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A Peak Into Community Archaeology - Ep 22
44 Plays3 years ago
In this episode, we talk about the practice of Community Archaeology. We discuss the pros, cons, and overall thoughts on the practice in comparison to what is known to be "traditional" archaeology.
Resources
- Podcast: Pollock, Ian. “Episode #30 Bringing Your Heart Home: Tiffany Cain Talks Tihosuco Identity and Heritage Projects,” The Familiar Strange, February 4, 2019.
- Leventhal, Richard M., Carlos Chan Espinosa, Eladio Moo Pat, and Demetrio Poot Cahun. “The Community Heritage Project in Tihosuco, Quintana Roo, Mexico.” Public Archaeology 13, no. 1-3 (2014): 213–225.
- Morgan, Kasey Diserens, and Richard M. Leventhal. “Maya of the Past, Present, and Future: Heritage, Anthropological Archaeology, and the Study of the Caste War of Yucatan.” Heritage 3 (2020): 511–527.
- Fryer, Tiffany C. “Reflecting on Positionality: Archaeological Heritage Praxis in Quintana Roo, Mexico.” Archaeological Papers of the American Anthropological Association, vol. 31 (2020): 26–40.
Contact
- Show
- Twitter: @idigitpodcast
- Email: [email protected]
- Alyssa
- Instagram: aal.archaeology
- Twitter: Lyssakemi
- Michaela
- Instagram: mm_digitalized
- Twitter: m_mauriello
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Transcript
Introduction to iDicket Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network. You're listening to the iDicket Podcast, a podcast where we talk about the student perspective of navigating the world of archaeology and anthropology. I'm your host, Michaela. And I'm your host, Alyssa.
00:00:23
Speaker
Hello. It has been a while since we've just like chatted on a podcast, right? It's like last episode we had the one from Josh's podcast. And the one before that we had an interview. And the one before that we had an interview.
00:00:47
Speaker
So it's been a minute. It has.
Reflecting on the Past Year
00:00:50
Speaker
Happy new year, everyone. Happy new year. I mean, by the time this comes out, it's going to be like February. Yeah. You know, it's okay. Wow. Can you believe it's already the end of January 2021? No. What is time? I know it's a social construct, but still. Okay. Where were you on this day exactly a year ago?
00:01:16
Speaker
I was in England waiting for my graduation two days later. I was staying with my friend, our friend, Emilyne, who we actually interviewed at the beginning of this podcast.
00:01:26
Speaker
And yeah, I think, I don't know. No, I think this is the day I was jet lagged. I think I just arrived. And then I think it was the next day that I met up with Kristin. Oh, okay. Yeah. Oh, I miss Kristin. And then we hung out. Yeah, I know. And then it was like the day after. Wow. I don't, yeah. How about you? Where were you on this day exactly one year ago?
00:01:53
Speaker
On this day, exactly one year ago, I was touring the ancient temples of Angkor Wat with my partner, Takumi, who had come to visit me in Cambodia and we were getting ready to go to Japan.
00:02:14
Speaker
That's so crazy. I was a bra. We were both a bra when I were not allowed to do that. Now we're not allowed to go anywhere. It's okay. Things are looking up for a little bit. We're still laying on the floor, but we're looking up at least. You know, people are getting vaccines.
Pandemic and Political Discussions
00:02:35
Speaker
That's cool. Very slowly. That's even cooler. I mean, no, I don't, I feel like it's an equal level of coolness.
00:02:44
Speaker
Yeah, it's a lot better. He's done a lot so far. We're looking forward to keeping him accountable for the future. Yeah, it's like the first like few days been pretty good. He's been following up with what he's been saying, but now for the next like what 1400 days. Okay, let's go.
00:03:02
Speaker
Let's keep up this momentum. I currently don't feel like I'm on fire, so that's nice. I haven't not felt like that in a while. Yeah. I was saying how it feels surreal on the internet right now, now that somebody has been blocked on all social media platforms, that you just can't randomly come across like this hate tweet or hate post. Seriously.
00:03:32
Speaker
I feel like there's like this piece in the internet. This just goes to show that you should unfollow.
00:03:40
Speaker
Anyone that makes you unhappy, just block them. Any toxic energy, yes. Any pages that make you unhappy, just block them. Just block it. I.E. the president. The former president. Yes, former president. Yes, former president. Yes. All right, let's just collectively agree never to say his name again. He is the new Voldemort. He must not be named.
00:04:05
Speaker
Exactly. Sorry.
Social Media Moments and Memes
00:04:08
Speaker
I just have to say one of my favorite things from the inauguration, other than everyone's outfits, was Bernie Sanders meme that came out of it. And the mittens. The mittens. He got his mittens from a charity. And so he like posts like, Oh, this is where I got them from. And then yeah, so it's just, he just keeps on giving. It's amazing. It is the meme that keeps on giving. And seeing it being
00:04:35
Speaker
included into art pieces, archaeological sites. And it's just like, it's just so funny. Yeah. It's so funny how every field, every field has adapted Bernie to fit in their field. Yeah. Super funny. Oh my God. Memes are crazy. I can't wait until like a decade from now with like in depth studies of like 2020 memes. The coping mechanism that is a meme.
