The Journal of Archaeology and Education is a peer-reviewed, open-access journal dedicated to disseminating research and sharing practices in archaeological education. See the "about this Journal" for more information. Only the most recent issues of the Journal are displayed below. Each record represents an entire issue. Please select an issue from the sidebar on the right to browse all published volumes and issues.
A Co-Created Approach for Community Heritage: A Case Study of Archaeological Engagement in Belize
This paper describes a collaboration between archaeological researchers and an archaeological illustrator, with narratives from both perspectives, to create educational materials for an elementary school in a rural Belizean community. Intended to facilitate access to information, for students to learn about a little-known archaeological site within their multi-ethnic neighborhood, the result was a set of visually stimulating materials that allowed for active engagement. This co-created project demonstrates that high-quality teaching materials are not dependent on expensive resources nor the latest digital technologies, but can be achieved through careful planning and intentional pedagogical approaches. This model can be adapted for other rural or under-resourced communities, especially by educators who are looking to create bespoke materials. It also demonstrates that smaller archaeological research projects can contribute meaningfully to outreach that includes student learning and engagement.
Exploring Human Aging through Bioarchaeology: A Workshop-Based Educational Approach for University Classes with Older Adults
Universities of the Third Age (U3As) empower older adults through tailored lifelong learning programs, which significantly grew in Europe and worldwide since the 1970s. In Spain, these programs foster active aging through cultural and scientific engagement. This study examines a workshop within the Programa Interuniversitario de la Experiencia in Burgos, focusing on age estimation and paleopathology in bioarchaeological contexts. The workshop addressed the challenge of accurately determining the age of individuals from skeletal remains, particularly older adults, whose representation in the archaeological record is often limited. This underrepresentation affects our understanding of past reproductive patterns and life histories. To tackle this, a theoretical-practical workshop was conducted with 49 students, employing original skeletal elements from the San José Cemetery in Burgos. The workshop's aims included distinguishing age categories via dental and skeletal analysis, identifying age-related pathologies, and understanding the scarcity of older adults in archaeological records. The workshop consisted of an introduction to age estimation methods and pathologies, hands-on analysis of original materials, and a concluding survey. In conclusion, our results suggest that this workshop represents a successful educational strategy for lifelong learning programs targeting older adults. Through the integration of theoretical content, practical engagement, and critical reflection on biological aging and archaeological interpretation, the initiative responds effectively to the learning styles and needs commonly associated with this age group. Please note that this article includes images of human remains.
Constructing an Ethical Discipline: A Survey of Anthropology Program Requirements and Rhetorics
This study investigates the inclusion of ethics education within undergraduate anthropology programs across a stratified sample of U.S. higher education institutions, with emphasis on archaeology’s engagement with ethics education. We analyze publicly accessible anthropology course listings, program descriptions, and institutional websites to determine how programs position ethics within their curricula. We further assess how these results vary across Predominantly White Institutions (PWIs) and Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs). Our findings indicate that while just 5.8% of U.S. programs explicitly require ethics coursework, 18.5% offered elective ethics-related courses in anthropology. However, most anthropology programs do not visibly emphasize ethics as a core component of the major or minor, according to observations of program requirements. Additional findings include differences in the inclusion of required ethics courses within anthropology programs across PWI and MSI institutions types, with Hispanic serving institutions yielding the most ethics requirements. These results highlight the need for curricular shifts–or perhaps shifts in communicating the curriculum–to promote ethics as fundamental to anthropological study, particularly given the discipline's colonial history and current societal relevance. Future directions include further qualitative studies of course syllabi and student perspectives to evaluate ethics education’s impact on professional development in anthropological archaeology.
For 33 years (1979–2012), the Smithsonian Institution publication AnthroNotes brought anthropology and archaeology to classrooms in the United States and beyond. AnthroNotes featured lead articles by research specialists and cartoons by the archaeologist and artist Robert L. Humphrey. AnthroNotes originated from the George Washington University / Smithsonian Institution Anthropology for Teachers Program, funded by the National Science Foundation. Although AnthroNotes ceased publication, all 84 issues and 263 individual articles are digitized. The cartoons and articles remain relevant and useful, free from copyright restriction, located in the Smithsonian’s digital repository (AnthroNotes 2018). Here we share practical suggestions and links to the original articles and cartoons to help students examine them for what they reflect about anthropology and archaeology, past and present. In today’s rapidly changing intellectual landscape, the cartoons offer an innovative and entertaining way for students to explore enduring questions in anthropology and archaeology as well as current topics, conversations, and concerns. We further demonstrate how these articles and cartoons trace major historical shifts in the field over past decades. Finally, because art reflects its historical context, these materials invite students to assess the impact of critical theory, self-reflexive views of culture, and gender studies on archaeology and anthropology today.
