American archaeology has roots in American racism. American archaeology starts with the disbelief that Native Americans were capable of building the monumental mound structures in the Mississippi River valley. To discover the origins of these features, white people dug into them. Sometimes enslaved Africans were forced to do the digging for white “discoveries.” The origin of today’s archaeological cultural areas begins with this.
The archaeological “discoveries” credited to white antiquarians and archaeologists was not always gained through the labor of white Americans; however, this is not immediately acknowledged by archaeologists. This means the history of American archaeology largely omits the efforts of the non-white people who dug archaeological sites. This lack of acknowledgement maintains the idea that, until very recently, white archaeologists have been the discoverers and progenitors of today’s archaeology. This lack of acknowledgement also concretes the idea that archaeology is something only white people do in the minds of the American public, including the BIPOC people archaeologists who are trying to figure out how to be included in archaeological discoveries.
The first known archaeological technicians in what would become the United States were enslaved Africans working for Thomas Jefferson. He writes about what they were forced to unearth in Notes on the State of Virginia (1785), including descriptions of digging through Native American infant burials. Enslaved people continued to be forced to dig Native American sites throughout the 19th century. For example, from 1837 to 1844 Montroville Wilson Dickeson used African Americans to dig into Native American burial mounds in the Ohio and Mississippi River valleys. This is clearly depicted in paintings done by John J. Egan around 1850, which are on file at the University of Pennsylvania. None of this was not acknowledged until recently.
Black labor continued to be used on archaeological excavations after Emancipation. For example, Black Americans were employed as archaeological technicians in 1930s as part of the New Deal programs. Gail Whalen and Michael E. Price (1998) describe how Black women were employed in excavations at the Savannah Indian Mound in South Carolina in the 1930s. The mounds had already been dug into by Smithsonian archaeologists in the 1890s but, in the 1930s, local white amateur archaeologists remained eager to dig into them again. White graduate students were used to supervise poor white and Black excavators who were considered unskilled laborers. The primary sites were excavated by exclusively Black female crews. Black women, some 65-years-old, were paid to dig up Native human remains and lift baskets laden with stones for eight hours a day, five days a week, weekends and holidays off, for over a year. The Black workers were cognizant of the sanctity of these burials, remarking that they felt sad that Native graves were being disturbed like that. The workers’ skill was acknowledged by reporting archaeologists, but they never noted any of the Black archaeologists by name. White archaeologists took all the credit for the work.
The fruits of this labor were all bestowed upon white people. Thomas Jefferson is considered the first American archaeologist. White antiquarians used Black labor to dig multiple Native American mounds throughout the 19th century in hopes of finding out who built them. White archaeologists and graduate students were considered the “discoverers” of archaeology in the southeast even though it was Black and poor white excavators who did all of the discovering. Archaeology continued to develop from these roots that failed to acknowledge the intellectual and labor contributions of non-white people.
Native American ceremonial sites in the United States were explicitly targeted. Mound sites in the southeast and mid-Atlantic were known to contain grave goods and human remains. We know white slave owners, antiquarians, and archaeologists did not believe Native Americans had the right to prevent them from digging their ancestral sites. They had no concern of Native wishes regarding these mounds. Initially, white people didn’t even believe Native people built their own heritage sites. We know racial hierarchies prevented them from believing Native Americans were equal to whites. Early white archaeologists did not care if Native Americans opposed their actions because they felt like their own personal motivations to dig stuff up outweighed Native rights for their ancestors to stay in place. This is how many of our early archaeological collections were gathered.
Enslaved African Americans had little agency in digging Native mounds, but subsequent African American excavators did; however, it is unclear if African Americans used archaeology to place Native Americans lower than them on racial hierarchies the way white archaeologists did at that time. Free Black excavators made the decision to to dig these sites to make money. They were also interested in the past. Whalen and Price (1998) write how some of the Black women in Savannah wanted to visit the mounds, but they weren’t allowed to. Digging the site was a way they could visit a place that piqued their curiosity. Skill and abilities to dig enabled free Black people to act upon these motivations. It is unlikely using archaeology to maintain racial hierarchies was a motivating factor as it was for white archaeologists in those times.