TikTok as a Learning Platform
00:05:04
Speaker
Honestly, memes helped us get through so much this last year. Honestly, and especially with like Gen Z humor, we're just like, I don't care, just kill me already. What were some of your favorite memes from 2020? One of mine is the Mike Pence fly. That was hilarious. I completely forgot about that. Oh my god. That was so good. The funniest thing ever.
00:05:33
Speaker
I'm trying to recollect other memes, but I just, my brain's just like, I don't even know. Did that even come out last year? How many years has it been since 2020? And also like AOC playing Among Us. That was one of my favorite moments of 2020. I'm trying to think about like my lowest times during this last year and what I was laughing about during those times. Yeah. Actually being on TikTok, I think that was,
00:06:02
Speaker
part of a highlight because it was just like, oh, let me look into this other part of the internet that I haven't explored and seeing everything out of it and the humor, the freaking algorithm that gets me. Truly incredible. I love TikTok with the bottom of my heart. Like I've learned so much from TikTok. It's been so great during like
00:06:28
Speaker
political crises and just like getting news from people who are actually on the ground and then just like little history lessons that you would have never known about people who like specialize in these things like make a TikTok and it blows up. It's crazy. And then there's like the hair TikToks and the makeup TikToks and frog TikTok and bean TikTok. There's just like random things that just bring me joy throughout the day that I appreciate so much. I love TikTok.
00:06:57
Speaker
I also got into a side of TikTok that is a conspiracy that Taylor Swift and Harry Styles committed vehicular manslaughter, and then that's why they ended their relationship. I was just like, I don't know how I got here. Not that I believe it, but some of the lyrics that people were putting together and being like, this is the sign that makes sense. What?
00:07:22
Speaker
And then the whole like manifesting trend and everyone using this word manifesting. And it's just like, all right. I mean, it's just a word. I mean, it's just like anything that you can put power to a word being like a bling. I put power to this word to make something come true. And then something does. I was going to say, what was that? That app is like geo something.
00:07:49
Speaker
I don't know what you're talking about. It gives you a random coordinate and you go to it. And then people on TikTok were doing it while manifesting something back on that topic. So people would be like, I'm manifesting money or something like that. And then they'd go to this random coordinate and walk around. It's like an old warehouse or something. And then they find like a $20 bill on the ground or something. Yeah.
00:08:12
Speaker
I don't remember what the app is called, but they're like, don't do this at night. And then people would do this at night. And then there'd be something extremely creepy. I think at one point, somebody found a suitcase with a body in it. Oh yeah, with a body. That was on the news. Yeah, it was on the news the next day. This is like, oh my God, what the heck? Yeah, I never downloaded it.
Geocaching Anecdote
00:08:33
Speaker
The only thing I do is geocaching, which is completely safe and legal, right? For the most part, legal.
00:08:41
Speaker
Yes. I remember one time I was geocaching like years ago with some friends and there's it was like on these I don't even know what they were called it was behind a building and then these two like transformer type things and there was a magnet on it that looked like it was just part of the transformer box and
00:09:03
Speaker
And you could actually take it off. It wasn't screwed or anything. It was just a magnet holding something. So then you take it off and you see a piece of paper with everyone's name and date that they found it. But then security kept rolling by because they just see these random girls just outside near this transformer, just up to no good type of looking.
00:09:24
Speaker
And so we were just like, Oh, we got to go. So we were like hiding behind these transformers as like securities going around. We like casually like walk to my car and then we drive off while like the security guys just like looking around for us. And we're just like, we're just you cashing man. Leave us alone. Oh my God.
00:09:43
Speaker
Well, yeah. Internet. Yeah, we gotta love it.
Community Archaeology
00:09:51
Speaker
I mean, I feel like we have to because being digital archaeologists that we are, I don't know what we would do without it, honestly. I mean, we could get satellite images and everything, but we wouldn't have our podcast either.
00:10:06
Speaker
That's very true. Thank you, internet. Thanks, interwebs. So nice catching up. So today we're going to do a little bit of archaeology shit chat after the break, but I will tell you what we're doing before the break. We're going to be talking about community archaeology today and just generally what we think about it, what we've heard, what we've read.
00:10:32
Speaker
with a cool case study from Teohusco, Mexico with the Community Heritage Project. So we will be chatting about that after the break. Maybe we should start with how archaeological projects are typically carried out.
