Dawdy's keynote paper, rather than answering the question whether archaeology is useful, asks whether it should be useful. That is, she asks whether archaeology needs to be useful beyond archaeology for archaeology's sake. It is a valid question, because many people see archaeology as a non-essential option, of peripheral use if any. For others, archaeology's utility lies in its ability to provide the long-term view of human behaviour and humankind's reactions to situations of the past that, hopefully, we might use to help us deal with present and future events.
As an Indigenous person (I am a member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, an American Indian tribal group), I wish to comment in two areas. First, I believe the issue is not so much whether archaeology should be useful, but rather that archaeology should not be used against any group of people. Dawdy reminds us of the use to which Kossinna and the Nazi regime put archaeology of the state, and her comparison to the words of V. Gordon Childe serves as a counterpoint and an example of archaeology of the state done for ‘good’. Dawdy also reminds us that such use of archaeology in support of the state has not been done only in Europe, and her use of citations from Fowler, Trigger, Kehoe and Hinsley concerning American Indian issues with archaeology are well placed. She believes that contemporary American archaeology's considerations of indigenous communities are ‘quite clearly oriented towards smoothing the way so archaeologists can placate a potentially troublesome public and still go about their business’ (p. 137) in the post-NAGPRA world – this is probably more correct than anyone has dared suggest prior to this juncture, but it only goes so far.
I have elsewhere offered a broad overview of Indigenous perspectives on archaeology (Watkins 2005). Perhaps the most telling perspective is that offered by Don Sampson, a former Board of Trustees chairman for the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation. In a position paper related to the Kennewick Man case, Sampson noted,
We want the public and scientists to understand that we do not reject science. In fact, we have anthropologists and other scientists on staff, and we use science every day to help in protecting our people and the land. However, we do reject the notion that science is the answer to everything and therefore it should take precedence over the religious rights and beliefs of American citizens (Sampson 1997).
A year later, another group involved in the Kennewick process reaffirmed the stance. Marla Big Boy, an attorney for the Colville Tribe, told reporters at a press conference in Santa Fe in December 1998, ‘The Colville Tribe is not against science. We are against the use of science to discriminate and disenfranchise Native American tribes’ (Big Boy, as quoted in Coleman 1998). In both these statements, the general term ‘science’ is used in place of ‘archaeology’, and both of these groups were united in their fight against the implication that the interests of ‘science’ should somehow trump all other values.
Second, as hinted at in Sampson's statement, I believe that there are some tribes who seem to have found a ‘use’ for archaeology. The Pawnee Tribe of Oklahoma has chosen to use archaeology in order to expand what might be considered its ‘aboriginal homeland’ as well as to extend ‘Pawnee identity’ further back into the archaeological record. I documented a portion of their use of archaeology to get the Salinas Burial Pit (a ‘tourist attraction’ in Kansas) closed and the human remains and associated funerary artefacts reburied in 1990 (Watkins 2000, 105–10) and their efforts to reclaim human remains and associated grave goods from the Nebraska Historical Society for reburial in 1991 (ibid., 110–15). Further, the Pawnee have continued to request the return of human remains from other institutions for reburial. A ‘Notice of inventory completion for Native American human remains and associated funerary objects in the possession of the Colorado Historical Society, Denver, CO’, published on 11 July 2002, in the Federal register (US Government 2002), outlined the disposition of human remains and associated funerary objects from the collections of the Colorado Historical Society. The Colorado Historical Society determined that the
preponderance of the evidence, including archaeology, oral traditions presented during consultations with the tribes listed above, expert opinion, and new evidence provided by the Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma in their repatriation request . . . indicates that a relationship of shared group identity can be reasonably traced between these human remains and associated funerary objects and the Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma (US Government 2002).
The repatriation of the material from the Nebraska Historical Society established a relationship between the Pawnee and prehistoric Loup River/Itskari-phase sites or remains of the Central Plains Tradition, dated to the period between about A.D. 1100 and 1350 (Steinacher and Carlson 1998, 256). The material recovered from the Colorado Historical Society further expanded the Pawnee's reach back in time as human remains associated with the Early Ceramic period or Plains Woodland (ca A.D. 100–1000) were repatriated to the tribe.
