Public Archaeology and Power

In 1956, Mortimer Wheeler argued that “It is the duty of the archaeologist, as of the scientist, to reach and impress the public, and to mold his words in the common clay of its forthright understanding” (Wheeler 1956, 234, quoted in Richardson and Almansa-Sánchez 2015, 195). These themes were taken up again decades later by Charles McGimsey (1972) in his much-cited volume Public Archaeology. Publications on the topic rose in subsequent years (e.g., McManamon 1991; Merriman 2004; Schadla-Hall 1999), with more recent authors more likely to use the related terms “collaborative archaeology” (Colwell 2016) or “community-based archaeology” (e.g., Atalay 2012) in discussing public and civically-engaged approaches. This shift in terminology is also reflected in the Journal of Community Archaeology and Heritage, which published its first volume 14 years after the journal Public Archaeology was founded in 2000. Greater attention to “community-based” and “collaborative” approaches signals more than a linguistic turn; it reflects archaeologists’ increasing recognition of the power dynamics of how archaeological knowledge is constructed (e.g., Schmidt and Kehoe 2019). More archaeologists are now pursuing a vision of the field in which the research process is democratized and communities, especially descendants, have a say not just in how archaeological knowledge is disseminated but also in how it is produced—including which questions we ask in the first place.

This special issue focuses on the role of power in public approaches to African diaspora archaeological research. There is little current consensus on the meaning or parameters of “public archaeology,” as the term has been applied in a wide variety of contexts (Richardson and Almansa-Sánchez 2015). Nonetheless, moving beyond insular “siloed” research approaches is increasingly recognized as crucial. For example, a recent call for anti-racist approaches in archaeology noted the importance of positioning community engagement as more than an “afterthought” in the time of Black Lives Matters (Flewellen et al. 2021, 238). These issues become even more critical and complex when we consider that projects in African diaspora archaeology are often headed by white practitioners.

This special issue explores these complexities through three diverse views of what equitable approaches to public engagement in African diaspora archaeology might look like. Kayeleigh Sharp, Mary McCorvie, and Mark Wagner explore the use of XRchaeology, a web-based augmented reality approach, in educating the public about Miller Grove, a free African American community in Southern Illinois that was settled before the Civil War. Miller Grove’s history highlights the role of free African Americans in aiding those escaping from slavery in southern states; the site can thus counter popular “Underground Railroad” narratives which tend to center and overemphasize white “conductors.” However, Sharp et al. work to do more than tell a new story about Miller Grove or the Underground Railroad more broadly. They want those who engage with the site and its history to weigh available material, spatial, and historical evidence to reach their own conclusions—that is, to learn to think like an archaeologist. An augmented reality experience can help bring the site to visitors who cannot visit Miller Grove in person. Beyond immersive virtual tours that include three-dimensional renderings of historical buildings long since demolished, the XRchaeology of Miller Grove includes digital storytelling, audience engagement with three-dimensional artifacts, and maps that can be used to explore the spatial dynamics of fugitive slave advertisements published in southern Illinois by enslavers living in other states. These tools allow visitors to build their own understandings of the historical and archaeological records at Miller Grove and come to their own interpretive conclusions. In both its open-ended presentation and its ability to bring the site to anyone with an internet connection, the XRchaeology program at Miller Grove represents a step toward a more democratized approach to public interpretation—one in which archaeologists are not the sole interpreters.

The other two articles in the special collection ask us to consider which publics are served by archaeology and to delineate the particular obligations of archaeologists engaged in African diaspora research to descendant communities and to African diasporan populations more broadly. William White’s article analyzes the memorialization of Queen Mary and other Afro-Crucian women leaders of Fireburn, an 1878 uprising by enslaved people on the Caribbean island St. Croix in which 84 workers died. St. Croix was dominated by Denmark during the colonial period, from the 1700s up to the 1917 sale of the island to the United States. After contrasting how Queen Mary is remembered by Danes and Crucians, White argues that many historical sites on St. Croix remain similarly contested in their interpretation. Part of this contestation is due to Denmark’s reluctance to center colonialism or slavery in its national histories. Indeed, White notes that tours designed by (and for) people of European descent on St. Croix do not tend to emphasize the history and contributions of Afro-Crucian people; instead, visitors can view St. Croix’s plantation landscapes without engaging with the central role of slavery in creating them.