00:10:53
Speaker
And so first step, an archaeologist, probably a Western person, has an interest and has a research question. Maybe. And then this particular person, probably from an institution or university in the US or Europe, gets some money to do
00:11:18
Speaker
some research on that question that they have. They take a team of other colleagues, maybe some grad students, travel around the world to that particular site, possibly in the rural outskirts of some country in a small town with maybe
00:11:40
Speaker
one bed and breakfast, a little restaurant and a couple locals and then they come in and put a bunch of money into that little economy for a couple months and then leave and then never come back. There we have archaeology. Thank you for coming to this episode.
00:12:06
Speaker
Generally, people will come into a community and do their research with little or no interaction with the local people. Usually, it's to do particular excavating of a certain area to try to
00:12:22
Speaker
figure out when whatever thing was deposited there. And it doesn't super involve a whole lot of community interaction. You don't really need to know the language of the country you're going to. Usually, if you're coming as a grad student or researcher, you kind of just go in and get a translator, do your thing, and that's usually it.
00:12:48
Speaker
community archaeology is trying to completely dismantle that process because that whole process in general is very colonialistic because it's foreign people coming in doing research for their own benefit, publication, and then leaving. And so what community archaeology is looking to do
00:13:15
Speaker
is get rid of these colonialistic tendencies that traditional archaeology has and try to incorporate or really like start with the needs of the community that they're
00:13:32
Speaker
So, for example, for community archaeology, the research question, instead of coming from the Western researcher, it comes from the community.
Teohusco Project Case Study
00:13:48
Speaker
that's being researched. And they're the ones saying what they want to know about their history, where they want to do excavating, why they want to do it, what they want the story to present as, and basically decide how they want their story to be told. And so that's the main goal of community archaeology is making sure that the communities that are being
00:14:15
Speaker
researched are representing themselves and being represented how they want to be rather than following like the typical narrative of whatever we project our history onto them as. Community archaeology to me it seems that it's a very important development in archaeology and definitely the next step that we need to keep striving towards and
00:14:39
Speaker
making better than what archaeologists have been doing and what is quote unquote, traditional archaeology. Just like, oh yeah, we're just going to go in here and we're just going to do our thing. Oh, nobody cares about anybody else in this region. We're going to go now. It's like we only care about the people who lived here 10,000 years ago, not the people who are currently living there. And that's why I kind of feel that having an anthropology
00:15:09
Speaker
degree with archaeology in the US especially, together it helps. Like set a basis for all of this because it involves ethnography too. You're not only studying the past but also the present and connecting the two or not as we'll see in this case study that we're about to talk about.
00:15:33
Speaker
Exactly. Exactly. And so the case study we're bringing in today is a community heritage project in Teohusco Quintana Roo, Mexico. So basically this area is situated in the Yucatan. The Yucatan's past is usually thought of as being part of the greater like ancient Maya narrative that's well known when thinking about
00:16:05
Speaker
that's well known when thinking about ancient civilizations surrounding Mexico and neighboring areas. This is a history of huge temples and great influence and trade and all of that. You've probably heard when you're talking about Middle South America,
00:16:26
Speaker
But what most people don't realize is that many of the modern communities in these vast regions don't identify with that narrative with the ancient Maya. And this particular town, for example, identifies more closely with their history in the caste war following Spanish contact only in the last 200 years. And so this project is a good example of
00:16:56
Speaker
how communities don't always identify with their biggest narrative. And like another example of this is charahoyuk. How do you say that? Charahoyuk. Charahoyuk. Another example of this is charahoyuk. Basically, here, do you want to describe charahoyuk really quick, just like what it is? Well, I mean, charahoyuk is a very,
00:17:24
Speaker
big site in archaeology because it's very communal and just still under research and discussion about how people were living and a lot of hypotheses and talks about just the community aspect of it all and how people were sharing everything, sharing spaces, food, ideas, I mean, like a normal community. Yeah, super large Neolithic, Chagalithic, Proto-City settlement.
00:17:55
Speaker
in Southern Anatolia, reading off of Google. But yeah, basically it's the site to go to if you're an archaeologist, everyone wants to go there, work there. But the project
00:18:10
Speaker
It's focused on a very ancient period of time that is not really connected to the present. And the community that lives there today basically feels no ties at all to that history at all. And so there was a archaeologist named Sonja Adelay who did
00:18:37
Speaker
He or she, sorry, they, they were a Native American archeologist from America working in Shadaloyuk. And from Native American perspective, Native Americans typically are very tied to their ancient history, have oral histories passed down, are very confident in like what they believe to be true about their histories.
00:19:05
Speaker
Uh, this place in particular, they were like, we don't know who these people were. They were of a different religion. Like we don't really have ties to them at all, but I'm interested in knowing.
