Introduction

In working with communities of the African Diaspora, as exemplified in the case studies presented in this volume, we need to create new models for the intersection between scholars and communities. In the past this intersection has been poorly defined and exacerbated by these communities being intentionally excluded from the research, history, and heritage narratives for the sites to which they can claim ancestral ties (Blakey 2020). Traditionally, community archaeology has been seen as a means for archaeologists to engage on the behalf of communities from a top down approach. This volume has demonstrated the value and need for archaeologists to listen to the needs of communities, and engage accordingly using a bottom-up approach.

With community archaeology, it is important to define some differences between it and public archaeology. More often than not, public archaeology involves local communities who do not claim an association with the identity of the site occupants either through descent or historical affinity. Usually public archaeology deals with broader concepts such as civic engagement (Little and Shackel 2014), community preservation, or heritage (Shackel 2004, 2008). Communities in this volume without exception have either a cultural or descent identity with whom the projects are examining. As such, the projects engage in defining the identity of the community either from direct descent or affinity from race/historic context, not simply locality. For descendants of the African Diaspora, the relevance of these sites is even more important to self-identity and this group can have the greatest impact from archaeological findings (Franklin and Lee 2020).

Some thoughts on critically examining the definitions of community archaeology was carried out by Erve Chambers (2004) in his discussion of public archaeology. He began with the contrast between participatory and collaborative models of archaeology. Participatory archaeology is the traditional means of involving the public where communities are “allowed” to participate through site visits, oral history, or even volunteering. Such is the case with public archaeology. In some cases, such participatory archaeology involves an intentional selection of community members who have a vested interest in the site (especially for oral history) but other times it is purely circumstantial. By contrast, the collaborative model is one in which the community is seen as having a role in deciding the research agenda, including questions to be asked, interpretation of the site, and who is included in this process. This latter model is one all of the papers in this volume seek to attain.

Dawdy’s (2009) call to make the archaeology we conduct be more than just about our own needs provides further clarity for community archaeology. Extending the intent of archaeology means not using community archaeology as a thin veneer (Westmont and Clay's Introduction) over our act of supporting our own needs, whether this be contractual, tenure based, regulatory, or to satisfy a largely white institutional board. What Dawdy calls for is a look at the practical deliverables of archaeology to serve the needs of local and regional communities. Co-creating research with descendant communities of the African Diaspora is one such application with a high return for meaningful contributions.

Moving beyond our own disciplinary needs gets to the questions posed by Camille and Elizabeth in the introduction to this volume and bear repeating here: “how do we truly decolonize archaeology, down to the level of our methods? How do we ensure our primary motivations are the wellbeing of our communities, not our own careers or research questions? How do we rebuild the trust lost through so many mismanaged projects and mishandled public outreach efforts?” (Westmont and Clay 2021). What this means is being honest with how and why we are approaching our archaeological projects.

From a personal perspective, deciphering the discrepancy between participatory archaeology and collaborative archaeology has a special place in the public archaeology we are engaged in at James Madison’s Montpelier. At Montpelier, the department engages in public programs where participants come from all across the country to take part in hands-on archaeology programs. We have made these participatory programs a defining part of our department for close to two decades and have had over 1,200 participants work with us for a week at a time. For many of these participants, the experience fulfills checking a bucket list for taking part in an archaeology dig, and for others, they come year after year making it part of their vacation schedule. While the programs fulfill these participants need to continued learning and growth, our programs do not necessarily change their fundamental conception of their personal identity.

Our work with descendants of the Montpelier enslaved community is one where personal identity has been in the forefront of the descendants' engagement with the archaeological research process, site excavation, and archaeological staff. For this group, experiencing how we learn about their ancestors in a tangible way through participation in excavations has provided an opportunity for them to reconsider how their historic identity is formed. Considering my personal interactions with these groups with differing perceptions of engagement very much informed my reading of the projects contained in this volume. What it led me to do is consider reading these papers to answer questions regarding defining constituencies, levels of engagement, and how to make our research have a lasting impact. These get into the questions of how to create a methodology to meet the needs put forth by Westmont and Clay in the introduction of this volume. These papers move our archaeological ethos from being conventional to revolutionary. The authors of these papers practice how to take this revolutionary ethos to the next level of being a new set of goals and ethics for our discipline. This paper summarizes what can be gleaned from this volume in terms of methods derived from the case studies presented in this volume.

