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Public Dialectics: Marxist Reflection in ArchaeologyAuthor(s): Christopher N. MatthewsSource: Historical Archaeology, Vol. 39, No. 4 (2005), pp. 26-44Published by: Society for Historical ArchaeologyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25617281 .

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26

Christopher N. Matthews

Public Dialectics: Marxist

Reflection inArchaeologyABSTRACT

The public dimensions of archaeological practice are exploredthrough a new method called Marxist reflexivity. This use for

Marxism draws a parallel with recent reflexive archaeologiesthat highlight the impact of archaeologists and archaeologicalprocesses on the creation of archaeological records. Thoughsimilar in this sense of critique, reflexive and Marxist archae

ologies do not often overlap, as each is essentially driven

by a distinct agenda and logic. Through a critical review

of four public programs undertaken in historical archaeology,this distinction is disassembled.

Introduction

Marxist critical archaeology strives to alignitself with traditions of modern criticism torework archaeology from a scientific analysisof the human past to a practice dedicated to

using the past to change the present (Leoneet al.

1987;Shanks and

Tilley 1987;McGuire

1992). By definition, such work is a formof public archaeology in that living culturesand concerns are intimately involved in theway archaeological investigations are designed.However, there are a variety of ways that such

archaeologies can be envisioned. An examina

tion of these approaches should shed light ontheir differential effectiveness and provide a

way for archaeologists to better articulate theirown and others' interests in the production of

archaeological work. Such a review may befound below, but the purpose of this work is

guided by a particular concern.The approach developed draws on criti

cal theory to better define archaeology in the

public sphere. While public archaeology isoften regarded as a key space for articulat

ing critical theory (Potter 1994), rarely is this

approach formulated so that archaeology itselfis the subject of critical analysis. Too often,

critical archaeologists engage with significant

public issues such as nationalism (Kohl andFawcett 1995; Meskell 1998), racism (Blakey1987; Franklin 1997, 2001), and class conflict(McGuire and Walker 1999) and then turn to

archaeologyfor solutions without

situatingits

essence amidst the very social issues that are

being engaged. In other words, archaeology isregarded as a separable component of the socialfabrics with which archaeologists engage. Suchinstances objectify archaeology and its potential.

They also reverse the basis of Marxist praxis,which insists on a greater sense of fluidityin how archaeology in theory relates with its

everyday practical action (McGuire and Wurst2002). Ultimately, such an approach under

mines the capacity for Marxist archaeologiesto sustain an active focus on social change.

To develop an alternative dialectical approachto public archaeology, this article reviews whyarchaeology, as practice and symbol, must bethe central subject of critical thinking by Marxist archaeologists. The specific effort is towardre-situating archaeology in public from a placecreated by and for archaeologists to the placedefined in the social construction of archaeol

ogythat results from

engaging archaeologywith those already working for change in themodern world.

This discussion involves a considerationof reflexive hermeneutics in archaeology tounderstand how to recognize the existenceof archaeology in the living world. Itthen elaborates how the dominant reflexive

approach in archaeology can be made usefulfor developing a specifically Marxist reflexive

praxis. Finally, a review of a set of publichistorical archaeologies at Five Points inNew York, Ludlow in Colorado, Annapolis in

Maryland, and Treme in Louisiana identifiesthe different themes and interests that underliethe articulation of archaeology with the public.

These examinations establish a four-stageapproach for defining and interpreting the

archaeological significance of the public intereststhat set archaeologists to work. The goal isto accumulate a new set of foundations for

recognizing and centering archaeology's public

Historical Archaeology, 2005, 39(4):26-44.Permission to reprint required.Accepted for publication 27 April 2004.


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CHRISTOPHERN.MATTHEWS?Public Dialectics 27

significance so that the Marxist critique mayemerge in archaeological practice rather thanin just its theoretical positions.

Reflexive Hermeneutics and the SocialConstruction of "Archaeology"

To rethink public archaeology, it is useful to

adopt the hermeneutic approach outlined by IanHodder (1999) in The Archaeological Process.While not a Marxist approach, Hodder's method,when expanded and critiqued, provides a firmfoothold for dialectically situating archaeologyin public in a productive and creative fashion.