I don’t know about this, there’s no job in it, and it’s not for people like me: Socioeconomic Diversity in Ancient Near Eastern Archaeology in UK Higher Education
Twenty-five years of Profiling the Profession surveys have consistently shown that the United Kingdom’s professional archaeologists come overwhelmingly from relatively affluent backgrounds. Anecdotal evidence suggests that archaeology student cohorts are more diverse than the professional field, but student cohorts undertaking courses focused on ancient Near Eastern (ANE) archaeology are even more heavily skewed toward more affluent socioeconomic demographics. This article presents the results of a pilot study collecting data concerning the socioeconomic background of undergraduate archaeology students, their perceptions of ANE archaeology and its practitioners, and their motivations for choosing whether to study ANE-focused courses during their archaeology degrees. The results identify broad relationships between the socioeconomic backgrounds of students and their degree program decision-making, revealing a series of push factors that discourage engagement with the subdiscipline.
Objects, Stories and Ethical Dilemmas: Breaking out of our Boxes
This article takes a reflexive approach to an archaeological outreach initiative, the Hands-on-Humanities Project, and particularly the case study of the Tomb in a Box, in order to model the need for more critical pedagogy. Object-based learning can be transformative by enhancing skills, building confidence and developing deep empathy. However, this will be achieved only if we dare to discuss, alongside our successes, the challenges faced and mistakes made along the path of project evolution. For our Tomb in a Box, this involved considering issues of stereotyping, neo-colonialism and elitism in our disciplines. Through uncomfortable engagement with these questions, in collaboration with our students, partner educators and academic colleagues, we were able to develop new activities and tools that moved us closer to achieving our stated goals of building skills, confidence and educational aspirations in disadvantaged communities. This paper details our personal experience throughout our project's transformation and the emotional rollercoaster we traveled from the highs of excitement to discomforting lows, and finally inspiration in our quest to ensure a valuable learning experience for our students. In sharing this critical reflexion, we hope to encourage open and transparent discussions about our own learning processes as educators.
Naming Chickens and Mapping the Sacred Geography of the Mundane
As archaeologists and cultural resource managers, how do we communicate the work we do and how might the stories of that work contribute to the value of public lands? We define archaeological significance in terms of process and how we identify those processes across the linear structure of a chronology, defining historical landmarks as temporal as opposed to spatial. Public lands present a unique opportunity to use archaeology to tell stories that are rooted in space since the landscape is conserved. With this conserved land, we can tell stories that are written across a landscape as though the landscape itself is a text that people can read. In so doing, we can tell stories about the past that create more intimate connections between people and our beloved public lands.
The Micro-Site Simulation Project; Developing Accessible and Inclusive Lab-Based Archaeological Pedagogies
By its very methods, be they desk-based research or practical field approaches, archaeology is, by nature, an active discipline. Therefore, the effective teaching of archaeological skills requires a dynamic approach. Most students have to rely on field schools for their training in practical archaeology. However, many of these are prohibitive in cost, accessibility, and inclusivity. This paper describes a newly developed tactic (the Micro-Site Simulation Research Project) utilizing experimental, hands-on, interactive, and experiential pedagogical approaches to overcome these issues, encouraging increased student engagement and the effective teaching of practical archaeological skills in the classroom.
Bringing Archaeology into Religious and Moral Education: A Case Study from Scotland
Archaeology provides ‘material expression’ to the narratives and discourses which construct and bind historical identity. When brought into the classroom it can provide a powerful tool to help school pupils untangle complex structures and meanings, and to begin to develop their own interpretive and evaluative skills. This article explores the use of archaeology in implementing aspects of the Scottish Curriculum for Excellence. We focus on one subject in particular, Religious and Moral Education (RME), and we analyze one unit of study designed and taught to Secondary 1 and 2 pupils, with ages ranging from 11- 13. We draw upon a recent major excavation in Perth and Kinross in Scotland so as to interrogate the role of symbols in rites of passage surrounding death as these are evidenced in the material record of the human past. We argue that archaeology provided a rich and robust structure, not available via other means, that assisted the development of pupils’ higher order thinking skills. We argue that deploying archaeology in RME, and by extension, in other subjects and in different educational contexts, will encourage pupils to explore materiality and will enhance their learning in new and inspiring ways.