Defining a Methodology for Descendant Archaeology

First, what I came away from reading these papers is that what defines community archaeology is the project to have a bottom up strategy--meaning the goals, questions, and outcomes are determined by the community--and if not, the community gives consent to their application (McDavid  2002). The minimal goal is to ensure our research is co-creative (Bollwerk et al. 2015) and serves the needs of the community. Prioritizing the desires and needs of the community involves decentralizing projects and placing them in the hands of the community. For communities of the African Diaspora, being able to engage with the origin of their disenfranchisement (slavery) is one of the few means to provide testimony of the contributions of their ancestors not just in their domestic lives as family but also to the products of their labor (Furlong Minkoff et al. 2021). This makes community engagement that much more important a factor in their involvement in archaeological research. Being more than just a curiosity, archaeology serves as one of the few tangible means for defining their origins and identity as a people. This gives them a strong motivation to have a voice in how the archaeology of their ancestors takes place. It also makes it critical to have the community frame the questions they wish to have directed at the sites of their ancestral lands.

Reviewing these papers demonstrates the need for defining methodology and critical review of community involvement. What these papers bring to bear is incorporating community archaeology into the epistemology of archaeology provides a solid core for our research to have an impact. What I hope to accomplish in this chapter is to use the lessons learned from the case studies in this volume to show how community archaeology can be operationalized.

There are several methodological factors raised in the case studies presented in this volume. First is the need to carefully consider who is the constituency we are identifying as community. Are they direct descendants of the site, members of a shared set of traumas that continue to the present, or are they local residents whose lives are affected by the stories being explored through the archaeology of their community? The second factor is how we introduce the community to the archaeological project. Is this done with site tours, interviews such as oral history, or structured meetings where the role of community is defined? This introduction in many ways determines how the community is engaged in the archaeological project. Finally consideration needs to be given to how researchers follow through with the community to give them ownership of the project both during but more importantly after the completion of the project. The papers in this volume demonstrate varying modes of efficacy for each of these approaches. For the remainder of this section, I will highlight how the case studies in this volume provide examples of four different forms of descendant engagement: defining constituencies, introducing archaeology to the community, engaging the community through archaeology, and creating a sustainable exit strategy. These four areas are not necessarily sequential process, as there are feedback loops between each of these areas, but all four are brought out by the methods used in the case studies in this volume.

Defining Constituency

One of the most important parts of working with communities is defining the constituency with which you work, whether this be a direct descent, local residence, or broader association. With communities of African descent, associating individuals with a particular heritage site is often problematic due to the lack of documents associated with the sale of enslaved individuals, absence of names from the documentary record, and the dehumanizing aspect of chattel slavery that rendered individuals as property without legal identities (Blakey 2020). Rather than preventing the authors in this volume from having meaningful engagement with communities, the authors have challenged traditional conceptions of community by embracing notions of extended community and broader definitions of relatedness through the African Diaspora. With this work, these authors begin with a definition of community that is centered in a long line of community-based archaeology (Battle-Baptiste 2017; Blakey 1997).

More often than not, when archaeologists refer to engaging with communities, they refer to involving descendants of the site they are researching with their project. This involves a very broad constituency and taking a critical stance at defining community helps us define the goals of why we are seeking engagement. In other words, why are we engaging with communities--it is to obtain information such as oral history, is it to provide a local connection for the project, or is it to meet the needs of individuals and groups for whom the site we are researching has meaning. The projects discussed in the volume provide an excellent set of examples of how such a constituency is engaged and why certain individuals or groups were selected. Much of the motivation for such engagement comes from the goal of decolonizing our approaches to interpreting the past (Agbe-Davies 2010). This goal of decolonizing is enacted in differing manners with the projects present in this volume. The degree to which decolonizing occurred was largely dependent upon the distance between the archaeological projects and the community.

