1Introduction: Toward an Engaged Feminist Heritage Praxis

Abstract

We advocate a feminist approach to archaeological heritage work in order to transform heritage practice and the production of archaeological knowledge. We use an engaged feminist standpoint and situate intersubjectivity and intersectionality as critical components of this practice. An engaged feminist approach to heritage work allows the discipline to consider women's, men's, and gender non-conforming persons' positions in the field, to reveal their contributions, to develop critical pedagogical approaches, and to rethink forms of representation. Throughout, we emphasize the intellectual labor of women of color, queer and gender non-conforming persons, and early white feminists in archaeology. [feminism, engaged research, heritage praxis, intersubjectivity, intersectionality]

The future of archaeology is (still) community collaboration

“…Unlike mainstream feminism, which has been critiqued for recentring Whiteness and heteronormativity, Black feminism has been used by archaeologists to examine the intersections between race, gender and class in the past, as well as in contemporary power relations within the discipline (Palacios 2020; King 2021). In a special issue of the Archaeological Papers of the American Anthropological Association , Tiffany C. Fryer and Teresa P. Raczek (2020), lay out an agenda for an engaged archaeological heritage practice rooted in the feminist principles of intersectionality and intersubjectivity. Contributors to that special issue demonstrate how race-radical approaches to heritage enable harm reduction in collaborative heritage work (e.g.…”

“…As Fryer and Raczek (2020) have argued, while multivocality is an admirable principle it may also allow us as practitioners to be too agnostic ( sensu Brumann 2014) about the groups we decide to collaborate with and on what terms. Sometimes, we would argue, what is at stake in a collaborative endeavour has everything to do with who our collaborators are and are not.…”

Heritage as liberation

“…Heritage is a mechanism of collective identity formation that “completes and elaborates upon what is missing from the past in the present” (Meskell, 2015, 2) by invoking cultural practice, anchoring itself to things, and affectively bonding people to historical narratives from which they form sociopolitical consciousness. Archaeology is one form of heritage practice—regardless of whether we actively pursue it as such (Fryer and Raczek, 2020, 8; Rizvi, 2020). Heritage as liberation requires archaeologists, as well as the larger gamut of applied anthropologists and heritage practitioners working across adjacent fields, to reorient their motivations for engaging in this work.…”

1 Exploring the Contemporary in Old Places

“…We suggest that one reason contemporary archaeology has not gained traction as a named subfield in North American contexts is because archaeologists attuned to the interconnectedness of past, present, and future materiality and social meaning are doing this work as a result of distinct anthropological and socio‐political genealogies. If one understands that the past is present, political, and oftentimes personal (Fryer and Raczek 2020a), then it is easier to see the stakes of how one identifies their work, what literature you claim, and what spheres of practice claim you. Labeling your work as community‐based, Indigenous, Black feminist, Marxist, or activist does more than change your citational practices but also makes your work legible to different audiences, collaborators, and in relation to contemporary politics.…”

“…We suggest that one reason contemporary archaeology has not gained traction as a named subfield in North American contexts is because archaeologists attuned to the interconnectedness of past, present, and future materiality and social meaning are doing this work as a result of distinct anthropological and socio-political genealogies. If one understands that the past is present, political, and oftentimes personal (Fryer and Raczek 2020a) Our North Americanist archaeological approaches to contemporary issues, politics, and activism ultimately guide our orientation towards transformative, emancipatory, and social justice archaeology (Atalay et al 2014b;McGuire 2008). North American historical archaeology has a long history of critical engagement with materiality and contemporary communities' understandings of the past (see Franklin 1997;Leone et al 1987;Paynter and McGuire 1991;Shackel 2001a).…”