Hodder seeks to develop a nondichotomous

method for archaeological interpretation. Thismeans breaking down the processualist Cartesian subject (archaeologist)-object (archaeological record) opposition so that these poles existin a circular, essentially iterative, relationship.

Hodder critiques the Cartesian dichotomy thatlies at the root of processualist archaeology for

masking the contexts of archaeological finds andresearch agendas and thus the slippages andfluidities that are produced by the influence of

such contextson

interpretation. He argues thatoppositional thinking hides the important detail,that what archaeologists believe to be true now

will act as a basis for any future truth claims.Hodder emphasizes that interpretation, not fact,resides at the foundation of knowledge.

In the processualist Cartesian approach,archaeologists are instead presented with astable archaeological record that is discovered innature by stable archaeological techniques thatreveal its contents and, with the application ofnormal disciplinary method and theory, produceits meaning. Here the foundation of knowledgeis fact, not belief. As Hodder suggests, the

Cartesian approach makes the archaeologicalrecord appear to act, when effectivelyexamined, as is its own agent since the actionsof archaeologists should be made increasinglyinvisible behind the facts they discover.

Hodder's alternative focuses on the impossibilityof removing the agency of archaeologists

from archaeological work, especially theirfoundational interpretations that "act" as factsbut are more realistically propositions of truth.The circular basis of the hermeneutic approachcan accommodate this much-less-secure basis of

knowledge because it questions and re-questions

assumptions based on the new knowledge gainedby making them. This back-and-forth tacking,Hodder asserts, makes the interpretive basisto archaeological knowledge more secure and

equallymore

opento

productivecriticism and/

or multiple interpretations.Marxists should applaud this approach for its

goals but improve on it by bringing to bearthe critical eye Marxism has for understandingthe real conditions that social action producesand is produced by. This means in addition to

applying Hodder's ideas in practice, it is vitalto critically evaluate the social positions that

archaeologists assume or, more specifically, are

allowed to assume when they produce interpretations of the past. Here, this means archaeology's social relations of production, including butnot limited to the class positions and relationsthat archaeologists hold and aspire to withinthe larger societies of which they are a part.

A Marxist reflexivity thus asks: what politicaleconomies come to bear on how archaeolo

gists access sites, develop research questions,and even reflexively explore their own presence in archaeological work? The focus is on

these sorts of "public" positions. A return toHodder's study explains.One means for materializing the hermeneu

tic circle in archaeological practice is to workagainst the grain of individualized archaeologicalanalysis. While all archaeologists to a degreerely on the interpretation of archaeologicalremains by individual archaeologists, Hodderargues that collectivities can be developedin practice that serve as more knowledgeable agents in the interpretive process. Hisexample from his own research project at theNeolithic tell site of ?atal Huytik in Turkeyis to establish spaces in the archaeologicalproject for collaboration between field andlab specialists so that field interpretations of,for instance, burned bone or deposit dates canbe developed in conjunction with laboratoryartifact specialists. Artifact processing occurs

rapidly at ?atal Htiytik, and lab specialists tourthe site daily to work with field specialists so

that the gulf between excavation and analysisis minimized, producing more secure bases forinterpretation. Additionally, interpretations are

made cooperatively using the differential sorts ofexpertise that define the archaeological project,overarched by the commitment by all to reflect


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CHRISTOPHERN. MATTHEWS?PublicDialectics 29

with the way archaeological research is done.The most prominent literature for this is on theresponses by archaeologists and Native Americans regarding the reburial and study of ancienthuman remains

bythose who have

soughtto

define ways for the archaeology of NativeAmerica to proceed despite its inherent colonialist origins (Zimmerman 1989, 1997; Biolsiand Zimmerman 1997; Swindler et al. 1997;Thomas 2000; Watkins 2000; Fine-Dare 2002).A very productive related approach, with firmroots in the Marxist tradition in archaeology, isresearch in American historical archaeology thathas sought to directly identify itself with the

public concerns of living and descendent com

munities who are currently working for socialchange. Three of the best public programs inhistorical archaeology that may be set in thisvein are reviewed?the Five Points project inNew York, the Colorado Coal Field War project,and the Archaeology in Annapolis project?aswell as a program in New Orleans designed bythe author to show different approaches to work

ing with the public significance of archaeology.The point is to elucidate the different ways

that the public resides within archaeology andto critically evaluate how archaeologists have

responded to this discovery.