What is made clear from the case studies in this volume is that community constituencies are far more complex than just engaging with direct descendants. For Chardé Reid and Elizabeth Clay, community constituencies were defined as a local community with a historic affinity to the site. This affinity was derived from the shared historic context of descent from people of the African Diaspora and strong connections with the site from their daily lives. In these two case studies, the traditional histories that either ignored or outright denied Black lives at the local heritage sites brought the desire for the local Black community to become involved with the project. In the case of Chardé Reid’s work at Jamestown, the local community members she consulted with had connections to laborers at the site and an interest in interpreting the lives of the first Black Americans to be enslaved in Virginia and the United States. Elizabeth Clay’s research on the Guianese plantation of La Caroline in the rural inland developed a public archaeology approach to bring in groups with no direct descendant ties for the site she was working. As part of her public focus, Elizabeth Clay invited citizens from the coastal town of Cayenne to the site and garnered their interest in learning more about their shared heritage of enslaved ancestry. She made a conscious choice to begin limiting these visits to individuals of Afro-Guianese descent to avoid the influx of curious tourists who tended to circumvent the experience of local community members' discussions of their ancestral ties.

Such incursion of what Michael Blakey (2020) refers to as “occupiers,” those groups who inhabit ancestral lands with an interest in laying claim to a dominant history, is one that can create a hostile and dangerous environment for local communities. In her research on prison camps in rural Tennessee mining areas, Camille Westmont encountered a local community who had little knowledge of the Black convict community with which her work was engaged. Westmont discusses the need for engagement with the local white community to help them to understand the place that Black inmates held in the work camps at the mine. By educating the local white community, this would ensure the safety of bringing in the Black community the following season. At similar dark heritage sites (sites of exploitation) there is an uncomfortable and often dangerous space of violence for people of color that needs to be addressed (Battle Baptiste 2011). Such community engagement ensures that we as archaeologists do not unwittingly place community members in harm’s way.

Another manner of engagement is that of archaeologists engaging with already existing community groups in more formalized client relationships. This client model is similar to that developed by Blakey in his work on the African Burial Ground in New York City (Blakey 2020). With the clientage model the descendant/community group is seen as the ethical client making decisions on what questions should be asked, how the outcome of research will be used, and general oversight over the project (Fig. 1). Archaeologists serve in a professional capacity providing the necessary expertise related to specific tasks such as survey, sampling and recording. While clientage can be a voluntary relationship on the part of the archaeologists, it is designed to be carried out with a community group that is established with authority to make decisions. In the case of Tracy Jenkins project in Easton Maryland and Cheryl White’s project in Suriname, South America, working with existing communities provided an institutionalized structure to guide the relationship--and ensured that the constituency was defined by the community, not by the archaeologist in charge of the project.

Fig. 1
figure 1

African Burial Ground clientage of public engagement illustrating how constituencies related to a project are defined and interact (Blakey 2020).

Full size image

In the case of Jenkin’s research, the community groups who engaged archaeologists were Historic Easton, Inc. and the East End Neighborhood Association. These community organizations allowed the project to be embedded into a predefined constituency that was governed by existing policy and decision-making procedures. Such a scenario ensures not only a constituency to engage, but also accountability--and the ability for the community to have private discussions away from the project leads. In this manner, the community is self defined and does not draw on artificial boundaries imposed by outside researchers.

In the case of Cheryl White’s interaction with local communities, the constituency was defined by the Suriname national government. Work by NGOs in Suriname is dependent on researchers obtaining permission from local groups for oral testimony regarding their descendant territory. This removed the choice of what group for her to work with but brought about a situation that she embraced for her research. White used this as an opportunity to work with the local community to map their space from local knowledge of terrain, agricultural areas and hunting ground frequented, and presence of artifacts. Through this process, she ended up working with different groups--male hunting bands, women agricultural units, and youths who assisted with mapping. In this way, various views were taken into consideration and community input was multivariate.