Theoretical Foundations for Archaeological Pedagogy with Digital 3D, Virtual, Augmented, and Mixed Reality Technologies
Archaeology is inherently a visual and spatial discipline and thus we should strive to center student learning within visual and spatial media. Apart from museum work, site visits, and fieldtrips, the traditional tools of the classroom, however, tend to only convey textual or two-dimensional abstractions of primary archaeological data. The latest digital 3D and eXtended Reality (XR) technologies (Virtual, Augmented, and Mixed) hold the potential for engagement with information in ways that more closely represent the true three-dimensional and visual nature of archaeological objects, spaces, and landscapes. This should allow for an embodied mode of interaction that significantly improves understandings of space and visual content. To maximize these benefits, our deployment of these technologies in the classroom should be guided by formal educational theory and research as well as by prior experiments. Here, we introduce theoretical perspectives on visual and spatial learning, as well as other educational theories, relevant to teaching the humanities and the material past. Our goal is to provide a range of theoretical foundations for pedagogical experiments that involve deploying XR teaching in the archaeological classroom.
Learning from the Land: The Application of Archaeology and Land-Based Learning as an Experiential Learning Tool for Building Intercultural Competency
The written nature of Western society and oral basis of Indigenous society present a key difference in the way we approach the world (Duarte and Belarde-Lewis 2015; Kovach 2021; Scully 2012). Within an Indigenous ontology, there is an inseparable relationship between story and knowing and a holistic nature to this knowledge (Kovach 2021). Stories become a valuable tool for teaching and learning, which can also be used in other areas where value is placed on contextualized knowledge. Through the inclusion of Siksika (Blackfoot) Elders in our archaeology field school on the Siksika Nation, we attempt to present culturally appropriate curricula which increases student’s intercultural competency. Our study sought to evaluate our teaching pedagogy and to understand what value students attach to instructional methods which incorporate Indigenous teachers. Using the First Nations Holistic Lifelong Learning Model (Canadian Council for Learning 2007) as a guide, we examine data from student reflective journals to evaluate the cultural inclusivity of the curricula developed and its efficacy in increasing student’s intercultural competency. We demonstrate that the holistic curricula provided was highly valued, and that the land-based and immersive learning environment created allowed students to reframe their own previous biases and understandings which ultimately increased their intercultural competency.
Beyond 2020: How General Education Archaeology Curricula Should Adapt to the COVID-19 Pandemic
Archaeology often justifies its existence by invoking the trope that we must learn about the past in order to create a better future. The COVID-19 pandemic is itself an event that will enter the historical record. Thus, the universality of this public health crisis is a unique opportunity to assess the relevance of university-level archaeology curricula to our present historical moment. We studied an upper division general education course on the archaeology of complex societies at a public liberal arts college in California. The instrument of data collection was a questionnaire administered at the end of the Fall 2020, Spring 2021, and Spring 2022 semesters. Students read an article about archaeological approaches to pandemics, then reflected on how it connected to course content and to their own experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic. Content analysis of student responses suggests that course themes of complex societies, the environment, archaeological evidence, the future, and social hierarchy resonated most with students on both intellectual and personal levels. We also identified emergent concerns with diseases (COVID-19 and others) and cultural responses to them, employment status, and psychological effects, suggesting that these themes are increasingly relevant to archaeology students during and beyond the COVID-19 pandemic.
Tour de Fort: Creating and Evaluating Guided Archaeology Tours
Since 2011, the Florida Public Archaeology Network (FPAN) Coordinating Center office in Pensacola, Florida has partnered with the National Park Service staff at Gulf Islands National Seashore (GUIS) to develop and implement a public program called Tour de Fort. This guided bicycling tour was created by FPAN with the goal to promote the public appreciation for the many terrestrial and underwater archaeological resources located within the GUIS Fort Pickens Area. Tour de Fort has remained a popular and well attended program over the years. Based on public demand, other guided tours were developed using Tour de Fort as a model. However, until recently the actual quality and impact of this public archaeology program on audiences was not well understood. This article examines how Tour de Fort and other guided archaeology tours provided by FPAN are organized; highlights specific interpretative techniques implemented; and provides the methods, results, and recommendations from a formal assessment conducted to measure its impact on participants.