00:19:18
Speaker
about them. Like, it was more that kind of vibe for the shadow community, local community. And so their community archaeology was focused on just like bringing information about the site to the community and translating it and that sort of stuff. And so that's one example of community archaeology is like that disconnect. This example
00:19:43
Speaker
is more like the caste war in the Yucatan, like very little is known about it in general. In the main museums, there's maybe like one piece of paper and one artifact that represent the whole caste war. And the caste war is what this community bases their entire culture and narrative off of. And so it's really a story that hasn't been told
00:20:12
Speaker
yet, but they hold very closely to their hearts and their community and have been preserving the sites within the community for years and years and years without the help of outside archaeologists.
00:20:30
Speaker
And so basically, how this story, how this project started was Richard Leventhal, who's the, what do you call it? The director. Richard Leventhal, who's the director of the project, lived within the Teohisko community regularly for multiple years.
00:20:54
Speaker
didn't have a research question at all. But he was interested in this idea of the Cass War because he had heard it from other colleagues while he was working on one of his big temple projects. And so he was like, oh, the Cass War, I haven't heard too much about that. There's not that much written on it. I would be interested in learning more about it. And when he first came to this community, he was like, oh, do you know anything about the Cass War? And they're like, no, we don't have anything about the Cass War.
00:21:21
Speaker
And so he just stayed and lived there for a few years. And then someone was like, are you actually interested in the Cass War? And he's like, yeah. And then he's like, OK, follow me. And so because he was able to live there and gain the trust of this community and show that he was actually caring and interested in their past and their history, they allowed him
00:21:49
Speaker
to enter their history and learn more about it. And so that's kind of how this community project started. It was with the trust of the community. The community was the ones who were directing it and telling him what they wanted to know about it and how they wanted it presented.
00:22:10
Speaker
And throughout this whole process, the Mayan people there have been co-authors on all of the papers, have been presenting the research at various international conferences in Spanish and in Maya, and they also translate everything in English. The project also helps the museum in town by creating a website and pamphlets for the community.
00:22:38
Speaker
They also involve oral histories by going to all of the local people and asking about any photos they have or artifacts they have and the stories behind them and that sort of thing. And now in the museum, there's a whole section for oral histories.
00:22:54
Speaker
And so this project itself has been going on for something like 10 years now. And most of the people on the project live in the city for like nine out of 12 months out of the year. It's not like a come and go thing. It's a very like they are now part of the community involved in local politics, involved in the lives of the people.
00:23:22
Speaker
They're actually friends with the people who they're studying. And you're not really studying at that point, right? You're both working together to make a narrative that represents the community. And so this is one example of a really good community heritage project or example of that where
00:23:41
Speaker
you're just you're invested in the community to the point where you become the community and you know their language, you know who's sisters, dating, who, like all of that stuff. And yeah, this is just this is one like very good example of community archaeology. It's like the rare like perfect child. Yes.
00:24:05
Speaker
I keep thinking about this like complete opposite rendition of this, but it wasn't archaeology, it was anthropology.
Community vs Traditional Archaeology
00:24:14
Speaker
And I forget the guy's name. He would go in and it's just kind of not like the best guy around. They don't really want, like the people in the community don't want to work with him and they can just tell he's just there for his research. He doesn't actually care.
00:24:30
Speaker
And so he was trying to get this genealogy together and he had down the elders and trying to talk to them saying like, okay, who's this person? Who's this person? And had like some photos. He would take photos. And I don't think he got people's consents. And they're just like, oh, it's this person's name. They say the name, which actually translates to something like
00:24:50
Speaker
poop or something. It's like just messing with him. Like leading him the wrong way. Yeah. So when you're saying how it's just like the Richard Leventhal was going around staying there for a while, making himself known and present and interested in the actual community itself and the people.
00:25:07
Speaker
and making an effort. And then I'm just thinking about this guy who's just like, I'm just going to come in and you know, just like assert my authority. Yeah. And it's, it's interesting because like, as researchers, you don't really think of projects in this way to where they just happen upon you.
00:25:25
Speaker
like it did for Richard Leventhal because he didn't go in like, hey, I have this question. I want you guys to answer it. He was just living there. And they were like, hey, we have these questions. And since you're interested, would you help us? And I feel like as we're trained to go into your dissertation and say, hey, I have these questions. Here's how I'm going to get the answers.
00:25:53
Speaker
This is very atypical for archaeological research and I think it's really difficult to do too because it takes a lot of time and patience and money. Not everyone has three years to hang out in a foreign city and learn the culture and the people and everything.
00:26:19
Speaker
Yeah, so there's there I feel like there's a lot of room for pushback against this just by way of like logistics, but it is definitely something to strive for. I think there's just so much time in the world, but you have to not distance yourself, you have to make the time. But if it's your life research,
00:26:42
Speaker
It's worth it. Exactly. What's also interesting about ethnographic work in general is I feel like we're taught to not interfere with the lives of the people you're researching. And you have to have a very strong distinction between researcher and researchy.
