The role of radiocarbon dating in advancing Indigenous-led archaeological research agendas
Jennifer Birch, Turner Hunt, Louis Lesage, Jean‐François Richard, Linda A. Sioui, Victor D. Thompson
Abstract
Archaeology is an inherently colonial discipline. The field has its roots in Western knowledge systems, social and racial hierarchies, colonisation, and the dispossession of Indigenous pasts from contemporary descendant and traditionally affiliated communities (Gosden, 2012 ; McNiven and Russell, 2005 ; Trigger, 1984 ). Calls for and efforts towards decolonising the production of archaeological knowledge have been reverberating in the discipline for some time (e.g., Atalay, 2006 ; Colwell-Chanthaphonh et al., 2010 ; Nicholas, 1998 ; Watkins, 2003 ). However, as Franklin et al. (2020: p. 754) write: “Changes in archaeology’s paradigms, practices, and politics have always been entangled with events happening in the wider world.” Various social movements (e.g., Black Lives Matter, Indigenous residential school histories) and the recent reckoning that disciplines, individuals, and countries have had with their own histories have profoundly shifted research agendas and modes of collaboration in archaeology. This changing worldview has galvanised support for the greater inclusion of marginalised voices and perspectives in in North American archaeology and beyond.