Public Archaeology and Praxis

Chris Morehart speaking to students and town officials

 

It has been sometime since I posted a blog entry. A summer field season followed by a semester of teaching and writing always seems to get in the way, no? I ended up misreading my calendar and scheduling my return from the field less than a week before the start of classes, leaving me little time to prepare for my new class: Archaeological Practice and the Public. Luckily, my brain was well-prepared for such a class. It is hard not to do public archaeology in Xaltocan. Folks there have a strong interest in their past. The town has a museum, and archaeologists do all their analyses right in the middle of the town plaza in the Casa de la Cultura. We also have to work with many local organizations (in addition to federal ones). For my work this summer, I received permission from the town's delegating body, the town's organization of common lands, the town's historical society, and the town's museum and Casa de la Cultura. My late former adviser, Liz Brumfiel, initiated such collaborative work there. The town awarded her the title of Honorary Eagle Warrior for her long commitment. When I worked there in 2007-2008, I gave public talks to the common lands organization. Lisa Overholtzer organized classes and community days during her project and made a fine museum exhibit. This past summer we had students come out to site a few times and organized an archaeology day for some of the small kids taking summer school classes in the cultural center, which involved talks on the history of the site, what exactly we were doing, the importance of preservation, and even field exercises. It was by far the best point of the field season.

So, my mind was in the right place for public archaeology when we got back. I am looking forward to redesigning the class to teach again, especially to include more hands-on projects for students. Certainly, some of the intellectual issues (history of the field, representation, politics of the past, etc.) are paramount in understanding collaborative and public archaeologies. However, my goal is to have a field class on collaborative and public archaeology. Nonetheless, the class's goal was to foster a sense of what Randall McGuire (2008) refers to as archaeological praxis, which I interpret as intellectually informed, socially engaged archaeological practice. As such, praxis goes beyond simple statements of ethics, which the SAA has had for a number of years. At the end of my class, I had students in two separate groups come up with a list of principles of archaeological praxis, pulling on the materials we dealt with in class. To both my surprise and delight, their lists were virtually the same. Stealing a little from McGuire (and hence Saul Alinsky), I formalized the list.

McGuire, R.
2008  Archaeology as Political Action. University of California Press, Berkeley.