00:27:07
Speaker
because you don't want to like influence their answers or whatever. And I feel like that's just like such an impersonal way of like doing research. And I sat in on a call a couple days ago with
00:27:25
Speaker
Like it was a very traditional like ethnographer and some of the things they were saying just like didn't sit too well for me like with me because they were saying like oh you know sometimes you're gonna ask questions that make people angry or that
00:27:42
Speaker
like, we'll get you in trouble. And that's just how it is. And like, it's not like you're a doctor and hurting them physically. Like, it's just mental. And I was like, what? No. It just does not sound correct. That does not. Right. Who would even fathom to say that? I know. I know. I know. And then so right after that talk, I went into
00:28:07
Speaker
the class where we were discussing community archaeology. And I was like, this is such a contrast. Like, I don't know what's happening in my brain right now. But yeah, it's like, it's an interesting thing to think about because I feel like research
00:28:26
Speaker
traditional research, you try to distance yourself from whatever you're doing so that you don't influence it. And I feel like community archaeology is asking for the opposite to where you're so involved in it that it becomes part of you.
00:28:45
Speaker
And I like that a lot more. And I feel like that's how it should be. It's like the only people who should be allowed to be doing this research are the people who are willing to become part of it.
Graduate Students and Community Archaeology
00:29:02
Speaker
And that's not where we are at all right now. Like a lot of people will feel like that's unfair because they're like, oh, I'm so interested in all these things. Like why can't I study them?
00:29:16
Speaker
I feel like it goes that type of mentality of just like, oh, distance yourself. Don't even like consider anything and their feelings mentally. I'm still like, Oh my God about that. It kind of goes back to like that 19th century rendition of anthropology being an armchair anthropologist where it's just like, you're going to extend somebody else off to do your research.
00:29:40
Speaker
And then they come back and tell you their accounts. And then you're like, okay, I'm going to write something down and it's going to be the truth because that's what you observed. And then that's what I observed through you.
00:29:49
Speaker
And it's like you're not actually getting anything done in that way. And then they claim the research as their own and publish it and then that's it. That's it. And that's basically the exact same because then the researcher is going to be going into those areas, interview people, maybe not even say who they're interviewing.
00:30:12
Speaker
And just be like, okay, this is my research of all the stuff that I collected. It's like, you collected these things because the people let you, the people in the community are letting you do this. Give people credit. I really like Richard Lavon thought you did this correctly. I feel like this is like the setting zone. I'm sure that there's
00:30:34
Speaker
cons to his approaches and things that he's been doing over the last 10 years. You can't just get to the top of the mountain without climbing the mountain. You have to have the steps. Exactly. It's interesting to think about from a grad student perspective too. If you're someone who wants to start doing more community archaeology,
00:30:59
Speaker
but you don't have a Richard to work under. How do you get this started? Because your program is only three to seven years and some of that's like doing classwork or whatever. You don't have the time to
00:31:16
Speaker
start a whole live in a community and start a community project and figure out what they want. I don't know. It's very conflicting. How do you incorporate this into a shorter period of work? Or is that even possible? Do you just elongate it? What would be the point of shortening the research too? Because life still goes on when you're still trying to research the past and the present.
Ethics and Ownership in Archaeology
00:31:44
Speaker
So you're getting
00:31:45
Speaker
future endeavors as you keep progressing forward five, ten years later. Of course, that's five, ten years later. But if anything, people when they are looking back at this time when this research is being collected about the past and
00:32:01
Speaker
during that time and how the past and present intertwine with each other. They have a better understanding of how that period of time can correlate to the future or the future present. It's like a lot to think about. And it's not an easy answer, of course, but I feel like this is a, like I said, it's a good step forward. And I don't
00:32:28
Speaker
I haven't seen a lot of changes in the archaeological practices too much over the last however many years I've been studying, but something like this too is... What people are striving for is the ideal situation would be that people from the community
00:32:51
Speaker
are the ones who run these projects and then maybe ask for outside collaboration instead of people from the outside going to the community asking for inner collaboration, like inside collaboration.
00:33:08
Speaker
And I think that's like the ideal that people are striving for, like people from the community doing research on their own communities. But I don't think that'll be the thing to do. Because some people don't find the past to be that interesting or it's like, why are you studying the past? We're living right now.
00:33:35
Speaker
What's also, so there's another route of this research, not this particular case study, but just in general, like who decides what to do with the past and like who has claims over that past. Hang on, my computer went dark.
00:33:53
Speaker
But who has claims over the past? So if a community decides that they want to knock down these ruins to build a food bank or something like that, who has the right to tell them, no, you can't do that. This is the world's history. If what they want to do with that space benefits the modern community.
00:34:22
Speaker
Yeah, it's like, I feel that's like a big question in the world right now and in heritage management. It's like who owns the past. With the UNESCO World Heritage Site that just puts this giant claim from the UNESCO World Heritage Site onto these lands and places and just protecting them.
00:34:47
Speaker
And it's the cities and the countries that provide the proposals for them to be on the site. So it's like we find this to be extremely important. Please help us set these rules that you can't do all this construction zoning, etc.
