In her lecture “the way we lived was shaped by objects”: Contemporary Reflections on Black Materiality, Whitney Battle-Baptiste discusses how her first book, Black Feminist Archaeology (2011) presents the components of a methodological tool kit to highlight how Americanist archaeologists can engage issues of race, class, gender, and sexuality. She also wanted archaeologists to amplify how identity and life experiences bring archaeologists to ask different questions of their data, employ multiple perspectives on material, and maintain an honest dialogue with colleagues and the communities they work with. She hoped her words would help to shift towards a more inclusive historical analysis that took into consideration how the past and the present are connected. Sites are no longer the only spaces where archaeologists are working. In the theory that we are in a moment where the “past is not past,” the power of archaeology is more important than ever.
Charles Eliot Norton Memorial Lectureship
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