Hartemann discusses how community is brought into a research project when the principal investigator is a descendant. In their chapter, they center their place as defining the gap between their “hegemonic spaces of western knowledge: and their one “linguistic, cultural, epistemological, ontological, and cosmological references” that come from their heritage as a Guianese person of African descent. In the process, they recognize the two contingencies (two different settlements whose boundaries overlap the plantation community she is studying) necessitate different approaches. While they engage the local community, they position themselves with perspectives guided by their status as a descendant in the engagement.

One of the most compelling definitions of constituency has been created by the Estate Little Princess Archaeological Project (ELPAP). In addition to the local community, ELPAP staff see their own project as a constituency to be engaged. This engagement is effected through shared authority—decisions are not vested in one PI, but through multiple points that span all partners in the project. This has led to a more open discourse in regard to methods, research questions, and goals for the project. What has made this definition of constituency important is that ELPAP is active in recruiting local students to take part in the project not just through participatory archaeology but once trained, as staff. As such, including the team in the larger decision making process ensures that local students witness the higher level management of the project and learn what it takes to create a team-based research program. This structure ensures that any definitions of “us” as archaeologists and “them” as community/constituents are mitigated against through daily interactions.

Being intentional and honest (both to ourselves and the community) about how the community is absolutely key to successful engagement with descendant communities. The more the definition of who is seen as constituents can be turned over to a descendant community, the more inclusive the community will become. In addition, this self-definition ensures the community has ownership over the project and gradually removes us (the archaeologists) from exclusivity in decision making and investment in the research. This process of having the community become self-defined for the life of the project is one that is ever changing--as more community members become involved and as the community learns more about the project. This makes the next step in community engagement-- introducing archaeology (both as a concept and the project) to the community-- a critical part of definition.

Introducing Archaeology to the Community

Archaeology is not a self-evident field of study to the public. Often confused with the quest for artifacts, even historians have problems understanding the connection between what we do and deciphering human behavior in the past (Little ….). This presents a challenge to working collaboratively with communities as we don’t want to assume the role of experts, but we still need to let the community know the kinds of questions archaeology can answer. As with all the aspects of archaeology, this runs the fine line of what Diserens Morgans discusses with her work with the Tihosuco community in Mexico as dissolving the boundaries between communities and so-called experts (Fryer and Diserens Morgan 2021). Removing these boundaries not not only ensures a humility in our work that goes beyond inclusion, but that these are lived histories of which we will never have complete understanding. Such humility allows us to be able to give up the expert card as necessary, know when to contribute and when to step back and let things develop.

The authors in this volume presented several techniques for introducing archaeology to the community including: site tours, interviews, and hands-on archaeology. One of the basic methods that archaeologists use to introduce concepts to the public is through site tours. In her work in French Guiana, Elizabeth Clay brought urban participants on tours that took advantage of the remoteness of the site. During the transport to the site area, there were points along the way in which project leads engaged visitors in conversations to relate to them regarding their views on slavery in Guiana. Such a structured site visit allowed the group to be at the same discussion point by the time they reached the archaeological site.

Another traditional means of getting community members thinking about archaeology is through interviews to solicit information about community history and sites. Jeff Burnett used this technique in his work in Martha’s Vineyard to get participants to understand what questions could be asked of archaeology. In her work with the community associated with Jamestown, Virginia, Chardé Reid used interviews in a more non-traditional way to discuss the history of how the history being told at Jamestown engaged with the community. In these discussions, Reid discussed the relationship between community members and the cultural heritage presented at the site.

Several of the other projects used participatory archaeology to introduce community members to archaeology. Westmont brought community members to the site to help with the excavations. The hands-on experience acted as a foil to bring participants out of their comfort zone to talk about the hard history of the prison camp. Being at the site and seeing the process of recovering artifacts made the lives of the Black prison laborers real for the local white residents. The tactic of using physical artifacts to make the lives of the disenfranchised real is an effective strategy for building trust and empathy.