00:35:06
Speaker
And I know that in York, in England, where we are for a while, they were trying to, they've been trying for years to get it to be a UNESCO World Heritage site. But for some, like, there's something that just doesn't, hasn't been like letting them do it. I forget entirely.
00:35:22
Speaker
The city of Bath in England is a UNESCO World Heritage Site City. I'm not entirely too sure of the verbiage of that, but everything in the city is protected. To do anything, it takes so many hoops you have to go through.
00:35:42
Speaker
So, but that's the city of Bath proposing that to England to propose UNESCO or the actual city proposing it. I'm not entirely too sure of the whole process to go with that. But in cultural heritage management, it's kind of like those do not touch signs. And as you put it around this rock, do not touch this rock. And it's like, what's the point of not touching this rock? You don't want vandalism.
00:36:08
Speaker
You don't want it to be ruined or destroyed in some sort of way. But by doing that, you're taking away the ability for people to actually enjoy this part of history that's been openly accessible for the world for forever until the sign goes up on it saying, do not touch.
00:36:27
Speaker
And it's for protection, but who wants it to be protected? Why is it being protected? And so I think it also goes along with the different areas and sites with the buildings being like, oh, we don't want this. We want a bank right here. And we have other parts of the city that are special to our heritage that we're keeping, but we don't need this building here anymore. Let's stare down.
00:36:58
Speaker
I don't know. It's complex. It is complex.
Cultural Heritage and Preservation
00:37:03
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, I feel like this is going to be bad to say. I'm going to say, I feel like the human race are a bunch of hoarders. You know, like, uh, this, I got this when I was just a wee
00:37:25
Speaker
10,000 year old human. And someday I'll need it. So I'm going to keep it around. And no, we can't build over it for new things because I might need it. The idea, obviously history is very important and to know where you came from helps to know where you're going and learn from the past, yada, yada. But the idea
00:37:54
Speaker
It's also like, when you're just thinking like the grand scheme of the universe, I'm going to get very like, university right now. Just like, why, why does this piece of rock matter? And why can't I put it somewhere else so that I can have a better piece of rock that actually benefits me, you know? And yeah, that's, I feel like that's the big argument between like,
00:38:19
Speaker
history people versus non-history people. And yeah, it's hard. Historians versus archaeologists versus modern people. Yeah, versus people who need money to live. Yeah. And the whole argument goes with like looting too. It's like, who are we to say that this person who is trying so hard just to survive can't sell this thing they found in the ground for food for the week?
00:38:48
Speaker
Why do we place more value over a thing than a modern person's life? Yeah. And of course, not discounting anything or anything. It's just an overall hypothetical, not hypothetical, but just the questioning of what makes something important and who was to say that this thing is more important than another thing.
00:39:16
Speaker
That makes me think of like CRM, like cultural resource management in California. Like when you're looking for artifacts on your site or whatever, it's only things that are older than 50 years that count as historical, like worth looking at. And if it's younger than that, you just like toss it back or whatever. But like 10 years from now, that thing you just toss back is going to be 50 years old. So like what makes...
00:39:41
Speaker
makes it valuable. It also goes in with things that are being looked at if they are
00:39:51
Speaker
something of the research interest, otherwise you just leave it. So if it's something like we want to learn more about this type of bottle from the 1800s and we only have a few of them and you find one, oh my God, we've been looking for this for a long time, but now we can have one. Cool. Thank you. But you see a bottle that's like same time period, but it's a different make that they have like an abundance of. They're just like, oh, you don't necessarily need this. You can just leave it there.
00:40:19
Speaker
I think it's just about the understanding of leaving and taking, or I guess not taking, taking, but what is considered to be important and why, and understanding the reasons why during your excavations and your sites, especially with the CRM research and work, because going to different projects, it's like, okay, well, what are we looking for? What's important in this area? What's
00:40:44
Speaker
special, which we leave, how do we know, and all that stuff. Because every different city, every different county in California, I'm only talking about California because I've only really worked archaeology in California for CRM. It's like,
00:41:00
Speaker
how do you know what you're looking for? Because somebody's going to be telling you that. And so who's telling them that? It is how it just goes along this giant line of like, he said, she said, who said, they said. Exactly. And that loops it back to community archaeology because we, quote unquote, researchers are interested or have been interested in the big temples and city complexes and big
00:41:28
Speaker
touristy-able things that we see built by ancient humans. But for other people, they see that stuff every day. They don't really associate with it, but what they're really interested in are this point in time or this artifact and that thing that people can't sell as tourism. Again, that's the whole idea of community archaeology is
00:41:58
Speaker
giving power to the people to research what they want and then listening to them instead of going for the big and shiny things. Yeah. Yeah. It's complicated. It's complicated.
