Clovis Comet Debate - The Archaeological Conservancy

Native American students in St. Paul, Minnesota build an historically accurate Ojibwe teaching lodge based on knowledge passed from
generation to generation. Archaeologists learned valuable information about the Ojibwe by observing the construction of the lodge.
These are two very different approaches: one narrowly
scientific, one broadly cultural. But recently, a handful of
archaeologists—some Native American, some not—have
been working to combine these two approaches, suggesting
that maintaining a hard and fast boundary may be counterproductive.
This third approach has been dubbed “indigenous
archaeology,” a method of interpreting the past in which hard
data and cultural knowledge perform a complicated dance.
Proponents believe that this hybrid approach can result in a
more insightful view of the past. They say it’s a legitimate if
unconventional means of studying cultural artifacts, and that
we have much to learn about the past by placing it within
the context of living cultural traditions.
Not everyone agrees. Some suggest that indigenous
archaeology is to traditional archaeology what creationism
is to evolution—a matter of selectively using data to support
cultural myths. Heading down this road is a dangerous
detour away from hard science toward a softer landscape of
cultural studies. They say it’s not archaeology at all.
In 2008, ge o rg e nI c h o l a s, an a rc h a e o l o g I s t
at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, was asked
to write the entry for “indigenous archaeology” in Elsevier’s
Encyclopedia of Archaeology. He’s written about the subject
for 15 years, and a decade earlier had published a simple,
serviceable definition: it’s archaeology “with, for, and by
indigenous people.” “I thought this was going to be a piece
of cake,” he said. It wasn’t. He was a year and half late submitting
the piece. “It was such a challenge because over the
course of years, indigenous archaeology became so multifaceted
and often so situational that it had all of these different
meanings,” he said.
So, what exactly is indigenous archaeology? To better
understand that, one could profitably consider some of the
episodes and attitudes that led to its emergence. A handy
starting point is the Antiquities Act of 1906, which was
signed into law by President Theodore Roosevelt. Created to
protect cultural sites on federal lands from looters, the law
codified the government’s control over many Indian artifacts.
But what the law didn’t do was equally significant: it didn’t
give Native Americans any say in the process. The federal
government, in effect, assumed by fiat the full ownership
of many Native American artifacts. Tribal members believed
their heritage had been hijacked and resentment smoldered
for decades.
That resentment flared up into resistance in the mid-
20th century. In 1969, members of the Onondaga tribe in
New York State moved to reclaim the wampum belts being
displayed in state museums—what Joe Watkins, author of
the 2000 book Indigenous Archaeology: American Indian
38 fall • 2010
larry zimmerman