The case studies also demonstrate effective ways to build familiarity with archaeology among direct descendant groups. What several of the case studies demonstrate is how building the capacity of local residents for sharing their knowledge of their ancestors' material culture brings about perspectives we as archaeologists would never have. White in her work in Suriname used artifacts as a common reference point between archaeologists and local descendants to determine the location of sites and community territorial boundaries. Local residents were familiar with artifacts from their farming, and discussing them as markers for site locations brought about a discussion of the ancient living spots. From there, she had community members begin to discuss the sites in relation to their daily activities and connected history. In this way, White used the introduction of community members to artifacts as a means to bring authority back to the community and then create more discussion.

In a similar vein, Gabby Hartemann used artifacts as a means to establish a common reference point--from which Hartemann allowed community members to discuss artifacts in their own Afroguianese language and talk about their importance to their lives. By giving priority to native language, oral history and elders, Hartemann used what they refer to as a “Griotic” archaeological approach. The Griotic approach prioritizing the language and culture of the elders ensured that the views of the community were emphasized, and downplayed the expert role that archaeologists tend to be placed in the research setting.

A key part of participatory work with the community is building enough familiarity with our methods so community members place a more active role in how the data gets interpreted. By understanding how we collect our data, what types of information we can recover, and what the goals of our processes are, the community can begin to ask additional questions we never thought to consider. In the author’s work at Montpelier, having the community take part in excavation and lab programs led to a whole new set of questions being asked of everyday objects, such as tobacco pipes, that we would have otherwise overlooked.

Community Engagement

Erve Chambers (2004:205), in his article on community archaeology, stated that bringing the community into the development of research questions is what differentiates participatory archaeology from collaborative archaeological projects. This transition to a collaborative approach is where we move beyond simply introducing the community to our archaeological methods, but have them contribute to the process. For the projects described in this volume, there are several methods used to ensure that what Blakey (2020) refers to as “white entitlement over their stewardship” of history and heritage is not only avoided but seen as completely unacceptable. What becomes clear from each case study is that strategies for engagement are different to each community and key to their success is spending the time to learn about each community to ensure effective engagement.

Gabby Hartemann centers on the Guianese culture, language, and African diasporic spiritual practices (Candomble) to gain proximity to the cultural groups being studied and decolonized from western influence--and bringing the concept of storytelling and conversation into the presentation of archaeology. This use of language combined with the Griotic archaeology approach (giving priority to oral history and elders) ensures that what defines archaeology is not simply a means to extract information to reframe it in a western perspective, but to preserve the meaning endowed by the community’s culture. This approach preserves the sanctity of the community in the interpretation and ensures their voice is dominant. In this manner, the place of community is preserved and remains a visible sign of relevance to the outside world.

Another technique is embedding analytical strategies of the local community into our research methods. White accomplished this in her research in Suriname by incorporating maroon community’s place designations in her mapping of the community territory. Placing trees, gardens, streams, and other landscape elements that were self identified by the community into the physical mapping of the landscape provided an infusion of community identity into the ethos of the project--and a lasting set of reference points that the community could see as a visible reflection of their input and encoded reference to their beliefs.

These reference points are only a beginning to the inclusion of the community in a research project. What is absolutely necessary is addressing the community needs in the research design and interpretation. An important concept in engagement is discussed by Gabby Hartemann as “staying in silence and working with humility” (pers. comm.). This approach gives the community the room to speak and be heard. In her work with local community members, Chardé Reid engaged this approach to develop a full understanding of the omissions and gaps in history that the Jamestown community noted in the interpretation presented by the APVA. Her intensive listening resulted in her strategizing with community members on how to identify the gaps in history and make plans to ensure that future interpretation avoided the biases of the past.

