Reviewed by: Community-Based Archaeology: Research with, by and for Indigenous and Local Communities by Sonya Atalay Eldon Yellowhorn (bio) Sonya Atalay. Community-Based Archaeology: Research with, by and for Indigenous and Local Communities. Berkley: University of California Press, 2012. 312 pp. $29.95. Reading this volume is like having a long, engaging conversation with the author. Its accessible vocabulary, interspersed with instructive illustrations, chronicle the ideas fomenting dialogue between archaeology and the public in general but more specifically Indigenous people. Being Anishnabek encourages the author to imbue her words with a special sensitivity to the struggle of her community to tell their history in their own words. Archaeology, thus, is tailor-made for her inquiries because [End Page 450] her training allows her to extract history from unwritten sources. She triangulates data retrieved from material culture studies, archival documents, and oral history interviews to construct a narrative that emanates from her people’s internal dialogue on the nature of antiquity. Her reflections on an uneasy history with her self-selected career, due to its disrespectful practices and its complicity in marginalizing her community, point to the challenges she overcame to pursue this calling. However, the profession and her community are better off because she did. Beginning with her sample from Anishnabe artist Daphne Odjig’s Spiritual Renewal, the preface relating her inspiration and the people she acknowledges, the author commits herself to articulating her perspective of the good that archaeology can do for Indigenous people. Within the eight chapters in this volume she synthesizes her involvement in the long- and short-term research projects that keep her busy. She begins by introducing her protagonist, which in this case is the subject of community-based participatory research (cbpr) and its implications for promoting a sustainable archaeology. She then turns her attention to examining the historical roots of this trend by recounting the early days of reactionary protest led by the red power movement. Direct action in those days meant invading archaeological excavations and disrupting the work at those sites. It meant protesting the desecration of Indian graves and sacred places. Their efforts started a friendless vigil, but eventually they found allies within the discipline and, more important, among legislators. However, I do think she overlooked the influence of early feminist discourse on the mental template and vocabulary that would inspire aboriginal scholars taking control of their research agenda. The phrase “research for, by and with Indigenous communities” (40) restates a motive, using the same prepositions, employed by journalists such as Gloria Steinem in the 1960s when she was launching a magazine that would include articles written for, by and with women. Apart from this oversight, the point that becomes clear is that this practice has shallow time depth in the repertoire of American archaeology. Chapter 3 is a practical guide for studying the past, how it intrudes on the present, and how cbpr contributes to bridging the distance between a profession just learning to communicate with multiple audiences and communities who feel excluded from participating in the recovery of their own history. It serves mainly to contextualize the succeeding [End Page 451] chapters that describe her personal journey of learning how to engage nonprofessionals in a jargon-laden profession. Chapter 4 is by far the most intriguing. Here she discovers the perspective of the outsider. Her work in Çhatahöyük, Turkey, is about confronting herself as the other. Working in a foreign land, speaking an alien language, and excavating strangers’ history situate her in a role familiar to many American archaeologists. Rather than estrange herself further, she embraces the opportunity to find common cause with the good folk of Küçükköy. As a consequence she gains an enhanced understanding of community concerns about being shut out of a project that would not exist had their ancestors not invested their labors in the objects, features, and architectural remains unearthed by foreigners. She learns her lessons and applies them to subsequent projects with her own people, but the experience was a prominent interlude in her usual practice. Of course the friendships she made while traveling in another country she simply took to heart. Chapter 5 is a step-by-step...
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Nov 1, 2023
Susi Machdalena + 5
Open Access