Myth Busting?Five Points

One of the great claims of American historical

archaeology is its ability to challenge popularhistorical assumptions about the everyday livesof hidden and silenced peoples such as slaves,women, and members of the working class.

Many archaeological studies have in fact takentheir role to be myth busters in the sense thatthe archaeological record is used to contradictstereotypes of poverty, backwardness, acquiescence, and inferiority that surround historically

marginalized peoples and that sustain theircontinuing subordination (Mayne and Murray2001; Yamin 2001a, 2001b; Horning 2002;Reckner 2002). Archaeology is regarded asa public resource that describes the "way it

really was" for these people, that they werebetter people and fared better than the popularmytho-historical accounts suggest. These studiesare considered public archaeology here becausethey work in dialogue with popular narrativesabout local and regional pasts. The archae

ology of the 19th-century working-class FivePoints neighborhood in New York City, which

adopted the "important goal" of constructing"a corrective to biased representations of the

neighborhoodwhile

avoidinga romanticized

image of poverty" (Reckner 2002:107), is an

example of research where this myth-bustingrole was made central.

Paul Reckner (2002) discusses how the 19th

century "urban sketches" genre of reporting and

writing produced powerful narratives of urbanlife in New York and elsewhere that continueto resonate in public today. The basic themeis the depiction of the inner-city slum as a

wasteland of poverty and vice that was home

to the dangerous classes. Reckner shows thatthe vast array of literature and analysis fromthe period produced a "moral causality narrative" in which the problems of the slums

were seen as the result of the social and moral

failings of those living there. Though his

principle discussion relates the struggle of theFive Points archaeology project to overcomethe influence of this narrative in the representation of their work in the local press, he cites

thateven

project archaeologists fell prey to itby explaining that the large amount of potteryrecovered at the site may be the result of theft,a common assumption about the poor whenviewed through the lens of the moral causalitynarrative. Reckner's article clearly relates the

struggle to work not only with the remains ofthe past but also equally with the space thoseremains inhabit in public today. In this case,this space was already occupied by a powerful master narrative that overdetermined muchof what the public and even the archaeologistswould gather from the archaeology. It becamethe goal of the project to provide another perspective to explain the past at Five Points andto create an alternative interpretation that couldsupplant the dominant mythic tropes they discovered in public. This is the first step in a

Marxist reflexivity. Exploring the alternatives

produced at Five Points, though, shows some ofthe limitations that archaeologists can face.

Among the most powerful results of theFive Points project are Rebecca Yamin's (1998,2001a) alternative narratives produced in asemifictional storytelling style. Yamin drawsfrom specific archaeological features associatedwith documented Five Points households to


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CHRISTOPHERN.MATTHEWS?PublicDialectics 31

archaeologists must not simply counter withseemingly positive alternatives. A position thatis cognizant of the today's role of archaeolo

gists as storytellers must be developed. Workmust be done to analyze through research howthat position of archaeology is as much a product of contemporary cultural concerns, socialinterests, and class positions as it is a resultof the archaeological record. In other words,when approaching and countering powerfulmyths, archaeologists need to consider thatsuch stories serve as the basis for the powerfulideologies (and the struggles that brought themabout) that legitimize equally the archaeological investigations undertaken and the myths that

archaeologist seek to depose. The case here isthat the narrative developed on working-classrespectability appeared to be independent andalternative but was more realistically only anew component of the existing one and anothermiddle-class attempt to articulate the problem ofthe working class. This limitation on producingarchaeological alternatives can be handled more

directly. Turning to consider other projectsshows how this has been done.

Advocacy?Ludlow

Facing the challenge of knowing and actingin the terms and interests of subordinate people,some archaeologists have proactively engaged

with social movements to define their publicposition. This effort involves analyzing theliving world to understand the public organizations and perspectives that constitute it andworking to "fuse" (Ludlow Collective 2001:95)archaeology with the movements that archaeologists seek to promote. This work is not positioned within the realm of the public discourseon the past as defined by master narratives butwithin the social structures that serve to locatepeople (and their perspectives on the past) inthe living world. An example of this sort ofapproach is the Archaeology of the ColoradoCoal Field War of 1913-14 being undertakenby the Ludlow Collective (Duke and Saitta

1998; Ludlow Collective 2001; McGuire andReckner 2002; Walker and Saitta 2002; Wood2002a, 2002b). The distinction of this project isits self-defined basis in activism and advocacy.