In a similar vein, Elizabeth Clay’s work with urban visitors in French Guiana allowed for space for intentional reflection that combined with project members presenting histories of the sites they were visiting. This approach is similar to that advocated by Sites of Conscience in their Arc of Dialogue. The Arc of Dialogue is a set of techniques designed to allow site interpreters to quickly meet site visitors where they are at in terms of their political views and knowledge of history, gain their trust, and step them towards developing a sense of empathy for the topic at hand. The final step is to encourage them to take what they have learned back to their community. Such techniques were critical for Clay in her interaction with visitors to allow them to bring what they have learned about their plantation heritage back into their own lives away from La Caroline.

A central tenant in dialogue process is to identify the need of what the PIs for Estate Little Princess project identify as “Slow Archaeology” in which time is taken to “acknowledge past trauma and have a commitment to redress where transparency, access, and representation are ingrained into project designs” (Flewellen et al. 2021: 15). This work pays careful attention to detail and a presence of mind to acknowledge the influence and impact projects have on local communities.

The involvement of multiple partners in the ELPAP project (ranging from local boys and girls club, local historical societies, and conservation groups to list a few) necessitates such an approach. A critical part of slow archaeology is taking the tact used in work with Native American archaeology of collaborative rather than simply consultative archaeology (Murray 2011). This part of Slow Archaeology ensures that the community is part of every process—and has the chance to voice concerns over areas they want more involvement or effort placed. By being involved in every aspect of the project, ELPAP staff give community partners the chance to self-select where they want their voice heard. It is only by opening the opportunity to partner in all aspects of the project that the community has the ability to provide input on areas that impact their lives.

A more formalized and contractual method of engaging with communities is through the Clientage model as presented by Blakey (2020). In this model, the descendant community is seen as the ethical client whose place within the research project is an ethical lens through which decisions are passed. Archaeologists’ role in this scheme is to provide professional expertise in terms of research methods and techniques, but defer to the community as the ethical client in decision making, especially around research goals (Blakey 2020). More often than not, such an approach is taken when the community is organized as a formal institution and serves as a gatekeeper for the resources.

Tracy Jenkins' work with the Easton Community demonstrates the clientage approach. As discussed in the constituency section, the two historical groups in Easton hired University of Maryland archaeologists to conduct the project. As such, the community hit the ground running in terms of involvement and automatically made themselves the client and the decision-making role was defined from the beginning. No work could take place without consultation and the questions being asked, sites being excavated, and timing of the project was determined by the local community. In this manner, archaeology happened at the bequest of the community and created a binding relationship between archaeologists and community. Such a defined relationship is ideal when projects are determined to be shorter in nature, goal driven, and time specific.

Creating a Sustainable Exit Strategy

Community archaeology seeks to make an impact on the people with which the archaeologists are working. Unlike communities, however, archaeological projects are not long lived. Most projects are relatively fleeting—with a project that runs for 20 years seen as having tremendous longevity. Communities, however, will remain long after the archaeological projects are over. In my own personal experience, I have revisited communities where archaeology has taken place, and local individuals involved in the project have asked, when is so and so coming back to do more archaeology? With no closure or follow up, communities can be left feeling very devalued after a project has completed, especially when there has been a bond between archaeologists and community members. At a minimum, all community projects should have what Carol McDavid and Terry Brock (2015) refer to as an “ethical exit strategy” or how archaeologists can leave a collaborative project with sustainability in mind. The papers in this volume provide some excellent examples of not only how to ensure closure, but also to give ownership of the project to the community—the group who has the greatest investment in the heritage we are studying.

As alluded to in the clientage approach, one way to define this relationship is through contractual means. From the beginning, the extent of the project is defined with everyone at the table. In the end, at the end of the project, the data and information is turned over to the community for their ownership. In the case of the Easton project, today one can visit “The Hill Community Project” and the local community lists the archaeology on their own terms. There is no termination of the information—the information derived from archaeology is defined in language of the community with the community having ownership of the results and incorporating it into their own heritage language (TheHillCommunityProject.org).

