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Centering the Margins

Knowledge Production in the Introductory Archaeology Course

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2020

Kylie E. Quave Open the ORCID record for Kylie E. Quave [Opens in a new window] ,
Shannon M. Fie ,
AmySue Qing Qing Greiff  and
Drew Alis Agnew
Kylie E. Quave
Affiliation:
George Washington University, 2100 Foxhall Rd NW, Washington, 20007, DC, USA
Shannon M. Fie*
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, Beloit College, 700 College St., Beloit, WI53511, USA
AmySue Qing Qing Greiff
Affiliation:
Independent Scholar, Madison, WI, 53703, USA
Drew Alis Agnew
Affiliation:
Independent Scholar, Madison, WI, 53703, USA
*
(fies@beloit.edu, corresponding author)
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Abstract

Teaching introductory archaeology courses in U.S. higher education typically falls short in two important ways: the courses do not represent the full picture of who contributes to reconstructing the past, and they do not portray the contemporary and future relevance of the archaeological past. In this article, we use anti-colonial and decolonial theories to explain the urgency of revising the introductory archaeology curriculum for promoting equity in the discipline and beyond. We detail the pedagogical theories we employed in revising an introductory archaeology course at a small liberal arts college in the United States and the specific changes we made to course structure, content, and teaching strategies. To examine the impacts on enrolled students and on who chose to enroll in the revised archaeology curriculum, we analyze student reflection essays and enrollment demographics. We found that students developed more complex understandings of the benefits and harms of archaeological knowledge production and could articulate how to address archaeology's inequities. We also found that enrollment in archaeology courses at the college shifted to include greater proportions of students of color. These results support the notion that introductory archaeology courses should be substantially and continually revised.

Típicamente la docencia de los cursos arqueológicos de universidades de los Estados Unidos se queda corta de dos maneras: no presentan la imagen completa de quiénes contribuyen a la reconstrucción del pasado y no retratan la relevancia actual y futura del pasado. Aquí usamos teorías anti-coloniales y descolonizadas para explicar la urgencia con que hay que modificar el currículo arqueológico para promover equidad social en la disciplina y más allá de la disciplina. Detallamos las teorías pedagógicas que utilizamos en la revisión de nuestro curso en una universidad de artes liberales en EEUU. Especificamos los cambios que hicimos con la estructura del curso, el contenido y estrategias de instrucción. Para examinar el impacto a los alumnos y averiguar quiénes tomaban interés en el curso, analizamos ensayos reflexivos y cambios demográficos de inscripción. Vemos que los alumnos desarrollaron conocimientos más complejos sobre los beneficios y daños de la producción del conocimiento arqueológico y que podrían indicar como abordar las desigualdades de la arqueología. También encontramos que las inscripciones en los cursos de arqueología de la universidad cambiaron para incluir proporciones mayores de estudiantes de color. Estos resultados soportan la idea que los cursos de arqueología deberían ser revisados substancialmente y continuamente.

Keywords

pedagogydecolonizationequityhigher educationcurricular revisionknowledge productionsocial identityanti-colonial archaeologypedagogíadescolonizaciónequidadeducación superiorrevisión curricularproducción de conocimientoidentidad socialarqueología anti-colonial
Type
Article
Information
Advances in Archaeological Practice , Volume 9 , Issue 2 , May 2021 , pp. 87 - 100
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Society for American Archaeology

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