As Philip Duke and Dean Saitta (1998:4) write,"we are tired of . . . pretensions to a value-free

and politically neutral archaeology . . .We areinterested in the radical class transformation ofsociety, and we seek in all of our scholarly

work to provide some tools for accomplishingthis." Such a clear-cut political stance is thefirst step to fusing archaeology with alternative

public interests, and this project clearly defineswhat interests they support.

The most basic public connection forged bythe Ludlow Collective is between their researchat the site of the Ludlow massacre and the

neighboring company town of Berwind and theinterests in the memorialization of the massacre

by workers today, especially the United MineWorkers (UMW). The story of the Ludlow

massacre is shocking. Working under oppressiveand dangerous conditions, miners organized andstruck in 1913 demanding "the right to unionize,higher pay, and that existing Colorado mininglaws be enforced" (Ludlow Collective 2001:96). Because of the strike, the Colorado Fueland Iron Company (CFI) forced the miners outof company housing, and most moved to UMWtent camps nearby, the largest of which was at

Ludlow. The strike persisted through the winterof

1913-14, climaxingin

April1914 with the

killing at the Ludlow camp of 20 people including 2 women and 11 children by companyguards armed with machine guns and underthe command of the Colorado National Guard.

The massacre captured the nation's attention as

progressives demonized John D. Rockefeller,Jr., chair of CFI, for violating the rights of

miners and their families (Ludlow Collective2001:96-98).

Such a catastrophe caused not only nationalconcern but also altered national consciousness regarding workers' rights. Questions wereasked by all about what effect the killing ofessentially innocent strikers and their families

meant for American democracy. Although forunion workers the meaning was clear: as unionworkers visiting the site told Saitta, the story ofthe Ludlow Massacre is just part of the storyof the American working class being suppressed(Duke and Saitta 1998:3). This reaction has

led the archaeologists to emphasize the oftenoverlooked importance of class in archaeological research. Duke and Saitta (1998) argue thatclass is the most vital relation for understandingsocial action, but it is also the one major social

marker (others being, e.g., race, ethnicity, gender,


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32 HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY39(4)

and sexuality) that has received only scant attention by archaeologists. They conclude that classis not only a marker of subjectivity for archaeo

logical subjects but is also a key component for

defining archaeologiststhemselves:

Archaeology has typically served middle-class interests.It is part of the intellectual apparatus (things such as

schools, books, magazines, organizations, and arts) that

produces the symbolic capital (things such as esoteric

knowledge, shared experience, certification, and social

skills) that individuals need to be part of the middleclass. This apparatus, including archaeology, devel

oped as part of the historical struggles that createdthe capitalist middle class . . . Because it is set inthe middle class, archaeology attracts a middle-class

following, and often does not appeal to working-classaudiences (Ludlow Collective 2001:95; also McGuireand Walker 1999).

The argument is that an uncritical archaeologyreproduces middle-class norms and expectations, even regarding events like the massacre at

Ludlow, and thus significantly distorts the story,stealing its usefulness to develop a productive

working-class consciousness today. The LudlowCollective seeks to challenge this class-based

limitation by explicitly workingto

produceand

represent a working-class perspective, and to dothis it draws on both theory and collaboration.

Theoretically, the Ludlow Collective employsa Marxist praxis for archaeology "that entailsknowing the world, critiquing the world, and

changing the world" (Ludlow Collective 2001:95; also McGuire and Wurst 2002). This perspective leads archaeologists to explore howclass consciousness was formed in the tradition

ally masculine spaces of the mines and saloons

and, equally and perhaps more substantially,in the feminine spaces of the workers' homes,both at the company town and the Ludlow tent

colony itself (Wood 2002a). As they describeit, this perspective explores "how mundane

experience shaped the strike," a process that"humanizes the strikers because it talks aboutthem in terms of relations and activities thatour modern audiences also experience [emphasisadded]" (Ludlow Collective 2001:95,103).

