Connecting archaeology, indigeneity, and community in the Caribbean

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

There are multiple Indigenous communities in the Caribbean today, Indigenous revitalization movements in the islands and diaspora, and long-recognised Indigenous legacies in all aspects of life. Despite this, the idea of indigenous extinction is persistent. Archaeology and archaeologists are implicated in this narrative due to an insistence on the pre-Columbian past as dead and preserved in archaeological museum collections. We acknowledge this critique and the need to respond with positive action to 1) engage those outside the discipline, and 2) answer to the critical question for archaeologists in the 21st century: "Archaeology for whom?" (Atalay et al. 2014 citing Nalda 1978). Therefore, the central aim of the proposed activities is to address the separation between the academy and communities in the Caribbean on the themes of archaeology and indigenous identity and representation. The proposed network draws together institutional and non-institutional partners from the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, neighbouring islands which share precolonial and colonial histories but with distinctive modern trajectories. We will open up a space to explore issues through a series of focused meetings involving academic partners and non-academic stakeholders. We will address the different contexts of engagement (and non-engagement) with Indigenous archaeology and indigeneity in the present. We will do this by holding meetings in sites and in the presence of objects of mutual interest such as at rockart locations and in museum storerooms to generate non-hierarchical dialogue on locally-specific issues around heritage and representation. This is needed to inform the practise of archaeology itself from the initial research design, questions asked, participants, and methods.