Ethnographic Research Challenges
00:42:17
Speaker
I mean, everything in life is complicated to think about it. So I think that's a good place to have a break. We'll be back in a second.
00:42:26
Speaker
And we went very, very deep right there. I'm just like, that's about everything because I mean, yeah, who actually knows what matters, what matters and why is, are we the ones to say that it matters?
00:42:43
Speaker
Why am I a white passing American female, the one who should say what to study in medieval Cambodia? I'm having an existential crisis now with community archaeology, like why am I there?
00:43:03
Speaker
Which is good. Yeah. Self-awareness, you know? Yeah. Ethnography in general is such a weird concept because like it's some white person going somewhere and researching people. Like, I don't know. It's weird to go out. Yeah. I don't know. Someone else needs to explain it to me in a way where like I don't feel icky.
00:43:31
Speaker
When I was doing my research in virtual reality, which in and of itself is its own realm, and people from all over the world are in it, and it's technically like considered ethnographic study right there because I'm going in participant observation
00:43:48
Speaker
And I guess that they just use those type of words to make everything seem like a science experiment. And that's what I find because it's just like, oh, participant observation, ethnography, like you're going in to research the people and observing the people. But it's like in the process, you're making friends, you're understanding people's lives, their stories, you're getting to know them, even though you've never actually physically met them. And then on the other side of actually being with people and
00:44:16
Speaker
talking to them, interviewing them for your research. You're with them physically and you're getting to know them, becoming their friend, but still considered a science experiment.
00:44:28
Speaker
So I understand where that ickiness feels. It doesn't feel cool to say like, Hey, this new friendship is only here because you're my research. I have a research question and you're my experiment. It's weird. Yeah. I mean, I do think there's value in knowing how
00:44:49
Speaker
groups operate and seeing the parallels between different cultures and what people do the same or different. I do see value in that. It feels weird. I can see where you're coming from. It's weird in and of itself, whereas what's the alternative to that?
Cultural Exchange and Local Archaeologists
00:45:13
Speaker
If you just don't include those words of ethnography, observation, those other things to make it an experiment. Just hanging out, making a movie. With my new friends over in Cambodia. We're just chilling. I feel like that's how it...
00:45:33
Speaker
should be. It's just like you're friends with the people, you're making these relationships, you're not just there to study but you're there to like engulf yourself in the experience. But also like that, just like saying that like maybe cringe a little bit too because like at the end of the day you go home to America.
00:45:54
Speaker
Maybe. Or maybe you stay there forever because you just love it so much. But the fact of the matter is you were able to do that in the first place and with that comes a lot of privilege and resources and all that.
00:46:13
Speaker
In terms of cultural exchange, very valuable. The whole thing with Fulbright and studying abroad and international universities and international research and all that, I do think it's very important to
00:46:31
Speaker
exchange cultures worldwide between people. And that's like bringing awareness to what it's like living in America and how your life is. And then also bringing awareness to Americans, how other people's lives are and how we're all the same or we're a little different. And I think there's a lot of value in that. And I guess that if you're thinking about ethnography like that,
00:47:02
Speaker
It makes me feel less bad. But in the end, it's still the same. You're still going there for a research purpose and you're spending time with people there. It's all the same. It's just how you're looking at it differently and what you are doing to your intention. But it's all going back to how you feel about it, about you.
00:47:26
Speaker
It's not necessarily about the community. Or is it? Or is it? Unless they're all inherently together. With my experience in Cambodia, the people I met had nothing to do with the research I was doing with archaeology, but we learned a lot from each other about modern politics of our own countries and just understanding
00:47:51
Speaker
how each other lived their lives in their respective countries. My perspective of Cambodia completely changed once I moved there because I had no idea what Cambodia looked like before actually going there. Once I got there, I was like, oh, this place is super developed and everyone has nice clothes and drinks lattes on Monday mornings. And it's just very normal lifestyle that you don't
00:48:20
Speaker
think of when you're thinking of different countries that you've never been to. You don't have an image of how people live their lives. You just think of Southeast Asia, jungle, and beaches. That's all that would come to my brain before actually going to Southeast Asia. It's just another place in the world, and they all have the same problems I do.
00:48:46
Speaker
having issues with boyfriends and whose wedding am I going to this weekend and that sort of stuff. I think culture exchange is super important in that, but it gets complicated when you add that teaching element to it.
00:49:08
Speaker
with archaeology and history because archaeologists traditionally are Western. They're Americans or Europeans who go to another country and try to learn about it. And I feel like we're starting to see more local people doing local archaeology, which is good.