The Ludlow project works in collaborationwith the UMW and other working-class audiences. Most specifically, this collaboration

taught project members that typical archaeological questions about human origins or the riseof civilizations garner little interest among the

working class. Instead, they found that a focuson everyday life "including who produces what,how production is accomplished, who benefitsfrom the distribution of the social product, andhow these

arrangementsare

ideologically justified" carries much more weight (Duke andSaitta 1998:5). Through such collaboration,the project has learned to place a great dealof emphasis on writing in plain language and

developing programs for the public, the media,and Colorado public schools that teach andadvocate the story of everyday working lives,especially so an understanding of the harshnessof past working-class lives may be disseminated(Ludlow Collective 2001:103-104).

The driving force of this approach?beingbased in an explicit theoretical agenda and

working in collaboration with acknowledgedpublic interests?also describes the next essential step in developing a Marxist reflexivity.

The Ludlow Collective has not only identifieda publicly formed political space (working-classconsciousness) with which it hopes to connectits work, but it has sought to turn that discovered perspective on archaeology itself by chal

lengingthat

archaeology's publicbasis is

alreadyclass-defined. A suggestive example of this isthe fact that many of the visitors to Ludlow's

public excavations had been drawn to the site

by a highway sign pointing to the Ludlow Massacre Memorial (there is a monument at the siteerected by the UMW), which was thought tobe identifying the site of an Indian war, not aclass war This story, however, does not applyto the visitations made by hundreds of living

miners and other union members who attend

the annual memorial service held at the site bythe UMW. This disjunction between union andnonunion publics was a factor in the project'sdecision to focus on the everyday lives of thestrikers. This approach allows the strikers' livesto resonate with the contemporary public whocan imagine these past people by making com

parisons with their own familiar practices andthus gain some sense of their consciousness. Itis this approach that allows the archaeology at

Ludlow to "become a powerful form of memoryand action" (Ludlow Collective 2001:100).At this point, however, some limitations can

be seen in the project's approach. As thecollective argues, archaeology is seen as aform of social action that can, but not often


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does, allow a working-class perspective to beused in the interpretation of the archaeologicalrecord. Yet, to do this, the project "humanizes"the strikers at Ludlow, a process that they argue

bridgesthe

gulfbetween

past working-classlives and present working-class interests. The

expected result here is that a farther reachingcomprehension of the very compelling story ofthe Ludlow massacre, its causes, and its effects

will, in essence, automatically result in increasedclass consciousness. The concern here is thatthe tie between raising class consciousnessand the humanization of the strikers fails todisassemble the class bias of archaeology thatthe project identifies and seeks to overcome.

The impulse of the project does not disseminatefrom the working class but, rather, from its

memorialization?i.e., its production as a subjectof memory?a discourse that requires a greatdeal more critique for such an activist projectto succeed.

When the Ludlow Collective states that

archaeology can be a form of memory andaction, it is suggesting that archaeology is not

already and always such. Drawing from its

own critique of the class bias of archaeology,it is important to recognize that archaeologyalways serves its audiences by being an activesource for memory building, but that action is

typically by and for the middle class and aboutmemories typically created in the abstract asstories of "the other." It is not sufficient to

simply assert that the project is not doing thisfor an alternative to be materialized. Nor isit sufficient to seek out what interests amongthe working class differ from the middle classthat may allow a research project to take ona working-class perspective. Rather, a project

must engage more deeply with the roots of theclass-formation process. In this case, what real

conditions caused conflicting capitalist socialclasses to form and be reproduced, despite suchintense violence and public outrage in the past?

An archaeology project must then consider howclass differences serve to establish the spacesfor memory that make class interests produce

historic and living perspectives: How maymemorial reflection be situated within this classformation process? In other words, a project

must respect, comprehend, and represent thesocial difference that class formation creates andthe partial perspective on both past and living

experience it produces. The turn to the common

humanity of the strikers undermines this effortsince the social processes of difference created

by class formation are masked.It would be

helpfulthen to abandon the

abstraction of humanity and to embrace themore concrete, though partial, perspective of the

working class. This would allow the memorials produced by the archaeology to be made

by the working class and not just about them.