However, African American archaeologists also demonstrated disrespect for Native heritage sites by digging them up despite their own misgivings about disturbing these grave sites. As an African American archaeologist, the least I can do is apologize for these transgressions and vow never to do anything like that for the rest of my career.
It wasn’t only Native American burials
African American burials were also targeted by white people in the past. Black burials were dug up and illicitly used for medical specimens, conducting research for institutions dedicated to maintaining white supremacy. For example, medical schools in the Dallas area were caught digging up Black burials to be used in medical schools. This took place well into the 20th century (Davidson 2007). Something similar happened in Baltimore (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/in-need-cadavers-19th-century-medical-students-raided-baltimores-graves-180970629/). Several American universities forced and/or cohered African Americans, including enslaved people owned by the university, to dig up Black burials for use in their medical schools.
The University of Virginia paid people to dig up Black bodies from African American cemeteries in the 19thcentury (https://daily.jstor.org/grave-robbing-black-cemeteries-and-the-american-medical-school). So did the University of Georgia. The UGeorgia kept a Black grave robber on the payroll for decades. UGA bought this person as a slave and initially forced him to dig up black burials. After emancipation he kept digging up black bodies. The university even enabled him to participate in the dissections (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/meet-grandison-harris-grave-robber-enslaved-and-then-employed-georgia-college-medicine-180951344/). Using other Blacks to dig up Black burials adds double insult to the Black community by forcing them to dig into sanctified internments, violating the desire for Black ancestors to enjoy a restful internment by their respectful descendants. Even worse, many of these universities don’t even know what happened to the human remains they stole from the grave.
This sort of 19th century medical research seeped into physical anthropology—one of the four fields in American archaeology. It was also foundational to eugenics, which informed Jim Crow laws. While archaeologists today have done much to try and distance themselves from racism, the number of misdeeds caused by proto-archaeologists and anthropologists in the past are so numerous we are constantly finding out about unethical acts that took place decades ago. These unethical misdeeds by white scholars are firmly rooted in the racist cultural mores of that time.
It is true that universities dug up poor white burials, but we know they targeted Native American burial sites specifically because of the wealth of artifacts they contained. We also know they dug up African American burials because Black Americans had less legal and economic power to protect their graveyards. We know Black and Native American bodies were used to justify racist eugenics pseudoscience that was foundational to maintaining de jure and de facto racial segregation and discrimination. The legacies of this continue to resonate today.
Most importantly: we know this work was done to empower white Americans at the expense of non-whites, which continues to maintain racial hierarchies and disempower non-white people.
This is the legacy of American archaeology and anthropology. Avoiding this reality is one of the ways we archaeologists maintain racial stereotypes, segregation, poverty, and disempowerment. You perpetuate this system and the structures that maintain it when you do not know enough to act against it. Knowledge is the key to addressing inequality and racism in archaeology and in the United States because, with adequate knowledge, you can manage your own thoughts and actions. You can also see how racism is intrenched in your employer, your clients, and your community.
Antiracism training is the least you can do
Antiracism training is not going to end racism in archaeology.
It will not make attendees “race warriors,” “woke,” or “antiracists.” Antiracism is a lifelong campaign. It may start with an antiracism training course, but you will have to do the work for many years afterward.
It will not change the opinions of bigots or people who refuse to accept the promoted concepts.
It will not result in a post-racial world where diversity, equity, and inclusion has been attained. That’s gonna take a $hitload more work than taking some workplace training. Antiracism training can help but the work isn’t gonna get done without action.
The goal of antiracism training is to help employees identify organizational issues that hinder racial diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workplace.