00:49:36
Speaker
And I think the goal is to have that collaboration on an equal level instead of Western superiority to other countries in terms of who's doing the research and thought. I see what you mean with that. Because in the United States and Europe,
00:50:05
Speaker
I just always want to go back to the United States and England. I feel like those were two forerunners of this colonial expansion of archaeology. And French. I know that's not entirely true, but the term archaeology comes
00:50:25
Speaker
It comes from the Western countries. The Western sphere of this globe that we consider to be the West. Even though it's a circle, it's a globe. And what we associate the West to be the US, Canada,
00:50:45
Speaker
and Europe. That's the West. Even though we have South Latin America, that's the West. Anywho, I digress. But just over the course of every culture's existence, there's always been an interest in their history, oral and physical history. But just the way that the people
00:51:07
Speaker
were to collect and store the data, the data, the artifacts, the information is very different. Yes. No, their, their methods were very different. Oh yeah. Oh, I see what you're saying. Yeah. Yes. And so then the Westerners come in being like, you're doing this incorrectly. We have to store these properly here. We're going to take these to our museums. I E take a look at the British museum.
00:51:35
Speaker
I'm saving this for the world's benefit. Yes. You, you can't take care of it properly, so I'm going to take care of it so that the world can prosper from this rich research. That I discovered. That I discovered in your land. In your land that you've been looking after for like the last 300 years or so, but still.
00:52:01
Speaker
Yeah, we're going to take it from you guys. Yeah. And anyway, the goal is to get away from that. Yeah. And it's just like the different, the methods are very different. So looking at how one culture, one community treats their past is different than the next because of XYZ, just their culture and the hike, how they
00:52:26
Speaker
how the cultures feel.
Collaboration in Research Practices
00:52:32
Speaker
So just going back on community archeology, it's something to look out for and to keep in mind as one progresses in their research and their interest in finding mentors and working under mentors and finding areas to work in.
00:52:52
Speaker
and finding out how you can benefit the research in your own way by engaging with the community, if the community is not even being engaged with. Yeah. The idea is to be aware of the influence that you have and use that influence to help
00:53:17
Speaker
the people whom which you're studying. The idea is to get away from individualized research and copyright claim over knowledge and instead involve and give credit to all of the people who deserve it. And make sure that what you're doing is good for everyone.
00:53:46
Speaker
That was like how it was when I was in Bulgaria on that excavation because usually with like field work, I guess it was like you're not supposed to take any photos on your personal devices. You can't share anything about this because this is my research because I've been doing for years. We can't have anything go out into the public.
00:54:05
Speaker
The site that I was on was just like, you're part of this team. You can do whatever you want. This is your discovery too. Like, it doesn't matter. Like this is yours. And it's just like, I've barely been here for a month. Oh, you guys have been here for years. I must say, I'm important. Everyone was like treated equally. It was great. And
00:54:32
Speaker
That's how I'm so happy that that was my first field experience, like first long-term field experience. Cause I had a field experience in California, but that was different than being onsite 24 seven for over a month. Yeah. I think there's still a culture of like, this is mine. You do your own stuff. And even though you helped, it's still mine. Um,
00:55:00
Speaker
And I think my team in Cambodia does a good job at giving everyone credit who was part of the project, whether they applied for the grant or dug at the site or did the writing or did the copy editing or whatever.
00:55:17
Speaker
I think that's very rare, or not very rare, but it's becoming more the ideal where you're giving credit to everyone who helped with the project, not just to the main two writers who
00:55:34
Speaker
actually wrote the final product. And yeah, I think that's super important. Go teams. Go teams. There's no I in archaeology. In English spelling. With an A. I spell with an A. Yeah, I spell with an A. Archaeology.
00:55:57
Speaker
Yes. As many vowels as possible, please.
Podcast Conclusion
00:56:02
Speaker
This is a team effort. It can't be achieved without being in a team. Yes, indeed. And that's why Ted Talk. There's your intro to community archaeology. Go check out the Teohusco project. They're doing cool stuff. Also check out
00:56:21
Speaker
me. I'm not doing anything cool right now. Check out my work. No, I'm really not doing anything right now. I'm just waiting for my computer to come and I just, I wanted to do things again. Kayla and I are just video gaming nuts. Honestly, I'm just waiting for work to pick up.
00:56:44
Speaker
Playing video games, looking forward to streaming again when I get my new computer, because my little baby 1060 graphics card, ooh!
00:56:52
Speaker
She's struggling. But yeah, be sure to check out the links in the description for the readings that we got for this episode and join our Discord. And if you want to be featured on our Instagram, we now have a link in the link tree in our bio on Instagram, where you can submit photos and become an iDigit archaeologist. We have almost 200 members in our Discord, which is wild. We have 191 right now.
00:57:22
Speaker
Should give a prize to the 200th. You get a hug. Just kidding. You can't do that right now. You get a rock. You get a rock because you rock. We should draw a little smiley face or something on a rock and send it. I'm down. We'll catch you guys next time. Bye. Bye.
00:57:56
Speaker
This show is produced by the Archaeology Podcast Network, Chris Webster and Tristan Boyle, in Reno, Nevada at the Reno Collective. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chrisatarchaeologypodcastnetwork.com.