While the long-term legal ramifications of this manoeuvring are unclear, these actions have created a de facto aboriginal homeland for the Pawnee tribe that spans a great portion of the central and southern Great Plains (the states of Colorado, Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma). It has also created a legal precedent for extending the amorphous concept of ‘shared group identity’ from a contemporary culture back in time to an archaeological one. It is possible (though not very probable) that, should the United States government wish to return federal land within these states to an American Indian tribe at some point in the future, perhaps the Pawnee Tribe will have the strongest claim based on this ‘relationship’. Not all of the relationships between the tribe and archaeologists have been amiable, but the tribe has learned to work effectively within the system established by repatriation legislation.
Additionally, as a result of amendments to the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, tribal authorities have taken over the functions of the State Historic Preservation Officer on tribal lands. A review of the website of the National Association of Tribal Historic Preservation Officers revealed 76 tribal historic preservation officers in 24 states covering more than 34 million acres (see http://www.nathpo.org/THPO/state_list.htm) that have been formally recognized by the National Park Service as meeting the qualifications necessary to take over the functions of the State Historic Preservation Officers. These represent people who work for American Indian tribes to minimize impacts to cultural heritage on tribal lands. It is important to note that I did not say impacts to tribal heritage, since these offices focus only on the cultural heritage of the land under tribal control. The geographical shortcomings of the National Historic Preservation Act are another matter, but I mention the THPO programme because it indicates a formal American Indian attempt to use at least a portion of archaeology's tools to manage American Indian heritage. In my opinion, this indicates that some tribes have found archaeology ‘useable’, if not ‘useful’.
The Navajo Nation Historic Preservation Department, through its Cultural Resources Compliance Section, coordinates consultation and compliance procedures to facilitate the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ compliance with tribal and federal preservation laws as well as providing technical support to tribal members. In this manner, it supports the nation's sovereignty by providing its own compliance systems over federal requirements. It also acts to speed up projects that require compliance with historic preservation laws and regulations to allow services to get to local tribal members more quickly. Even in this regard, however, the Navajo Nation does not ‘use’ archaeology.
An analysis of the situation makes some things clear. It is possible for American Indian groups and archaeologists to work together when united for a common cause, and American Indians are not averse to working within an established system to get things accomplished. Archaeologists were able to use the positive publicity generated by the closing of the Burial Pit to influence the Kansas legislature to obtain passage of a law which protects unmarked burials from destruction, and at the same time American Indians got a law that protects unmarked burials from commercial exploitation. There are some areas, therefore, where American Indian tribes have been eager to take over various aspects of archaeology.
Even while many American Indians as individuals recognize the validity of information that archaeologists can provide concerning cultures within geographical areas of the past, it is unlikely that these groups feel the need to embrace any explanatory power archaeology might offer. Tribes have entered into conversations with archaeologists, and those conversations often revolve around the different ideas concerning the archaeological record and the past.
Sometimes the conversation has been initiated by archaeologists working in conjunction with tribal people (cf. Anyon et al. 1997; Dongoske et al. 1997; Whiteley 2002), and other times it comes from the perspectives of an American Indian trying to unite the work of archaeologists with tribal perspectives (Echo-Hawk 2000). Regardless, archaeologists who work with American Indians recognize that the archaeological record can become fuller and more meaningful by integrating American Indians with the beginnings of the research programme. For example, archaeologists Chip Colwell-Chanthaphonh and T.J. Ferguson interviewed representatives of the Hopi, the Tohono O'odham, the Western Apache, and the Zuni – Native American groups that consider the San Pedro River valley to fall within the boundaries of their traditional homelands – to tie the archaeology of the area with ‘learning how Native peoples conceive of the ancestors, documenting the cultural values descendant communities have for ancestral villages and understanding the historical narratives embedded in tribal traditions’ (Ferguson and Colwell-Chanthaphonh 2006, 4). Rather than trying to use archaeology to explain or delineate culture history, the authors chose to highlight the tribal perspectives on the area in a manner that was more fitting to those perspectives.
As indicated in the previous discussion, I still do not believe American Indians find archaeology ‘useful’ in its scientific sense as a means of giving them additional information concerning their past. Perhaps this is not so much a shortcoming of the discipline as it is a strength of American Indian belief in the value of individual tribal perspectives. If archaeology as a discipline wishes to strengthen its standing among American Indian groups, it must continue to search for ways to make what it has to offer truly useful to American Indians. Such utility may continue to be found merely within the compliance area, where American Indian projects are impacted by federal preservation legislation. Archaeologists must also search out ways to integrate the ‘scientific record’ with tribal perspectives in order to supplement rather than supplant tribal views of the past and the roles of the cultures within it. Otherwise, archaeology will lose any utility to those whose ancestors contributed to the archaeological record we study.