Ancient Cities: Teaching and Learning in the Digital Age
In this paper we present an overview of the Ancient Cities project’s outcomes and experiences with producing and testing digital educational material in the field of archaeology. In the first part, the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) Discovering Greek & Roman Cities is introduced with respect to its target audiences and learning objectives, the ways in which it was disseminated to the target audiences, and how its structure and learning material were developed. Based on several questionnaires answered by the participants and user data from the MOOC platform itself, we were able to collect comprehensive information on the demography of the participants, their expectations, and their experiences. These data allow us to draw conclusions about the opportunities and difficulties of open education in the historical humanities. In the second part, we show how the course’s materials were successfully implemented in academic teaching at the Panthéon-Sorbonne University, the University of Paris-Saclay (UVSQ), and the University of Pennsylvania. These examples highlight how smaller academic fields in the humanities can design and enhance their respective teaching environments in the digital age.
Assessing Knowledge Mobilization and Retention in Teaching Archaeological Theory
How are difficult and often unfamiliar concepts best taught in the classroom in ways that the information conveyed is retained? This study discusses the challenge faced in teaching an intensive, undergraduate Archaeological Theory that is regularly taught at Simon Fraser University. A survey of enrolled students was designed and twice administered to evaluate the effectiveness of different teaching methods and student learning practices. The results of the survey, plus other sources of information, provide an opportunity to evaluate the effectiveness of information transmission and retention in the classroom.
Teaching Paleoradiography Theory Using E-learning – A Participatory Action Research Study with Undergraduate Archaeology Students
This article presents the development of an e-learning paleoradiography short course for undergraduate archaeology students using participatory action research. The use of x-rays in archaeology is well known and yet studies exploring the pedagogic preferences of students are lacking, particularly for online learning. To address this shortfall 100 students in groups of 50 were invited to participate and provide feedback on an e-learning course which ran in April-May and July-August 2021. Participants required internet access, a university email address, and four hours to complete the course. Initial feedback was used to improve the course for a second iteration. The course attracted international interest with students from 22 unique universities in nine countries. The majority were females in their mid-twenties with a slight dominance of second year students. A total of 52 participants (52%) completed the course to receive a certificate. Free-text responses provided rich and valuable feedback for course improvement far superior to blunt Likert scales of evaluation. Results highlighted critical issues including webpage navigation, device compatibility, and alternative formats for learning content. While the integration of a discussion forum failed to encourage inter-participant engagement, universal requests for the judicious use of images and videos were apparent for online learning.
Preparing Undergraduate Students for Compliance Work?
Anecdotal stories by professionals working in the heritage management industry, specifically Cultural Resource Management (CRM), describe feeling unprepared for the work upon graduating with an undergraduate anthropology degree. Likewise, recent graduates complain that they are unqualified for posted CRM jobs even though many hope to enter the field upon graduation. This anecdotal information raises questions about whether undergraduate academic training adequately prepares students for compliance archaeology. Although anecdotes suggest the academy could do a better job at preparing undergraduate students for compliance work, few resources exist to evaluate these claims. To further complicate the issue, some academics rightly question whether undergraduate education should focus on training students to enter the industry at the expense of a more holistic education. They also question who should be responsible for training students to enter the industry. This article explores these complicated issues and presents initial results from a recent pilot survey conducted in Colorado that was designed to examine undergraduate student preparation for compliance work. Using these preliminary results, we evaluate perceived gaps in training and offer possibilities for addressing these gaps that range from partnerships between CRM and academia to curriculum reform where appropriate.
Online Is Not Just as Good as F2F for Teaching Research Methods – It’s Better
We know, from many studies, the advantages and disadvantages of online learning.1 No need to go over them here. There are, however, several important lessons about the teaching of research methods—like statistics, text analysis, network analysis, cultural domain analysis, direct and unobtrusive observation, etc.—online that may not be obvious: 1. It is more effective in achieving learning objectives than in-person instruction. 2. It is the best way to ensure that students will focus their attention on the work. 3. It is the only way to scale up the teaching of methods and to make that teaching available to the anthropology students who want it but cannot get it in any other way
Remote Research as Authentic Learning Online
This article reports on a pilot effort to use ArcGIS Online to create a decentralized archaeological mapping lab for digitizing and analyzing archaeological materials visible in satellite imagery. This effort meets student and project needs through an authentic learning opportunity. This effort promises to help us document and study archaeological sites that are likely to be erased before adequate study can be completed on the ground. The Casma Hinterland Archaeological Project (CHAP) reported on here has been successful in both advancing archaeological research in the Sechín Branch of the Casma River Valley, Peru, and in supporting students in skill building, degree completion, and as employees.
