Archaeology as a Tool of Civic Engagement (review)

In this age of increasing isolation from larger social and civic communities, more and more archaeologists are embracing the practice of engaging the public in their projects. Long-standing ivory towers have come crashing down over the last thirty years, as academics have come to realize that seeking civic engagement provides benefit all around, as a way to reconnect constituent stakeholders with their pasts as well as for enriching archaeological results and interpretation. The articles in Barbara J. Little and Paul A. Shackel's edited volume Archaeology as a Tool of Civic Engagement (AltaMira 2007) take public engagement one step farther, considering archaeology as a means of effecting social change.

In the lead article Little sets the stage for the remainder of the volume, outlining a framework for incremental levels of civic engagement. The lowest level of engagement excludes stakeholders, and the framework then moves through increasing levels of engagement: viewing stakeholders as a resource to mine for data; as a resource needing assistance from the archaeological community; and ultimately as part of a reciprocal relationship where the stakeholders and archaeologists empower one another (7-9).

There have been a number of well-publicized archaeological projects where civic engagement played a critical role—Manhattan's African Burial Ground and the more recent President's House in Philadelphia, to name two—but this volume allows the reader a look into a broad range of projects. Little and Shackel are to be commended on assembling a breadth of perspectives and approaches in the volume's thirteen articles. Some use more traditional approaches to civic engagement (often in combination with other, less traditional means of engagement)—working with historic house museums to incorporate the stories of all residents of a plantation (Stahlgren and Stottman), using oral histories to aid in creating special tours and publications that focus on formerly neglected stakeholders (Praetzellis, Praetzellis, and Van Bueren), and involving descendants in archaeological excavations (Brooks).

Other articles describe projects that took a more intensive approach, with archaeologists adopting an active role in the pursuit of justice. Colwell-Chanthaphonh's moving and powerful article makes the point that struggles over the past are often actually control and power struggles in the present (24). His article discusses how archaeological recovery of victims of sanctioned violence and military personnel missing in action are helping individuals and communities seek healing. Archaeology was also used as a means of restorative justice in West Oakland, where archaeologists worked with community activists in the wake of the Loma Prieta earthquake to help physically and emotionally reunite an African American neighborhood that had been divided by highway construction in the 1950s (Praetzellis, Praetzellis, and Van Bueren). Shackel's article discusses New Philadelphia, a mid-nineteenth-century Illinois town founded by a free African American and home to a multicultural society in the nineteenth century. The archaeological field school at New Philadelphia addresses race and racism, involving both the students and the local community as a way not only to help local residents understand the town's multicultural past but also to promote a multicultural present (255).

While many of the articles involve African American history and archaeology (Britt, Gadsby and Chidester, Jeppson, McDavid, Mullins, Praetzellis et al., Shackel, Stahlgren and Stottman), others deal with projects that engaged varied constituents—including Chinese Americans (Moyer), Native Americans (Gallivan and Moretti-Langholtz), religious minorities (Brooks), victims of genocide and other forms of sanctioned violence (Colwell-Chanthaphonh), and even early archaeological laborers (Jeppson). Some authors couch their thoughts within the context of specific projects (Gallivan and Moretti-Langholtz at the Powhatan chiefdom's political center at Werowocomoco, Praetzellis and colleagues in West Oakland, and Brooks at the Doukhobor Pit House Project in Saskatchewan, to name three examples), while others use several projects to discuss the challenges and benefits of using a civic engagement approach (Stahlgren and Stottman on historic house museums, McDavid on racism and white privilege, and Moyer on museum exhibits as...