By resorting to the anthropological abstractionof shared humanity as a way to relate class

experience, the Ludlow Collective produces a

public space that can work as much againstworking-class interests as for them because

the Ludlow strikers remain in this analysis an"other" defined as an object of study. Their

partial class-defined subjectivities are reducedto abstractions based on what any human

would do given those conditions. Drawing onthe postcolonial historical criticism of Dipesh

Chakrabarty (2000), the most significant troublewith this approach is that it mirrors the abstraction that lies at the foundation of capital: thecommodification of labor (Sayer 1987). "To

organize life under the sign of capital is to actas if labor could indeed be abstracted from allthe social tissues in which it is always embedded and which make any particular labor?eventhe labor of abstracting?concrete [emphasis inoriginal]" (Chakrabarty 2000:54). In a capitalist society, this "labor of abstracting" is thedefining practice of the middle class for whom"the abstraction . . . becomes true in practice"

(Chakrabarty 2000:54, citing Marx 1973:104105). Yet, unlike the middle class, the workingclass does not require abstraction to know thattheir forebears were abused and exploited (Dukeand Saitta 1998:3).

A more effective public approach for thecollective would be to situate the strikersin less of an abstract time and space called"Ludlow 1913-14" and to tell the story bycollapsing the time difference that archaeologycommonly presupposes. By focusing on theinherent archaeological act of memorialization

(by making "then" into "now"), the project canbetter make the archaeological record (whichexists now) into a living social agent and asubject in its own right that is not just usefulto working-class struggles but is a participantin them. This way the objectification of


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34 HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY39(4)

the strikers as an anthropological object isdissolved, the othering habit of time differencein archaeology is denied, and the memory ofthe massacre is not a memory of visiting the

site but of actively producing its meaning inliving social action. To do this, the idea ofthe public and public interest in archaeology

must be articulated from the very start of theproject in the present.

Engagement?African American

Annapolis

This sort of presentist approach was defined

bythe

Archaeologyin

Annapolis projectwhen

it decided to explore the archaeology of AfricanAmerican Annapolis. The project had long been

employing critical theory to explain the Annapolis past (Leone et al. 1987, 1995; Little 1994;Potter 1994; Leone 1995; Shackel et al. 1998;

Mullins 1999; Warner 2001; Matthews 2002a)when it turned to the archaeology of AfricanAmericans. Like the Colorado Coal Field War

project, Archaeology in Annapolis is driven byan explicit political agenda that is critical of

the status quo in both Annapolis and archaeology. The goal was to use both public excavations and traditional archaeological researchto challenge modern capitalist social relations,especially those that formed in Annapolis inthe 18th century. These included slavery andthe production of the modern American ideology based on natural law and self-evident truths(Leone 1984, 1995). A major focus was on the

way these lessons from the past were used toeducate modern tourists about the historical

significance of Annapolis (Potter 1994). Inaddition to basic historical information on therole of Annapolis in the American Revolutionaryera (its Golden Age), the stories tourists heard

provided them with models, such as visits byGeorge Washington, for how to properly behaveas tourists and appreciate the inherent value ofthe historic landscape and the stories it contained. With these models, tourists to Annapolis

were expected to observe the past, treat it with

dignity, and leave it as they found it. As aresource for all Americans, the tourists' role in

Annapolis was to accept the stories they weretold as true and move on apparently better off

with their American identity confirmed.

The critical archaeology tours in Annapolissought to challenge this tourist-knowledgerelationship by encouraging visitors to question

what they were being told (Leone 1983;

Potter 1994). So that visitors would be giveninsight into the way archaeologists arrived atinterpretations of the past, site tours explainedthe methods used in archaeology to produce thearchaeological record and how archaeologistsdeveloped research questions to examine theremains. Specifically, it was hoped that the

archaeological record could be used to unmaskmodern ideologies by prompting site visitors to

question the validity of the stories they were

beingtold and to

criticallyreflect on their role

in the way these histories were made. Touristswere asked to consider the ideas of work andthe vacation and their relationship to personaldiscipline. Tourists were also shown that the ?

archaeological record identified the historical

contingencies that produced these self-evidentnorms. For example, archaeology showedthat the taken-for-granted aspects of modernlives such as going to work, being paid bythe hour, living apart from work, and goingon vacation were norms developed only in thelast two centuries as part of the way industrial

capitalism came to dominate the social order

by normalizing time-discipline. It was hopedthat this critical approach would lead to a more

fully formed historical consciousness amongsite visitors that they could use to pierce the

ideologies that were used to rationalize theirsubordination to the status quo.