For many archaeologists, antiracism training is the first step in recognizing how racialization and racism has invaded their workplace. A proper training for archaeologists will:
- Introduce attendees to the reality that race, racialization, and racism have been part of American history for over 400 years.
- Provide an overview of how race, racialization, and racism are baked into the society in which our businesses, agencies, and organizations operate.
- Provide an opportunity to investigate how this manifests in your workplace and encourage employee groups to lead a response to these issues.
- Create an opportunity to evaluate diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in your workplace (or the lack thereof), and.
- Most importantly: Get white archaeologists to start thinking about something that plays a powerful role in their lives but that their lives as white people provides them few spaces where these concepts and associated feelings can be investigated.
When it comes to race, racialization, and racism, white Americans tend to think that these are things that only apply to non-white people. White Americans are socialized to think that they don’t have race. Race isn’t part of their identity. Archaeology, a field that is over 90% white, provides few spaces where white people can think about how this whole thing has impacted them personally. Because they rarely think about this issue, or force non-white people to be the ones who do the thinking about it, most white people do not have the emotional or psychological stamina to engage with race without being emotionally overcome. White avoidance, solidarity, and silence are common responses to direct confrontation with talking about race, racialization, and racism, especially investigating whiteness. It can get even worse. White guilt and white rage can also result from the simple suggestion white colleagues engage in antiracist action.
These responses from white colleagues prevent them from productively addressing issues in their workplaces because it forces all the work on non-white colleagues who then bear the brunt of the emotional responses from their white colleagues when problems are identified. Antiracism training is one tiny, small way white people can build their endurance with race, racialization, and racism. It’s the training wheels many white folks need to take on this monumental task.
When it comes to antiracism, academia is even worse. While antiracism training is more widely available to university archaeologists than CRMers, the resulting “knowledge” and “ability” necessary to address how these things affect students, peers, and archaeological research has not led to academia being a comfortable space for BIPOC scholars and students. Academic departments think they are doing DEI work, but they continue to:
- Emphasize “optical diversity” (e.g. people who’s skin color looks different but’s background is pretty much the same as everyone else’s) and “mirror-tocracy” (e.g. people who went to the same schools, have the same credentials, and have done the same things as departmental leaders).
- Hire “diversity” without valuing it (e.g. hire people from different backgrounds but do nothing to support their different needs).
- Shovel a larger proportion of unpaid tasks on BIPOC scholars and students (e.g. forcing BIPOC students to advocate, organize, and pay for antiracism training.)
- Failing to listen to BIPOC scholars, students, or colleagues who point out problems or advocate for departmental change. Or, forcing BIPOC students and scholars to point out exact instances of racism, discrimination, inequity, and harassment before doing anything to address their concerns (Then dismissing these concerns as “just how this department operates” or “no big deal” or “he/she/they didn’t mean anything by that” ect.)
- Being afraid of candidates, students, or peers who are “too diverse” (e.g. not employing anyone with too ethnic of hair or dress, or too dark of skin color.)
- Paying BIPOC scholars less.
- Providing less mentorship for BIPOC students and colleagues.
- Doing next to nothing to foster an inclusive environment (e.g. doing all the aforementioned things and more but refusing to even acknowledge that this stuff is a problem for everyone in the department.)
FYI: If all the people of color in your department, scholars, students, and staff, want to leave the department, you have a problem with structural racism in your department. If you don’t know whether or not the people of color want to leave, that is probably a sign that you’re part of that problem. If they tell you things are okay but leave the department as soon as possible, it means we don’t trust you and, again, you are part of the problem. DEI moves at the pace of trust. If your colleagues of color don’t trust you, that’s where y’all should probably start.
The goal of antiracism training is to get archaeologists of all races thinking about how this reality with which we must all live is impacting our industry. It’s also to get archaeologists a chance to think about how this has shaped and continues to shape American archaeology.
With this knowledge and emotional stamina that comes with antiracist advocacy, you can start acting against this programming and the structures in your workplace that maintain it.
