Divided Country: Transforming Archaeology in South Africa

This article examines the political and institutional dimensions of archaeological practice in South Africa during the apartheid era and since the transition to democratic rule in 1994. We focus on the archaeological practices within institutional structures—the universities, heritage agencies, and museums. We examine the roles these institutions played in either perpetuating or challenging the disconnection between archaeological heritage and descendent communities prior to 1994, and whether the political changes that occurred since the end of apartheid have succeeded in creating an inclusive archaeological practice in South Africa. The Transformation Charter, adopted in 2008 by the Association of Southern African Professional Archaeologists (ASAPA), requires that all those working in the field of archaeology in South Africa practice a form of archaeology that is “rooted in social awareness and social engagement” and aims to be “socially responsible.” We examine the extent to which progress has been made towards achieving those objectives.

A Creole Synthesis: Archaeology of the Culturally Mixed Heritage Silas Tobias Site in Setauket, New York

ABSTRACTResearch on the Silas Tobias site in Setauket, New York has identified a small nineteenth-century homestead with a well-preserved and stratified archaeological context. Documentation of the site establishes that the site was occupied from at least 1823 until about 1900. Based on documentary evidence, the Tobias family is considered African American, though the mixed Native American and African American heritage of the descendant community is also well-known. Excavations in 2015 exposed both architectural- and midden-associated deposits that shed light on daily life of the Tobias household, which suggests the preservation of Native American cultural practices both in technology and foodways. In essence, the site presents excellent evidence of the mixing of cultural traditions, a process interpreted in this paper as a sign of both political agency of the Tobias family as well as a period of greater tolerance for racial difference associated with the end of slavery in New York.

A Guide to the Preventive Care of Archaeological Collections

ABSTRACTPreservation knowledge is important for those preparing archaeological collections for curation or requesting access to collections for research. Literature about the fields of archaeological conservation and curation is plentiful, but there are scant resources that offer a basic introduction to the knowledge needed to facilitate preservation of and access to archaeological collections. Much of the literature focuses on conservation in the field and in the lab. Archaeological curation standards and the importance of sustainable management of archaeological collections also are well documented. In contrast, this article serves as an introductory guide to preventive care, specifically to the agents of deterioration and the storage considerations that affect preservation of and access to archaeological collections. Collections specialists who work in museums, government repositories, or historical societies, as well as field archaeologists, academic archaeologists teaching and conducting research on collections, and descendant communities in tribal historic preservation offices and other repositories will find this guide useful as a reference and teaching resource.

Engaging Pacific Islander Veterans and Military Families in Difficult Heritage Discussions

A discussion program that engages Pacific Island veterans and military families in examining the experience of war through humanities sources including conflict heritage was recently undertaken in Saipan, Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. The program proposes to assist the community with gaining a meaningful and relevant understanding of war as a shared human experience by exploring their local conflict heritage and assisting in integrating Pacific Islander veterans into a sociocultural position of authority in the history of war in their islands. The program is informed by theoretical and practice-based approaches in Indigenous and community archaeology, is interdisciplinary in design, and provides some consideration for future prospects in engagement with descendant and veteran communities.

Institutional and Conceptual Barriers to Climate Change Adaptation for Coastal Cultural Heritage

Climate change is increasing the speed at which tangible coastal cultural heritage is changing in character or being lost through weathering, erosion, and inundation. Damages to coastal archeological sites, loss of access to historical sites, and the alteration of cultural landscapes will force changes in the way researchers can study sites, tourists can enjoy places, and descendant communities who have lived in particular areas for time immemorial, and local community members can utilize and relate to landscapes. In the USA, the National Park Service is a primary coastal cultural resource management organization. The National Park Service has been working on climate change adaptation for cultural resources for over a decade; however, there are few examples of parks in which long range climate change adaptation plans for cultural resources have been implemented. Building from 20 semi-structured interviews with cultural resource managers in three parks, we found that institutional structures within the National Park Service, as well as historical conceptual framings specific to the research, recreational, and interpretive values of cultural resources act as barriers to managers’ ability to design and implement climate change adaptation plans. Institutional barriers managers discussed include the dependence of climate change adaptation decisions partnership projects and the leveraging of budgetary and staff resources within NPS that may affect climate change adaptation capacity. We found that park managers often saw impacts in parks that may be associated with climate change, but found it difficult to separate normal maintenance from climate change affected deterioration, which may lead to status quo management actions rather than revised planning for a changing future regime. Conceptual barriers managers discussed revealed a conflict between preservation needs of research versus interpretive uses and while NPS guidance recommends prioritization of cultural resources for preservation at the park level, regional managers were more focused on this topic than park managers. As NPS moves forward with climate change adaptation planning, opportunities to develop and improve cultural resource preservation with new technologies, improved prioritization schemes, and include public input in resource preservation may help coastal managers overcome these barriers.

