What is Archaeological Ethnography? Locating Theory in the Practice of Archaeological Ethnographies

Sunday, May 2nd
9:00 am-12:30 pm

Session Organizer: Morag M. Kersel

Session Abstract: Recently Hamilakis and Anagnostopoulos (2009) asked, “What is Archaeological Ethnography?” This TAG session builds upon this provocative question by examining the theoretical paradigms that aid in the production of the archaeological ethnography, and those concepts, which help to define the practice. The emerging trans-disciplinary field of archaeological ethnography weds archaeological agendas with the methodological concerns of cultural/social anthropology. By integrating methodologies into an engaged anthropological framework, archaeological ethnographies embody the spirit of a holistic approach to inquiry and practice. Traditionally, anthropological research has prioritized the “ethnographic present” while archaeological research invented and isolated an “ancient past,” often resulting in a rift between the two disciplines. Archaeological ethnography questions such absolute temporalities and the modernist setting apart of the “ancient” versus the “modern” while it insists that we rethink the past as a vital component of the present (Hamilakis and Anagnostopoulos 2009). Archaeological ethnographies encourage archaeology to be a socially embedded practice that listens to and at the same time answers to its various constituents, offering a self-reflexive lens for inquiry. Monumental ruins, abandoned landscapes, archaeological sites, sacred spaces, pilgrimage destinations, heritage sites, spaces of spoliation, tourist sites, historically contested places and heterotopias of modernity offer especially inviting platforms for exploring the question of “What is Archaeological Ethnography?”

Y. Hamilakis and A. Anagnostopoulos (2009) “What is Archaeological Ethnography?” Public Archaeology 8(2-3): 65-87.

9:00: Maria T. Brodine (Columbia University): Living Levees: Flood Protection, Coastal Restoration, and an Engineering Disaster in New Orleans, Louisiana
9:30: Manjree Khajanchi (University of Bradford): Encountering Ireland’s (Re)usable Landscapes: Theoretical Reflections on a Field Study
10:00: Peri Johnson (University of Pennsylvania): Archaeologies of Dislocation: The Bridge and the Mountain in the Colonial Archaeologies of the Ottoman Empire
10:30: Coffee break
11:00: Katie V. Kirakosian (University of Massachusetts): Shell Lenses through Distinct Lenses: Archaeology Meets Ethnography Meets Archaeology
11:30: Janet Six (University of Pennsylvania): Fear and Loathing in Lāhainā : A Case Study in Epistemic Inclusion at the Site of Moku`ula
12:00: Meghan Howey (University of New Hampshire): Fetishizing the Grave: Perspectives from Collaboration with Abenaki Communities on Access to Archaeological Collections at the University of New Hampshire

Abstracts and Participants:

Living Levees: Flood Protection, Coastal Restoration, and an Engineering Disaster in New Orleans, Louisiana

Maria T. Brodine (mtb2106@columbia.edu)

Using initial observations from an ongoing ethnographic project on the reconstruction of flood protection technologies in New Orleans, Louisiana, this visual presentation will explore the utility of archaeological ethnography in understanding dynamic sociopolitical networks and relative temporalities. Looking at the way in which the region's history as an engineered landscape culminated in the experience of Katrina as an "engineering disaster" rather than a "natural" one, and relating initial ethnographic data on how science and engineering practices have changed in the post-Katrina landscape, I hope to stimulate further dialogue around methods approaching the notion of "culture" as something dynamic and at once social and material.

Encountering Ireland’s (Re)usable Landscapes: Theoretical Reflections on a Field Study

Manjree Khajanchi (University of Bradford, manjree@gmail.com)

Any form of human contact with a landscape, whether a physical, emotional, permanent, or temporary interaction, changes that particular site’s meaning in the past, present, and future. When visitors to an archaeological site make a connection with the place, this results in countless multi‐reflexive, multi‐layered, and multi‐narrative understandings of a single site. In this paper, I argue that landscapes have shifting, mobile temporalities that fit the requirements and needs of those present. In 2008, a research trip was taken by archaeology and anthropology students to selected archaeological sites in Ireland. The personal and collective experiences, actions, and views of participants provided dynamic, but nonetheless connected group‐narratives, and engaging individual site‐accounts of archaeological sites visited on this trip. Dissemination of information and experiences also took many forms, adding respective non‐concentric layers to already multi‐layered sites. One example I elaborate on involves the use of public, shared meanings of photography on the social networking site Facebook. I wish to open a discussion about the possibility of experiencing archaeological fields in any form, whether it is used as a picnic spot, an area to walk your dog, a place to litter, a shelter, or as a historical or national site of interest. While written words, personal communication, politics, and circumstance are all factors that influence which site history will reign in popular history books at any given time, all of these landscape uses add value to a site’s historical trajectories, increasing chapters to the non‐sequential and non‐linear biography of an archaeological landscape.