Tensions and Opportunities of Anthropology and the Academy Online
In March of 2020, the COVID-19 crisis precipitated an abrupt and unplanned shift to online instruction that is unlikely to completely reverse once the pandemic retreats. Thus, the academy and, by extension anthropology, stand at a COVID-19 accelerated crossroads between a corporeal tradition, a “virtual” present, and an unknown but transformed future. This article briefly explores existing tensions of anthropology and the academy online with the aim of informing a reflexive, equity-minded, and viable way forward. I draw from personal experience, empirical inquiry, and extant literature to examine the challenges and opportunities of online education, with a view to the potential future(s) of anthropology online. Issues explored include institutional trends and imperatives to go online, faculty resistance, student engagement, and the role that online instruction may play in disrupting/maintaining inequities in higher education.
Mind the Gap, But Don't Fret the Platform
This brief essay makes the case for effective online teaching and learning in anthropology. It addresses areas of traditional faculty resistance to online teaching and suggests that inline teaching has unique strengths and possibilities that can be used to encourage excellence in teachers and students in online anthropology courses.
Meeting Students (and Subjects) Where They Are: Perspectives in Teaching, Learning, and Doing Archaeology and Anthropology Online
This article introduces a special issue of Archaeology and Education that explores teaching and learning anthropology online. We argue that effective online teaching requires course design that supports participant interactivity, instructor presence, and student-centered opportunities for 'doing, not viewing.' Online modes of teaching, learning, and doing anthropology and archaeology address issues of educational equity and access in addition to providing opportunities for authentic learning that are not available through face-to-face instruction.
Adult Education at the Oriental Institute in the Twenty-First Century
For over fifty years, the Oriental Institute Adult Education program has taught outside of the traditional academic framework as exemplified by the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago. The classes of this program were converted to hybrid availability in 2015. The primary motivation for these expansions was to increase access to, and expand the audience for, the offerings within the program. In doing so, we have found a very motivated audience of global learners hungry for serious engagement with historical, linguistic, and anthropological issues. Although our experience has been punctuated largely by success, several challenges will require continual attention as we develop a more inclusive online environment.
Creating a Virtual Ethnographic Field School in an Off-line Community of Practice
This paper describes the creation of an asynchronous on-line ethnographic field school experience for lower division undergraduate students. Our Virtual Field School course offers a field school experience that accommodates the unique make-up of the University of Alaska Fairbanks (where fifty-five percent of undergraduates are “nontraditional” students). Typical ethnographic field schools demand that students can spend four to six weeks in an international fieldsite. Alaska’s geographic remoteness makes travel abroad prohibitively expensive for many students. Pedagogical and technological concerns are outlined, including the utilization of the SELIN distance delivery platform, coupled with Blackboard Learn. SELIN was created by anthropologists at the University of Neuchâtel (Switzerland) as a means of teaching upper division anthropology majors inductive reasoning and observation skills. SELIN courses are centered on authentic multimedia documentation of fieldsites, rather than texts or lectures. The pedagogical merits of the choice of the ethnographic site—the Alaska dog mushing community of practice—are discussed in light of novice anthropology students’ interests and abilities. The paper concludes by discussing the potential appeal of the virtual field school model to archaeology and the value of the unique type of multimedia materials created for the course for educational outreach.
ANTH101.com: A free and open course that works with or without a classroom
Anthropology is not just a discipline or a body of knowledge. It also contains a different “ethos” for seeing and being in the world. It is often this “ethos” that is what anthropology teachers are actually trying to “teach.” Anth101.com is a free and open textbook, and a hub for anthropology teaching resources, which are dedicated to this kind of transformative learning. The course and text are broken up into 10 lessons that connect to 10 challenge assignments that allow students to practice and embody the core ethos of anthropology.
