CUNY Academic Commons

One of the things I learned on the trip to the Weeksville Heritage Center was that the community around the building was heavily involved with the excavation of the village during the 1960s. This relates to Leone’s chapter, “African America,” where the community also took part in excavation of an African American household. I really enjoyed the d…[Read more]

This week’s readings were concerned with the fields of archaeology and bio-archaeology and how their methods can be used in new and novel ways to reflect critical understandings of the past. In Rubin’s chapter, the archaeological theory of “sites” is used to map out places and spaces that gay leathermen frequented in the South of Market Street…[Read more]

The readings for this week discussed how to conduct research in an efficient yet substantial way. Although Silberman and Purser’s chapter focuses on collective memory in the digital age, it still provides a resource for how to study online activity, as well as examples of digital mapping projects and methods. The authors criticize shallow d…[Read more]

In Professor Jaskiran Dhillon’s lecture, “Indigenous Resistance, Planetary Dystopia, and the Politics of Environmental Justice,” she discussed the usage of indigenous knowledge by colonial governments as a way to mediate the effects of climate change. She was critical of this approach, as indigenous knowledge is not merely what an indigenous indiv…[Read more]

The readings for this week discussed the processes of designating a space as worthy of preservation, and how some spaces have contested histories – causing them to receive less reverence and attention. Allen’s chapter talked about how the murder of Michael Brown in Ferguson is being memorialized and the effects it has on both local and broader c…[Read more]

Both readings point to the individualizing power of the panopticon – by isolating people, they are reduced down to their individuality and all group identities are forcibly shed. This has the ability to stifle political awareness and action, as the individual no longer feels part of something bigger. Foucault focuses on the automatizing effects of…[Read more]

This week’s readings focused on how aspects of identity are exhibited through the use of material, whether domestically or on a person’s body. The authors took unconventional ideas of material culture and applied it to various situations to show how individuals or family groups express their identity or desired activities through their dress and…[Read more]

The three articles by Harrison, Smith, and González-Ruibal each discuss a possible ideal future for archaeology concerning both method and theory. The authors recognize the political and social effects archaeology can have on historical narratives and futures. Harrison’s article, “Exorcising the ‘Plague of Fantasies…,'” focused on what he calls…[Read more]