Archaeologies of Dislocation: The Bridge and the Mountain in the Colonial Archaeologies of the Ottoman Empire

Peri Johnson (peri@sas.upenn.edu)

Among German classical archaeologists working in the Ottoman Empire, the tropes of the cosmopolitan bridge and kaleidoscopic landscape were introduced to set a precedent for the Bagdad Railway, and other transportation infrastructure projects of German economic imperialism. In these discursive landscapes, the cosmopolitan Ottoman subjects were incapacitated by their diverse society and incapable of resisting German expansion. Likewise, the arguments against the existence of a Hittite Empire were founded on the very timelessness of these landscapes. Indigenous empires could not have unified the kaleidoscopic Anatolian Plateau. These orientalist tropes occupied only half of the discursive landscapes of the Anatolian Peninsula. In the mountains to the north and south of the Anatolian Plateau, German archaeologists located the indigenous cultures of Anatolia. There they discovered the monuments of primitive migrating tribes comparable to the tribes of Africa. Although late to the colonial experience, Germans were able to discover their own discursive Africa in the mountains of the Ottoman Empire. Whereas Turkish archaeologists often reject the dislocating tropes of the bridge and kaleidoscope, the trope of the mountain has continued popularity because it is entangled in nationalism’s bounded identities. In the mountainous Turkish province of Kastamonu, for example, the German discursive landscape of a primitive Paphlagonia was translated into a provincial identity. The primitive was excised and replaced by the local, but archaeological interpretations were otherwise unchanged. These discursive indigenous landscapes have become the preferred location of ethnoarchaeology because of their timelessness. Alternatively, they need to become the location of archaeological ethnography precisely because of their timelessness.

Shell Lenses through Distinct Lenses: Archaeology Meets Ethnography Meets Archaeology

Katie V. Kirakosian (kvkirako@anthro.umass.edu)

Ethnography in/of/for archaeology is a burgeoning theoretical and methodological arena with real life applications and consequences. Blending ethnography and archaeology is also, I argue, a logical partnership when talking about shell-bearing sites, which are quite often marginally understood and under-theorized. Such partnerships might allow our archaeological “lenses” to be refocused and challenged, especially when descendant communities are part of the interpretive process. Castañeda (2008) recently outlined three modes of ethnography in archaeology, all of which blend ethnography and archaeology in new and unique ways, yet with different agendas, roles and goals. Within Castañeda’s framework, I will explore the need for and potential of a relative sequence of all three modes, where the methods, objects and subjects of study all inform the other. I will offer a research plan where a selected group of archaeologists as well as members of a Native descendant community in southern New England will come to the same table and with the same expectations, yet at different times in order to engage with, interpret and make meaning of an ancestral site. It is hoped that this will inform both an archaeological understanding of the site in question, as well as the need to deconstruct the chasm “between the cultural conceptions of the past as heritage for descendant communities and social science conceptions of the past as history for archaeologists” (Castañeda and Matthews 2008: 17).

Fear and Loathing in Lāhainā : A Case Study in Epistemic Inclusion at the Site of Moku`ula

Janet Six (six@sas.upenn.edu) (Department of Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania)

Epistemic inclusion – in theory - seems like a “no brainer.” Polysemic and multivocal interpretations provided by– in my case kanaka maoli (native Hawaiians) – should provide richer subtext to an archaeological investigation. But – and here’s the twist – what if the “community” you – as a trained archaeologist – deign to include, doesn’t want to include you? In 2008, I was approached by the Friends of Moku`ula, a non-profit native Hawaiian organization, to conduct archaeological investigations at the political and sacred center of Moku`ula. Arguably the most important site on Maui, Moku`ula was home to the ruling class for over 400 years. In the early part of the 19th century, the site was usurped by conquering Hawai`i Island chief Kamehmeha I. The now buried site of Moku`ula sits in the middle of a large wetland which is the home of one of the most powerful deities in the Hawaiian pantheon, Kihawahine. Half woman, half dragon; she is associated with fresh water and lives in a grotto beneath Moku`ula. Over the past two years, in addition to meeting with the community at large, I have been summoned before the Maui County Cultural Resource Commission and the Maui/Lanai Island Burial Council where I have been yelled at, scolded, threatened, insulted, etc. Was it worth it? You bet. Did I learn anything? Absolutely! As WAC inaugural Peter Ucko award winner (2008) Dr. Larry Zimmerman wrote back in 1978, "Perhaps being yelled at by archaeologist and Native Americans is good for the soul." I couldn’t agree more.

Fetishizing the Grave: Perspectives from Collaboration with Abenaki Communities on Access to Archaeological Collections at the University of New Hampshire

Meghan Howey (meghan.howey@unh.edu)

NAGPRA has led many archaeologists of Native North America to accept that the ‘grave’ is part of the archaeological past over which we should no longer have primary access to and/or control. I want to suggest that, while the progress around burials is important, we have come in a way to fetishize the ‘grave’, relying on it as a safe area for epistemic inclusion of indigenous perspectives that lets us avoid much more threatening challenges from indigenous stakeholders to our disciplinary practice and access to archaeological materials. In particular, what do we make of the epistemic view held by some indigenous peoples that everything archaeological, not just burials and associated goods, is sacred and should be repatriated? Can we ever find a way to include this perspective? If not, can we build a fully collaborative archaeology that picks and chooses what indigenous epistemologies we include? I explore these questions through the case of ongoing collaboration with Abenaki communities to develop “best practices” for physical access to the University of New Hampshire archaeological collections.