No 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.

Taking the conflict over the remains of Ned Kelly as a starting point, in this article I trace the various conceptions of the, body as evidence within the intertwined histories of anthropology, criminology, and medicine to explore how anthropological practice brings the dead into being through exhumation and analysis. I outline the popular rhetorical tropes within which evidentiary claims are situated, exploring how the agency of people after death is understood within the framework of present-day forensic anthropological practice and how this is underwritten by a particular heritage of anatomical analysis. [Keywords: archaeology, forensic anthropology, materiality, semiotics of the body]

What role will archaeology play in the Anthropocene – the proposed new geological epoch marked by human impact on Earth systems? That is the question discussed by thirteen archaeologists and other scholars from five continents in this thought-provoking forum. Their responses are diverse and wide-ranging. While Edward Harris looks to archaeological stratigraphy for a material paradigm of the Anthropocene, Alice Gorman explores the extent of human impact on orbital space and lunar surfaces – challenging the assumption that the Anthropocene is confined to Earth. Jeff Benjamin investigates the sounds of the Anthropocene. Paul Graves-Brown questions the idea that the epoch had its onset with the invention of the steam engine, while Mark Hudson uses Timothy Morton’s concept of hyperobjects to imagine the dark artefacts of the future. Victor Paz doubts the practical relevance of the concept to archaeological chronologies, and Bruce Clarke warns archaeologists to steer clear of the Anthropocene altogether, on the grounds of the overbearing hubris of the very idea of the Age of Humans. Others like Jason Kelly and Ewa Domanska regard the Anthropocene debate as an opportunity to reach new forms of understanding of Earth systems. André Zarankin and Melisa Salerno ground significant issues in the archaeology of Antarctica. And Zoe Crossland explores the vital links between the known past and the imagined future. As a discipline orientated to the future and contemporary world as well as the past, Chris Witmore concludes, archaeology in the Anthropocene will have more work than it can handle.

Evidence excavacated from mass graves and clandestine burials has played an important role in the international prosecution of human rights abuses as well as in individual criminal cases. The archaeological dimension of forensic anthropological work is focused on the grave site and its immediate surrounding environment, making the work very visible and sometimes contentious. This review traces the ways in which forensic archaeological evidence is composed and evaluated, exploring how anthropologists have negotiated the sometimes competing demands and claims of the courts, scientific practice, and relatives of the dead.