Considering Conservation of Human Skeletal Remains in Archaeological Contexts

ABSTRACTThe articles in this issue present bioarchaeological case studies from across the globe, including North and Central America, East Asia, Europe, and the Near East. Some bioarchaeology projects are new and others are decades old, but common challenges emerge as researchers apply conservation standards to real situations in the field: a lack of training or resources for long-term curation of human remains, the lag between excavation and analysis of remains, and environmental challenges that include melting permafrost, tropical storms, and a variety of pests such as molds, fungi, bats, snakes, and insects. The studies also address ethical considerations about the use of digital images of human remains, molecular and isotopic methods that require the destruction of human tissue samples, the ability of fast-paced cultural resource management (CRM) projects to address the needs of descendant communities, and the responsibility that we have to the people we study. Techniques for addressing these challenges include new computer programs, more advanced photographic software, and research on the effects of conservation techniques that provide new “standards” for bioarchaeologists. We highlight the importance of each contribution and discuss the future of conservation in bioarchaeology.

The Caddos and Their Ancestors: Archaeology and the Native People of Northwest Louisiana by Jeffrey S. Girard

Reviewed by: The Caddos and Their Ancestors: Archaeology and the Native People of Northwest Louisiana by Jeffrey S. Girard Mary Beth Trubitt The Caddos and Their Ancestors: Archaeology and the Native People of Northwest Louisiana. By Jeffrey S. Girard. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2018. Pp. xvi, 130. $29.95, ISBN 978-0-8071-6702-1.) In The Caddos and Their Ancestors: Archaeology and the Native People of Northwest Louisiana, archaeologist Jeffrey S. Girard provides a readable and accessible history of Indians in northwestern Louisiana for a general audience. Girard presents a chronological view of the region's long history, focusing on major changes in lifeways between 11,500 b.c., with evidence of the earliest inhabitants, and the a.d. 1835 treaty that ended Caddo Indians' claims to their Louisiana homeland. The book is well organized. After the book opens with an introductory chapter on archaeological methods, data, and goals, Girard discusses the evidence in chapter 2 for Paleo-Indian and Archaic period hunters-fishers-gatherers (11,500-500 b.c.), in chapter 3, Woodland period mound builders (500 b.c.–a.d. 900), in chapters 4 and 5, Caddo Indians in the Mississippian period (a.d. 900-1700), and in chapters 6 and 7, the colonial and United States periods (a.d. 1700-1835). Examples are drawn primarily from Girard's own research, undertaken during his long career as regional archaeologist for the Louisiana Division of Archaeology. Not only do readers learn about key sites such as Conly, Fredericks, and Mounds Plantation, but they also see how this research draws together teams of archaeologists and other specialists, landowners, and representatives from state and federal agencies and descendant communities. Clearly, Girard is a teacher as well as a researcher, as shown by his concise, accurate explanations of technologies such as radiocarbon dating and geophysical surveying. His writing is straightforward and streamlined. Citations are provided in endnotes, rather than within the text, with additional references to guide further reading. There is a glossary that defines archaeological terms. Girard's writing is often elegant, such as when he explains the importance of recording archaeological finds: "An undocumented collection of artifacts taken from the ground makes no more sense than a jumbled collection of words displaced from a book. The individual specimens, like individual words, constitute bits of information. But the story they tell relies on order and context" (p. 2). The Caddos and Their Ancestors brings the story of northwest Louisiana's long history to a broad audience. People living in the region used the rich resources available to build vibrant and complex communities. Girard shows that "Caddo culture is a fundamental component of the heritage of the state of Louisiana" (p. 111). I recommend this book for public libraries across the region and to university libraries as well. Furthermore, I see this book as a model for my colleagues to follow. We have done the excavations, analyzed the artifacts, and written our reports and scholarly journal articles. It is time to look at the big picture and show modern readers what archaeologists have learned [End Page 409] from their research on the past. Girard accomplishes this goal with a thoughtful, well-illustrated book that I recommend to anyone interested in Caddo Indian history and the archaeology of the Red River Valley. Mary Beth Trubitt Arkansas Archeological Survey Copyright © 2019 Southern Historical Association

Seroprevalence of rodent-borne viruses in Afro-descendent communities in Brazil.

ABSTRACTDuring the Brazilian slavery period, many African migrants were brought to the American continent. Historically, some of these migrants escaped from the Brazilian gold mines and farms to which they had been brought and settled in remote valleys and this was the main mode of resistance to the slavery system. These runaway-slave descendant communities are called quilombos, a group with distinct ethnic identity, specific behavioral habits, including geographic isolation and conservative practices. The objective of this study was to investigate the prevalence of rodent-borne viruses in two Afro-descendent communities from Mato Grosso do Sul State, Midwestern Brazil. A total of 319 individuals from rural and urban quilombola communities were enrolled. Twelve (3.76%) had anti-rodent-borne virus IgG antibodies. Seven (2.19%) were anti-mammarenavirus reactive and nine (2.82%) had anti-orthohantavirus antibodies. The literature includes limited data on the health status of quilombola communities, but all the studies emphasize the disparity of attention of local healthcare personnel to these communities compared to the general population. The findings of this study highlight the vulnerability and the precarious health conditions of quilombola groups, especially those living in rural areas and thus, point to the need of preventive measures to improve access to healthcare for this ethnic group.

