This week's Archaeology at Home email highlights the work of Black archaeologists. First and foremost, please take some time to read in full Professor Bill White's recent blog post The 2020 Race Uprisings and Archaeology's Response.
The June 25th webinar Archaeology in the Time of Black Lives Matter was sponsored by the Society of Black Archaeologists, TAG North America, and the Columbia Center for Archaeology.
Facilitated by Maria Franklin & Justin Dunnavant. With Alexandra Jones, Alicia Odewale & Tsione Wolde-Michael. Chaired by Ayana Flewellen. The 25 June event was recorded and can be viewed online on Vimeo and hosted on Society of Black Archaeologists website.
Where does archaeology sit in relation to Black Lives Matter and how might we find ways to engage with the insights and challenges of this moment in our archaeological practice? How do we move beyond statements of solidarity against anti-Black racism and towards making sustainable systemic changes in the discipline? And what might that change look like?
Check out this PBS Nova interview with paleobiologist Melissa Kemp, who says humans have been introducing species to the Caribbean since long before Columbus arrived—and she’s helping piece that history together: Tropical paleontology and being #BlackInNature
Another interesting read was published recently on Phys.org: Archaeology is changing, slowly. But it's still too tied up in colonial practices
Here are some of the resources we highlighted a few months ago that we want to reshare in the current theme:
A video from November 2019 features Bill White and Ayana Omilade Flewellen, among others, reflecting on unearthing the lives of enslaved Africans on the Caribbean island of St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands. In this 7-minute video, the all-black team of archaeologists explains its approach to unearthing the day-to-day lives of enslaved Africans at Estate Little Princess, a former sugarcane and rum plantation on St Croix.
From that video, you can read more about the project in this article, which contains another (6-minute) video about the Estate Little Princess project.
Here is an 18-minute video from National Geographic about The Slave Wrecks Project, an international network of researchers and institutions hosted by the National Museum of African American History & Culture.
And from March 2020, this (48-minute) podcast from The Arch & Anth Podcast --"In the Caribbean, what is the relationship between ecology and the archaeology of slavery?" features Dr. Justin Dunnavant (Vanderbilt University) discussing his research on African diaspora archaeology, and his work with various organizations and initiatives that involve training up students in maritime archaeology, sharing historical knowledge with wider publics, and fostering relationships with communities.
July 28 podcast: A Panel Discussion on Diversity in Archaeology, from the CRM Archaeology Podcast. In this show, Bill White hosts career POC archaeologists Tommy Ng, Ayana Flewellen, and Desiree Martinez, in a discussion of current diversity issues in the field. Not just diversity and the current situation, though, but what we, as a profession, can do about it.