Teaching anthropology online presents a unique opportunity to invite students to explore the world along with us, from wherever they might be. This journey can introduce students to the range of human potential and possibility, while also allowing them to better understand themselves, where they come from, their everyday lives, and the world around them. This article argues that online learning can transform offline living, especially when it engages everyone in their efforts to bring about change in their lives. It presents online teaching as a powerful act of engaged anthropology and an urgently needed experiment to develop online learning experiences that are relevant, useful, accessible, flexible, accommodating, and engaging for a wide range of students. Drawing on years of teaching anthropology online, this article offers tips and advice, along with specific examples and stories of lessons learned along the way. These tips encourage and help guide instructors to aim for “anthropology for everyone,” become a curator, think creatively about online possibilities rather than recreating on-campus courses, make anthropology relevant, and encourage real-world practice. By focusing on online learning for offline living, we not only teach students about the world, but actively engage with them to change and improve theirs.
GRAND CHALLENGE No. 3: DIGITAL ARCHAEOLOGY Technology-Enabled Learning in Archaeology
Archaeology is traditionally a hands-on, in-person discipline when it comes to formal and informal instruction; however, more and more we are seeing the application of blended and online instruction and outreach implemented within our discipline. To this point, much of the movement in this direction has been related to a greater administrative emphasis on filling university classrooms, as well as the increasing importance of public outreach and engagement when it comes to presenting our research. More recently, we have all had to adjust our activities and interactions in reaction to physical distancing requirements during a pandemic. Whether in a physical classroom or online, archaeologists must learn to properly leverage digital technology in order to create enthusiastic, engaging, respectful, and accessible (from-place and in-place) learning environments. This article brings together scholars who are learning to do just that. We apply a usable and easily navigated framework for archaeologists to consider while in either formal or informal educational environments and provide examples of how digital technologies can be applied to satisfy the three “presences”—social/emotional, teaching, and cognitive—required for a successful “community of inquiry” experience in archaeology. Examples are drawn from our personal experiences in North America, Central America, and Europe.
GRAND CHALLENGE No. 4: CURRICULUM DESIGN – Curriculum Matters: Case Studies from Canada and the UK
Archaeology in the 21st century faces outward more than inward, with many archaeologists working on projects that actively involve young people, descendant communities, diverse colleagues and clients, and the general public. The ways and means of learning and teaching about the past, as outlined in the curricula of primary, secondary, and post-secondary schools, always reflect the prevalent pedagogies of the age. Our paper comments upon two different ways of learning about archaeology. First, it presents an online university graduate program in Canada for post-Baccalaureate Cultural Resource Management (CRM) practitioners and a module on archaeology and education, which may form part of a variety of Master’s degrees in the UK. Second, it examines the ways in which archaeology has been introduced into a range of subjects in the National Curricula of the UK. Our goal is to inspire critical reflection upon the connections between the social milieu in which we teach and learn and the scope and focus of curricula and pedagogy in archaeology. We conclude with comments on current dynamics and desired futures at the fascinating interface of archaeology and education.
INTRODUCTION The ‘Other Grand Challenge’: Learning and Sharing in Archaeological Education and Pedagogy
This article serves as an introduction to a special issue titled "The ‘Other Grand Challenge’: Learning and Sharing in Archaeological Education and Pedagogy." In this introductory article, I briefly discuss the history of university-level archaeological education in Canada, primarily in light of considerations of accessibility and ethics. I then introduce the focus of the conference session I co-organized—dealing with grand challenges for the future of archaeological education and pedagogy, which forms the foundation for this special issue—inspired by a personal existential crisis and the intriguing role of stories and storytelling in archaeological education. The resources presented in this special issue include a series of collaborative articles and resulting discussion, as well as videos of original conference presentations (link in this introduction), all of which relate experiential stories of archaeological education and pedagogy and the grand challenges to come.
GRAND CHALLENGE No. 1: TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION Archaeological Pedagogy, Indigenous Histories, and Reconciliation in Canada
In 2015, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) released 94 Calls to Action, many of which pertain to education. Archaeological educators are called to find ways to integrate Indigenous knowledge into our classrooms, our teaching methods, and our curriculum at all levels of education. Across Canada, discussions are happening about how to decolonize and Indigenize curriculum, a process which will have significant implications for archaeological pedagogy. Drawing on both the specific text and the overall ethic of the TRC Calls to Action, I explore who teaches archaeology, what is taught, and what that means for archaeological pedagogy in post-secondary contexts. When we all gain knowledge based on Indigenous perspectives, we start to build healthy understandings of Indigenous peoples and cultures and begin the work of addressing the legacy of impacts by colonizing practices and policies outlined in the TRC report.