In pursuing a more equitable and ethical way forward, White highlights two heritage-related projects on the island. The first is CHANT (Crucian Heritage and Nature Tours), a tourist company owned and operated by an Afro-Crucian woman that provides heritage tours for both tourists and Crucians, especially youth. The other project is the multi-year excavations at St. Croix’s Estate Little Princess undertaken collaboratively by White and other members of the Society of Black Archaeologists. Here, project leaders have deliberately pursued a community-based research framework that engages local people in the collection and interpretation of their own heritage and history. These efforts, White notes, are modeled after collaborative, Indigenous archaeological approaches that engage Native American communities. Engaging with an ancestral place such as Estate Little Princess, White argues, may be therapeutic not only for Afro-Crucians, but also more broadly for people of African descent working on the project.

The final article, by Teresa S. Moyer, delineates how a time-deep Black history was systematically erased and obfuscated at Mount Clare, a historic house situated in Baltimore’s Carroll Park. The Carroll family’s history of enslavement was little remembered at the site during the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America’s decades-long management of the historic plantation. Instead, the house was furnished and restored with an eye to celebrate its past elite white occupants. The interpretive omittance of Mount Clare’s historic Black residents was both racist and intentional, and it aligned with the Colonial Dames’ broader mission to commemorate the “brilliant achievements” of white American “founders.” The erasure of Black history at Mount Clare was also exacerbated by the earlier purchase of the property by a German social club, the West Baltimore Schuetzen Association, in 1870; much of the above-ground evidence of the plantation’s Black occupants was demolished in subsequent decades. Nonetheless, archaeology conducted in the 1970s and 1980s yielded poignant insights into the lives of African Americans on the property; finds included a large quartz crystal buried in Mount Clare’s kitchen and possibly indicative of African diasporan religious practices. Yet, such salient objects and the histories they illuminate continued to be sidelined at the site. While strongly critiquing this obfuscation and neglect, Moyer also doesn’t simply advocate for a historic house model that centers the lives of the plantation’s enslaved African American occupants. Rather, Moyer urges us to consider the needs of locals residing near Carroll Park in Baltimore today: maybe the house can be put to better use as a literary center, soup kitchen, or afterschool program. In arguing that “silver punchbowls and oil portraits [should] go into storage,” Moyer takes the most radical view of an equitable public approach to African diaspora archaeology and heritage—one in which the pressing needs of a community take precedence over any historical story we might tell.

The purpose of this special issue is to invite further deliberation and consideration of archaeologists’ obligations in collaborative research approaches, beyond “reach[ing] and impress[ing] the public” (Wheeler 1956, 234, quoted in Richardson and Almansa-Sánchez 2015, 195). The issue’s three articles present multiple frameworks and approaches. In so doing, they pose as many questions as they answer, asking us, who are the audiences served by African diaspora archaeological research, and what are our obligations to them? Is audience even the right concept or would it be better replaced by constituent, participant, and stakeholder? What is the role of power in remembering and forgetting Black histories and heritage? When should archaeologists speak and when should they listen? Should current communities’ needs take precedence over public archaeological interpretation or historical commemoration? As Sharp et al. note, rather than simply sharing our interpretations, we can empower anyone to “think” like an archaeologist and use archaeological and historical information to come to their own conclusions. As White observes, historical power relations matter for who is remembered and forgotten. Additionally, all publics are not the same: our obligations to local descendant communities are paramount in African diaspora archaeological research (see also LaRoche and Blakey 1997). And as Moyer argues, what those local communities may need at a historic site most may not be archaeology at all. There is no single public-oriented approach that will ensure equitability and ethics. Instead, our best way forward is to remain a little unsure, unsteady, questioning, self-reflective, and self-critical. The question is not, what is the best public approach to African diaspora archaeology? Rather, the question is, how can my approach be better?