This lofty goal failed to materialize. Sitevisitors were not convinced of the connections

archaeologists were making between the past andthe present or of the relationship between the

interpretations of archaeological remains and thestories of their own lives. In order to interpret

what they heard, visitors employed and reproduced the ideological separations (Barnett andSilverman 1979; Matthews et al. 2001) that layat the foundations of modern capital. Specifically, tourists embraced their position as doublyremoved from the Annapolis past. First, theybelieved that these stories were unconnected totheir lives, except as consumable entertainment.Second, their role was by definition one of passive consumption; if this was somebody's history,it was certainly not theirs. Facing these onto


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CHRISTOPHERN.MATTHEWS?Public Dialectics 35

logical roadblocks, the Archaeology inAnnapolisproject redesigned its public approach.

Turning to consider African American archaeology in Annapolis, the project was aware ofthe limitations it faced in

producinga critical

archaeology. They also realized that the AfricanAmerican past was even more politically volatile than the middle-class and elite archaeologiesthey had undertaken thus far. African American

archaeology presented both a new opportunityand a challenge for an archaeology programdedicated to critiquing the status quo. Reflect

ing on their experience with modern tourists,Archaeology in Annapolis sought in the newwork to confront the limitations imposed on

their agenda by the modern ideologies that interact with presenting archaeology in public. The

project sought a means to undermine the basicseparations that allow tourists to keep the pastat arm's length. They also had to find a wayto move from providing a route into the pastfor the public to finding the routes that alreadyexist in the way the modern public lives now inrelation to the past. They then followed theseguideposts in making archaeological decisions.This work decentered the role of

archaeologyso that what archaeologists do and the spacesthey occupy became more publicly produced.

This is exactly what the Ludlow project did inreference to living working-class interests andconcerns, but the Annapolis project took a different path.

This path was to engage directly with the African American descendent population in Annapolis to talk with them, not on the site but beforeexcavations began, about what archaeology is

and how it could be of service to their interests.Then the project took a vital next step: theyasked what the community would like to knowfrom archaeology. They heard the following:

1. Do we have an archaeology?2. Is there anything left from Africa?

3. Tell us about freedom, not about slavery (Leone et

al. 1995).

Answering these questions became the agendafor the project, and the research that hasresulted has produced novel archaeological interpretations of the African American past (Leoneand Fry 1999; Mullins 1999; Warner 2001).This direct engagement allowed the project to

share the authorization of its work with the

community whose contemporary interests inthe past were being explored. This differs fromthe Ludlow project because the engagement

was not with abstractworking-class

interests

but with specific contemporary concerns thatwere articulated by the public as archaeological research questions. The difference is thatthe Annapolis project rejected the viability ofthe separation between past and present in the

way they approached the archaeological record.

Following their approach, it can be said that itis not the lessons that were learned about thepast to challenge the dominant histories and ide

ologies of today that matter, but, more directly,what matters is how past lives may be broughtto bear on living now and, more specifically,how the living world uses such past-present connections in the way they live today. Thus, theAfrican American public interests that drove theAnnapolis research became the means for the

project to explicitly state what from the present they brought with them as they explored thepast. This was Leone's question more than twodecades ago regarding interpretation at public

historymuseums.

Here, though, the pointwas to learn and employ how challenges to thestatus quo made by African Americans in theireveryday lives today were in part derived fromthe way they related to and used the past. Thisrelevant critique of contemporary society wasallowed to guide archaeologists as they worked.This project followed the guidelines discussedby Chakrabarty and other postcolonial scholarswhose interest is to challenge aspects of Western dominance by de-stabilizing and redefining itscategorization of knowledge (Said 1979; Spivak1987; Bhabha 1994). In this case, archaeology

was transformed from a discourse about the pastthat can have relevance in the present to a discourse specifically located in the present thatuses public relations with the past to changethe way people are perceived and actuallysituated in modern social and power relations.