Antiracism is what archaeologists should do
If you haven’t noticed, archaeology is overwhelmingly white. There are reasons for this:
- America’s earliest archaeologists disrespectfully plundered Native American sites for decades.
- BIPOC burials were specifically targeted by archaeologists, antiquarians, and medical schools.
- The resulting data was used in the pseudoscience eugenics that was used to create de jure and de facto segregation and discrimination.
- This led to economic inequalities that prevented BIPOC scholars from going into fields like anthropology because, if they were allowed to go to college, they had to go into a field that would result in a high paying job. This remains a reality today.
- Archaeology is considered “something white people do” because white people have taken credit for archaeological “discoveries” they didn’t discover.
- Until very recently, almost all archaeology professors were white. BIPOC students never saw anyone of color doing archaeology.
- Archaeology remains an uncomfortable space for BIPOC people because of the reluctance of white archaeologists to directly address the monoraciality of their industry.
Most of these issues are bigger than any one archaeologist can address. But it’s not that big of an issue for us to address together. Antiracism trainings are the least archaeology can do to show the world that we are working through our transgressions. It also has the potential to increase the number of antiracists, Black, white and otherwise, who are already putting significant effort into increasing DEI in archaeology.
We did not create this world, but we do not have to accept that this is the way things are supposed to be. If you have a chance, I encourage you to sign up for an antiracism workshop designed for archaeologists. If notice there aren’t any antiracism trainings near you, ask your self why. Then reach out to one of the archaeology organizations doing DEI work and arrange for one that you can attend.
The roots of American archaeology are connected to racism, but this is also the case in other parts of the world as well. In Africa and Asian, archaeologists of European descent (e.g. people Americans would call white) have long dug sites using local local laborers (e.g. folks we in the United States would identify as BIPOC). White archaeologist in these regions have also failed to acknowledge the contributions of these laborers and have used their efforts to support racial categories that contributed to racial discrimination. However, I’m from the United States and am most familiar with our system. I feel like we in the U.S. can lead by example through advocating for the rights of BIPOC archaeologists and non-white communities in our country. Part of this advocacy needs to include antiracism efforts.
Here are two organizations I know conduct antiracism trainings for archaeologists:
SHA Gender and Minority Affairs Committee: https://sha.org/committees/gender-minority-affairs-committee/
Society for California Archaeology’s Coalition for Diversity in California Archaeology: https://scahome.org/about-us/committees/coalition-for-diversity-in-california-archaeology-cdca/
Feel free to add to this list in the comments.
References
Davidson, James M.
2007 “Resurrection Men” in Dallas: The Illegal Use of Black Bodies as Medical Cadavers (1900—1907). International Journal of Historical Archaeology, Vol.11 (3), p.193-220
Jefferson, Thomas
1787 Notes on the State of Virginia. https://books.google.com/books/about/Notes_on_the_State_of_Virginia.html?id=DTWttRSMtbYC Accessed September 11, 2022.
Lovejoy, Bess
2014 Meet Grandison Harris, the Grave Robber Enslaved (and then Employed) By the Georgia Medical College. Smithsonian Magazine. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/meet-grandison-harris-grave-robber-enslaved-and-then-employed-georgia-college-medicine-180951344/ Accessed September 11, 2022.
Meier, Allison C.
2018 Grave Robbing, Black Cemeteries, and the American Medical School. Smithsonian Magazine.https://daily.jstor.org/grave-robbing-black-cemeteries-and-the-american-medical-school/ Accessed September 11, 2022.
Pietila, Antero
2018 In Need of Cadavers, 19th-Century Medical Students Raided Baltimore’s Graves. Smithsonian Magazine. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/in-need-cadavers-19th-century-medical-students-raided-baltimores-graves-180970629/ Accessed September 11, 2022.
Whalen, Gail and Michael E. Price
1998 The Elusive Women of Irene: The WPA Excavation of a Savannah Indian Mound. The Georgia Historical Quarterly, 82(3):608—626.
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