Tuesday June 2nd 2020 was a day of solidarity around the world.
However we at Archaeologists Engage are aware that we must not show allyship on just one day, there must be a commitment in the international heritage sector, which facilitates access to the interpretation of history to do more, ongoing.
Yesterday we posted a statement about what we believed we could do to be better in our field of archaeology and cultural heritage. We wanted to share this on a more permanent platform with you all, as something of a mission statement.
As ARCHAEOLOGISTS and cultural heritage professionals we have a particular opportunity to bring about change in the narrative.We work internationally, across the world, cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary. We can help stop discrimination.
What can we do?
We can ensure diversity in our research institutions.
We can ensure diverse excavation teams.
We can be inclusive of community groups and indigenous communities when planning projects.
We can be inclusive of community groups and indigenous communities when planning projects.
We can amplify the voices of local archaeologists.
We can counter misinformation.
We can ENGAGE more with our communities.
We can ENGAGE more with our communities.
We can acknowledge the politicisation of our work.
We can become involved in education programmes.
We can highlight and work with charities to provide access to heritage and about heritage to minority or disadvantaged communities.
We can highlight misinterpretation in past work.
We can call out problems.
We can tell the stories that need telling.
We can empower individuals.
We can empower communities.
As educators, researchers, institutions, cultural centres, community activists, volunteers, professionals…..
We can do more
We can make discrimination out of date
#makediscriminationoutofdate
Thank you for reading and engaging!
Dr Tathagata Neogi, Dr Belinda Tibbetts, Linn Marie Krogsrud, Emily Wapshott
Anthropologists and archaeologists who work closely with the local
communities are normally required to submit their research proposal to an
institutional ethics committee for scrutiny. Although initially this might seem
cumbersome, it is a necessary academic ritual that makes the researcher aware
of their ethical boundaries and responsibilities in the field while engaging
closely with a community in their own cultural contexts. It also seeks to
protect the interest of the participating communities by encouraging the
researcher to acquire informed consent from their interlocutors. The researcher
is normally required to get a “Consent Form” signed by the interlocutors by
which they agree to participate in the project as informants. This form,
composed in the vernacular of the participants, ideally contains a general
outline of the research project, the potential usage of the collected data
(including images and video recordings) and an assurance of anonymity of the
participants. Although the requirement for written consents works well in the
research involving literate communities, it represents a methodological
roadblock while studying the non-literate or semi-literate ones.
This was the issue that I faced during my doctoral research. I am an ethnoarchaeologist studying the social context of pre-industrial iron and steel manufacture in northern Telangana, a remote forested rural heartland of central India. My research involves working closely with the older members of the local iron-working communities, who were actively involved in iron-smelting before it was completely halted in the early 1950s. All of these individuals are in their mid-seventies and a majority of them never learnt to read or write, even in their vernacular Telugu. Therefore, the idea of a signed consent form was simply not workable. Apart from this, the smelter communities posses bitter collective memories of traumatic episodes of coercion and displacement by the colonial authorities since the mid-19th century, when strict imposition of the Forest Laws restricted their access to good quality timber required for making charcoal. This had gradually smothered the local iron-smelting and crucible steel making tradition, pushing the smelters and the steel makers to the brink of survival. These experiences made them skeptical about everything that can be linked with the power of the state, including all forms of paperwork, a ritual equated with the official authority of the government. During my fieldwork, I quickly learnt that requesting the smelters to sign the “Consent Form” at the onset of our interactions was counterproductive in befriending them and in gaining their trust.
In order to be able to work with the iron-smelters without
overriding the ethical boundaries or cultural sensitivity, I adopted a
different methodology. In the first few days of fieldwork, I was visiting the
village in the car of a local academic who had kindly offered to drive me
around. I realized that car is an index of social prestige and economic power,
and therefore “official” in the eyes of this remote rural community. Apart from
the paperwork, this was also affecting the way iron-smelters perceived and
interacted with me. In their eyes I will always command more power and authority
due to my non-local origin, my broken Telugu, and my current social standing as
an academic educated abroad, it was my responsibility then to narrow this gap
as much as possible.
As a result, I hired a friend who was a native speaker of the local
dialect of Telugu, as my interpreter. We then rented a motorbike, a common form
of transport used by the locals in the region, to go about my fieldwork.
Whenever we visited these communities, we made it a point not to go straight
into the research topic. And we never mentioned the “Consent Form”. We started
our conversation introducing ourselves, over a cup of tea or fresh milk offered
to us. Although most of them insisted that we sit on chairs as they squatted on
the floor, we made it a point to sit with them in the same level and maintain
eye contact as we speak. We would gradually ease into the topic of our
research, asking for oral consents about taking field notes and pictures. It
was essential for them to feel comfortable and respected in our presence and it
was important to tell them that we are grateful for their support in helping us
understand their past. There were occasions when we were asked to leave, or
requested not to take photographs, and we obliged immediately without forcing
to stand our ground.
The author undertaking research in an iron-smelting community.
A common question that my interlocutors often asked was how would
they gain from helping me do this research. This was their genuine concern that
needed to be addressed in a thoughtful way.
The automatic instinct in this case is to give money to the poor
interlocutors as an expression of our gratitude. But that may not be the right
course of action. The impersonal act of giving money places the ethnographers
in a dominant position of power widening the gap between them and their
interlocutors. It also belittles rather than gratifies the interlocutors’
genuine enthusiasm to share information about their lives. The authenticity of
ethnographic information purchased for money can also be highly questionable as
the communities can come up with a standard narrative of what the researcher
wants to hear. This was the case in at least one village in my study area where
a few years earlier someone shelled out large sums of money to get information
on smelting from the local community.
In the case of my interlocutors, they were happy to know that the
stories of their lives and crafts will be available for an international
audience when published. They also often asked me to send them their pictures
that I took during my fieldwork. Each time I visited them, I asked if they
needed anything from the town I was living in, and I bought what they required.
When I worked with the local blacksmiths, I normally purchased iron implements
from them for my rented apartment. I have also collected a number of smelter
family genealogies, which I intend to print and send to the respective
families, so that these can be used to perpetuate the knowledge of family
histories. My interlocutors never asked me for money, and they appreciated the
personal nature of my gifts that created a lasting relationship with the
community.
Three key points that one must be aware of while working with
semi-literate fringed communities are:
1. Be aware of the difference in power hierarchy and strategize to
minimize the gap.
2. Respect the local culture
and make sure that the interlocutors feel comfortable and respected in your
presence.
3. Show gratitude by thoughtful personal gifts and not money.
Tathagata Neogi is an ethnoarchaeologist interested in studying marginal craft producing communities in South Asia.