In a very similar manner, White’s work in Suriname is one where national permits needed to conduct archaeology resulted in community engagement that would have a lasting effect. The groups White worked with were able to witness how their views of their hunting and farming areas could be recorded to legally document their world view. White notes that maroons are hyper vigilant about how their cultural heritage is defined, and as such had ownership over the process.

Not all projects have a vested community organization who have requested work to be carried out. In the case of Chardé Reid’s work in Jamestown, her research was seeking ways to ensure site interpretation took into account the views and interest of the community. In her work with local residents, Reid sought to have community members reconsider whose heritage is represented at the site to reflect their own lives. Upon completion of her project, its legacy is decolonizing the interpretation of Jamestown and providing a space for community members to see themselves reflected at the site. Unlike Jenkin’s project, Reid was not contractually obligated to serve the needs of the community, but found the means to work this into her project’s working goals. Such community heritage work is also seen in Elizabeth Clay’s work with French Guiana, Camille Westmont’s work in Tennessee, and Jeffrey Burnett’s work in Martha’s Vineyard. In all cases, the projects leave the communities with more than what they came with--and strove to define the project on the communities’ terms.

In her work, Chardé Reid references a set of guidelines created by The Montpelier Foundation, The National Trust for Historic Preservation and a team of museum professionals, descendants, and activists to provide guidelines between heritage sites and descendant communities (Montpelier 2018). This resulted in a published set of guidelines entitled “Engaging Descendant Communities in the Interpretation of Slavery at Museums and Historic Sites: A Rubric of Best Practices Established by the National Summit on Teaching Slavery” (Fig. 2). This document provides a means to measure the progress towards parity in all relationships between heritage institutions and communities and has some excellent metrics for archaeological projects that work with descendant communities. The goal of using this rubric is constant negotiation to ensure descendant communities have a place at the table in terms of the research, interpretation, and governance of a project.

Fig. 2
figure 2

Title page for rubric for “Engaging Descendant Communities” (James Madison’s Montpelier 2018).

Full size image

Another strategy for continued engagement is made apparent in the work of ELPAP’s work with local students. The express goal of bringing Black Crucian students into the project was intended to direct them towards the field of archaeology, heritage resources, and local heritage tourism. In addition, staff of the ELPAP have made concerted efforts to build the resources of St. Croix historical societies to build museums and artifact repositories. In this project, the goal is not research driven but community driven. The point of archaeology is expressly to build the capacity of the community to use archaeology as a resource in local development. Such a legacy is one where the community project is taken on by the local constituency in a way that allows the community to begin to define the parameters for future research. A key part is inspiring local students to engage in and pursue a college degree in a heritage-related field. This allows them to see their community as having historical resources that are relevant to their identity and use these resources to pursue a livelihood.

What comes from such research is providing opportunities for local and descendant community members to become professionals. Gabby Hartemann’s research is a case in point. As a Guianese scholar, Gabby is pursuing their research in terms that can only be attained from cultural affiliation with their own ancestors. The time for objective research by distanced anthropologists is a thing of the past. Our profession is recognizing the need to give authority to local community members. The ultimate expression is for local Black community members to conduct the research themselves. This is one of the strongest ways to decolonize the field of African Diaspora archaeology.

Summary

The authors in this volume are all setting the course for community archaeology. What the chapters in the volume vividly demonstrate is that African Diaspora-based community archaeology is not just the future of archaeology but it is the archaeology of today. The remarkable diversity of approaches show that manner by which a wide variety of community contexts can be incorporated into project design. By defining their projects with a community focus, they are demonstrating the power of doing archaeology from the bottom up. These papers not only provide excellent case studies for how this can be accomplished, but also for building some compelling concepts for methods of working with communities. Overall, the papers in this volume can be typed into three modes of community engagement: heritage engagement, clientage archaeology, and community ownership.

With heritage engagement, communities are brought in to create an interpretive approach that allows insight into how the project outcomes fit the needs of the community. Discussing project outcomes and ensuring a proper match between community and interpretation results ensures a legacy that survives the project.