Representaciones, saberes y prácticas de profesionales del trabajo social frente a la atención y garantía de los derechos de las comunidades negras en Bogotá

Analyzing the representations, knowledge and practices of social workers who attend afro- Colombian population implies a critical and reflective lecture on the professional chore. It must be from an integral vision, which considers the academic knowledge, practices in professional and daily environments, challenges, errors and merits from this guild. Bearing in mind that social work as guarantor of rights, contributes to the materialization of the targets in the plans, programs and projects focused in the “afro” community, privileging its interests and needs. This way, the intention of the investigative group from this article is to generate a stage of reflection so that, those who exercise social work, are constantly valuing his work from its ethical principles, its legitimacy and the suitable and incongruous interventions that have been proposed in the work with the afro descendant community from the differential approach and the Human Rights approach.

A visão epistemológica de Feyerabend e suas possíveis relações com a tendência metodológica da etnomatemática

O trabalho teve como principal objetivo estabelecer uma relação entre o pluralismo metodológico de Paul Feyerabend e a Etnomatemática, apontando algumas implicações para o ensino de matemática, em especial na Educação Básica, e na aprendizagem de conceitos matemáticos. A pesquisa foi realizada junto a comunidades de imigrantes e descendentes de ucranianos localizadas na Região Centro-Sul do Estado do Paraná, especificamente no que se refere a formas que tais indivíduos efetuam a leitura de relógios. Os resultados obtidos apontam para formas próprias de expressão que podem ser relacionadas a conhecimentos etnomatemáticos característicos desse grupo social. Essas formas de expressão denotam uma identidade cultural que deve ser levada em conta no processo de ensino de conceitos matemáticos, visando estabelecer um diálogo entre a matemática formal e as construções características dessa cultura.

Oral health of elderly people living in a rural community of slave descendants in Brazil

Abstract Background Oral health has an important impact on quality of life and should be an integral part of the overall health of the individual. Quilombolas, afro-descendants communities, live in difficult-access rural areas and with several obstacles on the use of health services. Objective This study is aimed to analyse the oral health conditions of the older Quilombola population in the North of Minas Gerais, Brazil, and the main limitations faced by these communities regarding public health services' access. Method This study evaluated the oral health of elderly Quilombola population in the North of Minas Gerais, Brazil. The study's population consisted in 669 Quilombolas, aged 65 to 74 years old, residing in 33 Quilombola rural communities that are located in 20 different counties of Brazil. Examinations and interviews were conducted in the houses of the elderly people surveyed for the assessment of oral health condition, analysing the use of dental health services, objective conditions (clinical) and subjective conditions (reported). Results Most of the interviewees were self-declared black, female, illiterate and living below the minimum wage. More than 50% of the elderly Quilombola- population interviewed were edentulous and only 17% used total prosthesis. The smiling was the main impact of oral condition reported by them in everyday life. Conclusion The analysis provided by this study exposes the impact of overlooked oral health conditions in minority populations as Quilombolas and reinforces the need of public investments in those vulnerable communities.

Keberlangsungan Interaksi Komunitas Keturunan Arab di Palembang dengan Sungai Musi. Kajian Sosiologi pada Masyarakat Pendukung Situs

This paper is an archaeology study that uses sociology approach to determine the continuity of interaction of Arab descend against the river. The research analyze how Arab descend in Palembang who have lived in Palembang long ago use the river in daily life and analyze their perception about river. The research method used in this research is qualitative method with data collection techniques through observation and interviews. In an effort to find out the perception of Arab descendants community in Palembang about the river, the researchers applied the pattern of thought in accordance with the mindset of the research’s object. The results of this study indicate that the development of Palembang has caused environmental changes but it does not make the Arab descendant community, except the community in Sungailumpur, to no longer interact with the river but its intensity has decreased. The description of the life of this community is the identity of the Arab descendant community living in Palembang, that is their ancestor inherited the tradition of riverine culture like the Palembang people in general due to the mother of their ancestor who is a native of Palembang.

Decolonizing Collections‐Based Learning:Experiential Observation as an Interdisciplinary Framework for Object Study

AbstractThis paper introduces a structured interdisciplinary framework for collections‐based learning. The scaffolding combines visual analysis and multisensory material properties analysis with anthropological understandings of culture, context, and materiality. It is proposed in critical response both to visual approaches of art history/critique and to new materialist approaches that elevate the physical properties of matter. Both visual and materialist approaches tend toward presentism and decontextualization. They intrinsically privilege the viewer's standpoint and interpretations over those of makers, users, and descendant community members, producing a “colonizing” effect. This outcome does not serve anthropology's decolonizing intentions of cultural relativism and context—or the “twenty‐first‐century skills” with which anthropology aligns. An anthropological understanding of material culture can enhance visual and material approaches by culturally contextualizing the multisensory experience of things and teaching cultural relativism. This paper proposes such an approach: semistructured experiential observation that unites aspects of formal art historical analysis, multisensory observation, and reflexive, polysemous cultural interpretation. The framework offers an interdisciplinary, decolonizing method of object study. [anthropology, materiality, object‐based learning, pedagogy, visuality]