Private property, public archaeology: resident communities as stakeholders in American archaeology

Abstract

In the United States, archaeological sites on private lands have few legal protections, and are thus at risk of damage or destruction. To alleviate these risks, archaeologists must engage thoughtfully with private property owners and develop strategies to promote site stewardship. In this article, I identify the resident communitythose people who live on archaeological sites, regardless of their ancestral ties to those sites -as an important stakeholder in archaeology. Based on recent fieldwork experiences on a privately owned site in the southeastern US, I discuss the unique challenges of engaging a resident community in archaeological research, and the potential of such engagement for fostering archaeological stewardship. Specifically, I use theories of place attachment derived from environmental psychology to explore how resident communities may be encouraged to empathize with and protect the archaeological records of past people.

Students Are Stakeholders in On-Campus Archaeology

“…The parallels in these results suggest that SCU students may not be unique. Rather, an interest in and connection to the material, cultural, and historical heritage of a central place in the daily experiences of students may be common—similar to such interests and connections found in the broader public (e.g., Wright 2015).…”

“…Aspects of college life—from alumni associations to school pride to campus-wide social and sporting events—suggest a heritage sensibility within the experiences of many students. A number of studies have highlighted how people often feel a sense of connection to local archaeological remains and the past lives they represent, even in cases without lineal descent between local residents and the communities that produced the deposits (e.g., Byrne 2002; Harrison 2004; Hart and Chilton 2015; Wright 2015). Additionally, engagement with the archaeological record is one way that people can foster these kinds of connection (Kowalczyk 2016; Sgorous and Stirn 2016).…”

“…The carefully planned inclusion of the general public in archaeological work and outreach activities can also have external impacts, such as the cultivation of useful constituencies (McManamon 1991), whether to prevent destruction of the archaeological record (Wright 2015) or maintain opportunities within the discipline (Camp et al 2020; Klein et al 2018). A key concept in stakeholder theory is that work must be assessed not just in its effects on organizations' members but also the common good (Bryson 2004:21).…”

The Future of American Archaeology

“…One potential basis for these relationships is place . Regardless of lineal affiliations, contemporary residential communities —“groups whose privately owned homes and lands encompass archaeological sites or other heritage resources” (Wright 2015:213)—share some form of place-based identity with the indigenous communities who lived in the same location centuries or millennia ago. Of course, the attachments between past people and particular places are not identical to those that exist today, but some form of place attachment may render intelligible experiences among groups separated by time or by distinct cultural backgrounds.…”

“…The Garden Creek Archaeological Project (GCAP), conducted on private land in western North Carolina from 2011 to 2014, underscores some of the challenges and opportunities that can emerge from efforts to muster an archaeologically inclined residential community (Wright 2015). Focused on a Middle Woodland period (ca.…”