Clientage archaeology brings a more formal definition between the archaeology project and the community. The clientage approach places the decision making in the hands of the community and the outcomes to be determined with the community serving as the client. Community ownership ensures even more control as this situation is one in which the community owns the project resources and directs the archaeological project from its inception to completion. What all of these project types have in common is intensive collaboration between the community and the archaeological project. This moves beyond public archaeology to community archaeology.

Beyond the specifics of the case studies presented in these volumes, the authors inspire us to move towards looking at how to change our profession to decenter a Western approach to archaeological practice to one that centers the communities we study (Mignolo 2012). Archaeological ethics have traditionally focused on justifying our existence—calling out the sale of artifacts, destruction of sites, and the public focus often centered on creation of publications that too often are directed at our own colleagues, and the public aspects being relegated to interpretations derived from academic questions not the needs of the public. What this volume pushes is ethics surrounding meeting the needs of communities—once instituted, this would result in a more careful consideration of methods to ensure communities’ needs were prioritized (González-Ruibal, 2018).

We are now at a point in our discipline where we should not have to justify ourselves through epistemological wrangling and claiming the scholarship for ourselves. What we need to do is define what community archaeology is—what this volume has shown is that empowering the community is only effective when it happens from the bottom up, not top down. All of the papers in this volume challenge why we do archaeology and strive to have our profession provide services to the communities for which archaeology is most relevant. The archaeology of peoples of the African Diaspora is one of the most relevant sets of data for these communities. We provide the professional capacity to conduct the research, but making the communities the client. Relinquishing power over our research and production of knowledge does not mean that we lose our expert status, communities will always look to our expertise (Stottman 2010). The real challenge is using archaeology as a tool for engagement and empowerment--not of ourselves but of the public whose heritage we represent (Dawdy 2009).

A critical piece to this empowerment is doing what this volume embodies--writing about examples of community engagement to show its effectiveness and efficacy. By documenting projects in peer-reviewed publications, we will build precedent. The academic canon is created by well-laid out case studies that receive peer review, and become widely cited by peers (McDavid and Brock 2015). Generating volumes such as this set of case studies ensure that community archaeology becomes part of the norm of accepted and necessary practices in the field of archaeology. The relevance of community member’s views of artifact interpretation is just as important as the musings of archaeological scholars. One does not need to look past the contemplative and politically decontextualized studies of blue beads, origins of manufacture of Chesapeake tobacco pipes, and other nuanced studies to realize the broad range of questions that can be legitimately asked of the archaeological record. This is not to delegitimize these studies, just to show that questions brought by communities about their heritage have an equal and valid footing to questions generated by the scholars deep in the discipline of archaeology. By making community studies become a part of the academic canon, we ensure the voices of communities have an equal footing. A critical part of community validation is including descendants as authors in such publications. A side benefit is entering these studies into the academic canon is what we need as archaeologists for tenure, status, and legacy. Let’s make it work for everyone.

With more case studies come more familiarity and necessity of bringing in a community archaeology approach to our professional ethics. Our academic discussions should be pushing our profession forward, not justifying already existing epistemologies. In addition, more articles mean that the field of community archaeology has a more rigorous set of standards developed and that measures for effectiveness can be had. This sample of case studies shows what rich work is possible--and the multiple perspectives that can be wrought. In addition, with communities represented, there is more of a chance of local community members seeing archaeology as a place to enter as a career. Studies such as Gabby Hartemann’s show the power that comes from a local influence on epistemological logic. Not only does this bring a perspective that allows archaeological data to closely be paired with communities' definitions of themselves, it allows community members to see how archaeology can represent their world views. This community-centered approach continues the cycle of relevance and place that ensures sustainability of our work with communities and the public. Such careful collaboration gives archaeology a chance to become a vital part of communities’ identity and heritage. In the end, communities are the key to protecting archaeological resources and making archaeology key to defining their heritage makes such protection a natural outcome.