Scan your eyes over a standard-issue map of North America, and you will find names of European political leaders, explorers, and places repeated across the Canadian Arctic: Victoria Island, Melville Peninsula, Cambridge Bay. These names offer little acknowledgement of Inuit presence, which extends for millennia across the land, ice, and water today known as the Canadian Arctic. For my final project in Historical Archaeology, I explored community-based research on Inuit place names and how that can help us understand memory, identity, colonialism, and interpretation in the Arctic. Interwoven with place names are the politics of colonialism, the sovereignty of language, and the creation of historical narratives through interpretation.
The most striking result of my research was how colonial legacies continue to influence narratives of history, identity, and indigeneity today. Archaeologists have the ability to use their work to deconstruct colonial systems put in place to disrupt the communication of traditional knowledge––known as Inuit qaujimajatuqangit––and to advance social justice in the Arctic. For academics used to controlling every aspect of research design and execution, sharing authority with communities can be an unsettling. But I would argue that for archaeology to remain relevant in today’s world, the field can no longer hold itself apart and above the people in it.
This highly didactic blog is listed as one of the services that the community of archaeologists and paleontologists of Catalonia offers to the wider public and for people of the same field, to share updates on research projects, stream live conferences of the sector and share news on a uniform website.
While it is not immediately apparent who the exact authors of this blog are (since it’s the fruit of a collective work of archaeologists and paleontologists of government of Catalonia), I still believe that the authority they have on the writing of research advancement and news of the filed is still very palpable.
We are talking about a scientific journal that is accessible by everybody. They belong to the government, so of course their objective will be to inform the population of Catalonia on their archaeological records and where they can bring us as a nation. They organize their content through categories such as articles, papers and they also upload their conferences in video format.
The tone is very formal, and I believe it’s more oriented towards people from the same field. That is where I would use more advertising and more media to attract a wider range of readers.
Archaeological Fantasies
https://archyfantasies.com/about/
On the contrary of the previous blog I wrote about, I believe this one is much more oriented to a broader audience, and specifically to an audience that might not necessarily be from the archaeological academic world.
The author doesn’t give away her own name and keeps it as “ArchaeologicalFantasies”, even thou she does identify as female as one of her blog sections is dedicated to women that have had great impact in the field since the late XVIII century, calling them “Mothers of the field”. I am not sure if you can give full authority on the quality of the content based on someone who doesn’t display their real name, but this assumption could be very colonialist of mine. She has a B.A in Anthropology and a Masters of Science certificate in GIS/Remote Sensing focusing in archaeology, and is currently finishing her masters in CRM Archaeology.
Personally, while I believe she does a good job at attracting more people to the field, I find some of her topics based on a much more colonial-classic tone. There is little mention in new decolonizing- feminist methodologies. But interesting to read still!
Publishing Archaeology
http://publishingarchaeology.blogspot.com/
I believe this blog has a much more academic content and intention, and it includes the opinion of the author, on technical and field methods as well as publications from across the field. The audience could be undergraduate students of his own, as well as colleagues and other publishing researchers from different fields.
On the authority of his writings, he is an archaeologist and university professor since many years ago: His name is Michael E. Smith and he is an archaeologist who works on Aztec sites and Teotihuacan. He is currently a professor in the School of Human Evolution & Social Change at Arizona State University.
He writes in a journalistic style, and I found his dedication to the undergraduate professor that motivated him to research in his field very moving. There are multiple sections where we comments and gives his opinion on main topics and definitions within anthropology such as “are we living in the Anthropocene”? where mostly, he asks of anthropologists and archaeologists to publish in journals of other disciplines to be better critiqued.
I like how instructional the content is, and at first I couldn’t help but think that his research in the big “gory rituals of ancient Meso American societies” was lacking the study of the daily lives of its inhabitants as we talked in class, but he has done some research on urban lives as well.
Hello! my name is Clàudia Esplugas Masvidal, and I am an (intending) anthropology senior here at the University of Washington, all along with a minor in DXARTS, as well as GWSS. If I were to clarify a couple of things to better explain the so necessary context that surrounds my persona, I would say that:
1) My name is Clàudia with an open accent on the “a” as my parent’s little form of Catalan resilience: I was born in Barcelona, Catalonia, where for a long time we were not allowed to speak our fist language (Catalan). As language was re-incorporated in the academic curriculum when my parents were young, they found it very important to give me that accent as a variation of the Spanish/Latin version (which has no accent.) As a child I wouldn’t really understand such need, but nowadays with our Catalan parliament shut down by a coup from the Spanish government because of our independence referendum, I find it more important than ever.
2) I say “intending” because I have traveled a long road cruising this unexpected world of the undergraduate, with “ups and downs” if we look at my strictly academic record, but ultimately happy to say that I have explored the multiple intersections of those areas of study that I was always passionate about, and that altogether with my finished and in-progress projects and research, by the time I graduate this June I will definitely, most surely know where my passion, skills and values meet, and what activities I should keep on doing so I lead a fulfilling and happy live in this midst of capitalistic-induced climate change-era we have been born to.
