Abstract:The Old Leupp Boarding School (OLBS) was a Federal Indian Boarding School in operation from 1909–1942 on the southwest Navajo Reservation. It currently exists as a historical archaeology site, and it is an important place to the local Navajos of Leupp and Birdsprings, Arizona. Due to the nature of cultural resource management projects on the Navajo Reservation, which occur prior to development, in‐depth research of Navajo archaeological sites and collaboration with the Navajo public does not usually occur. Wit… Show more
“…Memory, and especially collective memory, proves to be a powerful force and an incredibly useful tool in our contemporary archaeological repertoire. Sesma ([2022] this volume, Chapter 2), Oliver and Cox ([2022] this volume, Chapter 3), Two Bears ([2022] this volume, Chapter 4), and Wilkinson ([2022] this volume, Chapter 5) each demonstrate ways of engaging collective memory about meaningful places through archaeological‐ethnographic methods. In these cases, memorywork is also a deliberate way of maintaining community connections to place when development projects or conventional heritage narratives would erase or obscure local pasts.…”
Section: Methodological Approaches For Contemporary Archaeologies In ...mentioning
confidence: 99%
“…In Chapter 4, Two Bears (2022) offers a powerful case study of contemporary, collaborative archaeology in the examination of the Old Leupp Boarding School on the Navajo Reservation, moving beyond a history of suffering to acknowledge and celebrate the resiliency and survivance of Diné (Navajo) people. Explicitly practicing a decolonizing and Indigenous archaeological framework, Two Bears stresses the necessity of consultation and collaboration with local and descendant communities, in accordance with Diné protocols, to determine the goals of a project that has potential to give back and improve the lives and wellbeing of those involved.…”
Section: Methodological Approaches For Contemporary Archaeologies In ...mentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Site formation, in addition to deep histories of spatial and material transformations, also incorporates contemporary land use and ecological processes, and, not to be forgotten, archaeological intervention. Each author in this volume extends archaeological analysis of an old place into the contemporary moment in order to reflect on evolving relationships between people and place and respond to contemporary issues with deep historical roots: urban planning and community dislocation and relocation (Chapters 5 [Wilkinson 2022] and 7 [Danis 2022]), contemporary manifestations of historical trauma (Chapter 4 [Two Bears 2022]), the afterlife of industrial toxicity (Chapter 6 [Stewart 2022]), meritocracy in heritage activism (Chapter 8 [Lorenc 2022]), place‐making at the margins (Chapters 2 [Sesma 2022] and 3 [Oliver and Cox 2022]), and community responses to gentrification and tourism development (Chapter 9 [Taylor 2022]). Authors demonstrate how the material traces of the past accompany, constrain, and open possibilities for people today.…”
This chapter opens an analytic space to consider the resonance of “old places” in the contemporary moment through the lens of archaeology. Borrowing the term used by some of our interlocutors, old places are places that bear memory, that have accrued emotional attachment, and that intervene in the present as reminders of things that have happened before. Through these qualities, old places sustain life and relations. We adopt an expansive view of site formation processes that extends into the present and future and argue that studying contemporary site formation can unleash insights into the multi‐temporal constitution of the world we inhabit. We do not insist on a single approach to studying these processes, but rather suggest that the methodological and theoretical diversity that archaeologists and local communities bring together is key to studying and knowing old places in the present. We draw connections between a contemporary archaeology of old places and the emergent fields of contemporary archaeology and critical heritage studies, but also argue for retaining and fully incorporating the political and activist orientations of historical, feminist, African Diaspora, and Indigenous archaeologies—fields that have long centered the knowledge and concerns of contemporary communities—into this work.
“…Memory, and especially collective memory, proves to be a powerful force and an incredibly useful tool in our contemporary archaeological repertoire. Sesma ([2022] this volume, Chapter 2), Oliver and Cox ([2022] this volume, Chapter 3), Two Bears ([2022] this volume, Chapter 4), and Wilkinson ([2022] this volume, Chapter 5) each demonstrate ways of engaging collective memory about meaningful places through archaeological‐ethnographic methods. In these cases, memorywork is also a deliberate way of maintaining community connections to place when development projects or conventional heritage narratives would erase or obscure local pasts.…”
Section: Methodological Approaches For Contemporary Archaeologies In ...mentioning
confidence: 99%
“…In Chapter 4, Two Bears (2022) offers a powerful case study of contemporary, collaborative archaeology in the examination of the Old Leupp Boarding School on the Navajo Reservation, moving beyond a history of suffering to acknowledge and celebrate the resiliency and survivance of Diné (Navajo) people. Explicitly practicing a decolonizing and Indigenous archaeological framework, Two Bears stresses the necessity of consultation and collaboration with local and descendant communities, in accordance with Diné protocols, to determine the goals of a project that has potential to give back and improve the lives and wellbeing of those involved.…”
Section: Methodological Approaches For Contemporary Archaeologies In ...mentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Site formation, in addition to deep histories of spatial and material transformations, also incorporates contemporary land use and ecological processes, and, not to be forgotten, archaeological intervention. Each author in this volume extends archaeological analysis of an old place into the contemporary moment in order to reflect on evolving relationships between people and place and respond to contemporary issues with deep historical roots: urban planning and community dislocation and relocation (Chapters 5 [Wilkinson 2022] and 7 [Danis 2022]), contemporary manifestations of historical trauma (Chapter 4 [Two Bears 2022]), the afterlife of industrial toxicity (Chapter 6 [Stewart 2022]), meritocracy in heritage activism (Chapter 8 [Lorenc 2022]), place‐making at the margins (Chapters 2 [Sesma 2022] and 3 [Oliver and Cox 2022]), and community responses to gentrification and tourism development (Chapter 9 [Taylor 2022]). Authors demonstrate how the material traces of the past accompany, constrain, and open possibilities for people today.…”
This chapter opens an analytic space to consider the resonance of “old places” in the contemporary moment through the lens of archaeology. Borrowing the term used by some of our interlocutors, old places are places that bear memory, that have accrued emotional attachment, and that intervene in the present as reminders of things that have happened before. Through these qualities, old places sustain life and relations. We adopt an expansive view of site formation processes that extends into the present and future and argue that studying contemporary site formation can unleash insights into the multi‐temporal constitution of the world we inhabit. We do not insist on a single approach to studying these processes, but rather suggest that the methodological and theoretical diversity that archaeologists and local communities bring together is key to studying and knowing old places in the present. We draw connections between a contemporary archaeology of old places and the emergent fields of contemporary archaeology and critical heritage studies, but also argue for retaining and fully incorporating the political and activist orientations of historical, feminist, African Diaspora, and Indigenous archaeologies—fields that have long centered the knowledge and concerns of contemporary communities—into this work.
“…What I am especially interested in here are the ways that memory and landscape coalesce, and examining such coalescence through an archaeological lens. In doing so, this work is in conversation with the school of southwestern landscape archaeology that attends to historical and contemporary materiality and social relations of a place, and does so in ways that transcend the traditional boundaries of anthropological subdisciplines (Fowles 2010, 459; see also Two Bears [2022] this volume, Chapter 4). That blurring of the subdisciplines is not unlike the transdisciplinary approach to contemporary archaeology called for by Hamilakis and Anagnostopoulos (2009; see also Taylor and Sesma [2022] this volume, Chapter 1).…”
Section: Landscapes In Archaeologymentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Materializing memory on a particular landscape creates a memoryscape that links the past and the present through material and social interactions. In the case of South Eleuthera, as in many places around the globe, people inhabit a landscape that is imbued with memory, and thereby, with cultural meaning and value (see also Oliver and Cox [2022] this volume, Chapter 3 and Two Bears [2022] this volume, Chapter 4). The rich layers of historical memory coalesce over time around specific sites and throughout the broader landscape.…”
The Millars Plantation on Eleuthera, Bahamas was first established in 1803 as a cotton plantation and remained in operation through the 1830s. After emancipation, the formerly enslaved community continued to live on and work the plantation acreage and surrounding areas, until 1871 when Ann Millar formally left the 2000 acre‐property to the descendants of her former slaves and servants. That descendant community still upholds their right to this land today, despite a series of legal challenges by Bahamian and foreign investors who seek to develop new tourism‐based economies in the area. In the process of documenting the historical landscape of the Millars Plantation through oral histories, ethnographic interviews, and landscape survey, the research revealed ways that residents today have materialized memory—piecing together object, story, and space—on a living landscape that has too often been framed as empty or relegated to the past. This chapter investigates the ways in which memory becomes rooted in the materiality of the South Eleuthera landscape. When read side‐by‐side, the archaeological and contemporary social stratigraphy of South Eleuthera illustrate this historical landscape's ongoing site formation and the ways in which community members use the memoryscape as a tool for community building and local advocacy.
The Wichita and Affiliated Tribes have a long history of occupation in what is now known as Oklahoma. This includes evidence of habitations along Camp Creek and Sugar Creek near Anadarko in Caddo County. Here Wichita peoples camped, built grass houses and arbors, and held social gatherings leading up to and following the passing of the General Allotment Act in 1887. After allotment, communal camp and dance grounds were especially important focal points for community building. These places, such as the ichaskhah camp and dance ground discussed in this article, are critical to understanding the multigenerational connections between ancestral and living Wichita peoples. This history is also important to the community today. However, archaeological research of the Allotment period is exceptionally rare in this region. By using collaborative and Indigenous archaeological methodologies, this work documents the complexities of these places, challenging traditional assumptions of allotment-era cultural loss and assimilation.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.