Those activities and skills are: Writing poetry, short fiction, investigative journalism, documentary, photo journalism, reading anthropology, contemporary ethnography, social activism, de-colonization, researching what sovereignty means in all its faces, non-violence, civil-disobedience, singing and performing contemporary arts, experimental art film.
On 2016 I transferred to this university thanks to the student disability resources at Bellevue College , The Daily and started following Standing Rock and interviewing AIS faculty and students to understand Settler Colonialism resilience locally as well: Catalonia was about to hold a referendum and I needed to see different forms of resilience to take with me. My favorite anthropology classes were with professor Radhika Govindrajan, never had I seen what contemporary ethnography and anthropology of decolonization look like, and how I can apply them to myself as an individual.
In 2017 I started experiencing what it means to work and study full-time while having a learning disability in this country. I worked as a legal assistant and Spanish interpreter for an
Immigration Law office downtown Seattle, and I saw with my own eyes the devastating affects of the Trump administration on refugee families being detained at the Tacoma center: I saw how justice is a bureaucratic system invented by the same ones who incarcerate you and who release you by finding loops and wholes, which you can fill with money and your own blood. I feel very identified with Valeria Luiselli’s book Tell Me How it Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions, and would like to write down my experiences as well before I forget them.
I tried to keep up with the research project lead by professor Walter Andrews, the Svoboda Diaries Project where historical transcription and technology meet, and I started a small documentary mentored by Holly Barker, where I followed Pacific Islander students and their events as The Burke museum explores what it means to decolonize its structure and give back materials to their communities so they can use them for their events. It’s still on editing process.
Over the course of this summer, while also working, I have explored my voice, contemporary dance and visual poetry through a video collaboration with several artists, which we showed on our first art show on Capitol Hill early this month, and which I will keep on developing as I present it in future festivals if possible. It has been liberating to find creativity to be the most healing way of living, and as I focus on graduate school and other life adventures, it must keep on being explored.
This year, thanks to family friends and great professors who have supported my journey all these years, I am the director of the Womxn’s Action Commission (ASUW) and I will be incorporating aspects of decolonization, resilience, and will seek to partner with all the other diversity student commissions to put on programs and events that represent all of us and our struggles as womxn on the 21st century. I am partnering with the Intellectual House and with Dr. Luana Ross to put on an Indigenous Feminisms event on Spring, and I cannot wait to see what wonderful fruits come out of our new team, as I seek the intersectionality of my fields of interest, my creativity and our team’s passion.
I have been in love with several archaeological projects all my live, and I’ve been following Professor Gonzalez’s work for some time since I transferred in this university: I can’t wait to see how my view on community based archaeology shape my understanding of the discipline!
As an archaeologist who works at the intersection of tribal historic preservation, colonial studies, and public history, my work brings together anthropological, historical, feminist, and indigenous methods in the study and representation of Native American heritage. My research specifically examines how community-based participatory research can improve the empirical and interpretive quality of archaeological narratives, while also situating archaeology within a more respectful and engaged practice. As a core feature of this work I am exploring the diverse applications of digital media as tools for contributing to the capacity of tribal communities to manage their historic and environmental resources. In conjunction with these projects I have developed multiple classroom, lab, and field training programs that provide undergraduate and graduate students with the opportunity to participate directly in research with tribal communities and to develop student-directed research that contributes to the capacity of these communities to study, manage, and represent their heritage.
This work centers on my ongoing collaboration with the Kashia Band of Pomo Indians at Fort Ross State Historic Park, a former Russian-American Company mercantile settlement (1812-1841) in northern California. The goal of this partnership involved the development of the Kashaya Pomo Interpretive Trail, a walkable cultural heritage trail and companion website that features the history and heritage of the Kashia within their ancestral homeland. Within the context of this work, community-based participatory research with both the tribal community and the California Department of Parks and Recreation provided the basis for itnegrating Kashaya cultural protocols and values into the study, management, and representation of their heritage within Fort Ross and their ancestral homeland, Metini.
Since coming to the University of Washington in 2013, I have initiated a new, multi-year community-based partnership with the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde Community of Oregon (CTGR) and their Tribal Historic Preservation Office (THPO). The goal of this collaboration is twofold: first, to conduct an archaeological study of 19th and early 20th century sites associated with the community’s settlement onto the Grand Ronde reservation, which was created by executive order in 1855, and second, contribute to the capacity of the CTGR THPO to manage tribal cultural resources on its reservation lands. This summer our project will host a 7-week field school, Field Methods in Indigenous Archaeology, where undergraduate and students will work alongside tribal students and the Grand Ronde THPO to study the history and development of the 19th century reservation landscape.
Prior to coming to UW, I received my doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley Department of Anthropology (2011) (Go Bears!) and was a Scholar-in-Residence fellow in the Department of Sociology & Anthropology at Carleton College and a Christian A. Johnson Fellow in the Department of Anthropology at Vassar College.
When not in the field or the classroom I am often found road tripping across the U.S. to find interesting, old things, trying not to kill the plants in my kitchen garden, or baking cupcakes and pies for lucky students.
Winner of the Golden Spatula Award, 2014: Prof. Gonzalez’s Rhubarb Strawberry Pie with Cinnamon Scented whip