The limitations of the approach in Annapolisappear in the way that archaeology was presented

and how the African American perspective wasrepresented. To learn about African Americanpublic interests, the Annapolis Project establisheda space for dialogue between archaeology and

African Americans in Annapolis. This spaceproduced three guiding research questions but


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36 HISTORICALARCHAEOLOGY39(4)

was not itself considered a factor in the waythese questions emerged. Archaeology was

presented as neutral resource, as somethingthat could be put to use by anyone with aninterest in the

past.The

impactof the

powerthat archaeologists have by virtue of the socialconstruction of archaeology to create this spacefor African Americans to learn about and use

archaeology is not discussed. This oversightsets up a confrontation between the inherentbiases of an unexamined social archaeologyand the perspectives of those whose interestsare normally excluded. It runs the risk in thiscase of forcing African American interests to fitwith more powerful archaeological interests in

order to be acted on.To handle this problem, the project might

have paused between learning about whatexactly African Americans sought to knowand the initiation of research to examine theseconcerns. In this moment, the archaeologistscould have defined the hermeneutic relationshipbetween archaeology and this public to seemore clearly how each was implicated in theother. On the one hand, what specifically did

the project gain from taking the approach it didto learning about African American interests inthe archaeological past? How was the socialconsequence of this approach for archaeologyand its constituents defined? On the otherhand, what benefit did African Americans takefrom working with archaeologists? How did thecreation of this new relationship affect and/or

produce their agenda?This line of questioning leads archaeology

to not only engage with and act on articulatedpublic interests but also to interpret thoseinterests in light of the spaces that brought themto archaeology's attention. This critique is notto suggest that archaeologists need to tease outburied conspiracies; rather, they are encouragedto make the social relations that are increasinglydefining the character of public archaeology more

critically framed so that the actual authorizationof archaeological interpretation may be more

substantially brought into view. Put another

way, archaeologists should not seek to be setto work by interested publics but to realizethat the hope to connect with these people is a

sign that researchers are already at work. Thisis how the representation of African Americansin this project is problematic. No one can

deny that a unique historical path producedthe modern African American community in

Annapolis. However, the goal of developingan archaeology to understand and serve that

community requiresmore

thought.Just as with

the projects regarding class relations discussedabove, there needs to be a careful examinationof the social relations that are embedded inthe claim to being African American. Thesocial space that produced the three research

questions thus needs critical review so that thehistories and assumptions that produced it (i.e.,the difference between African Americans andarchaeologists) may be challenged as well as

employed. In this way a sense is established

that the work of African American archaeologyis about the historical development of a socialperspective rather than a study of an objectifiedtype of people.

In order to put archaeology in the service ofgroups in such a manner, archaeologists needto do more than learn how the critical perspectives of such groups may be appropriated. Theyneed to be sure that the spaces these groupshave created for talking back, which result from

the strategic and incidental partiality of theirperspective, are an integral part of the wayarchaeology forms itself through these groups.Archaeological publics must be able to talkback at archaeology as much as archaeologistswould like to talk back at the social limitationsand inequalities that are defined by studyingothers. To do this, archaeology should bringto the surface the foundational assumptions it

employs to realize and represent the multiplepartial perspectives that drive its investigationsof the past and, as suggested below, do thisthrough a critical reflection on the productionof archaeology in public.

Hybridity?Archaeology in reme

One last example can be made of the workdone by the Greater New Orleans ArchaeologyProgram (GNOAP) housed in the College ofUrban and Public Affairs at the University of

New Orleans. The GNOAP studies the archaeology of New Orleans for the specific purposeof public outreach and education. In 1999, asdirector of the GNOAP, the author organizeda program called Archaeology in Treme basedon excavations at the St. Augustine site in the


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CHRISTOPHERN. MATTHEWS?Public Dialectics 39

on the destabilizing basis of the African American archaeology project in Annapolis. Whilethe adoption of African American interests inthe formation of archaeological research questions brought the critique of modern American

society embedded inAfrican American identitiesto bear on archaeological research, the Treme

project stepped through and beyond such a

critique to analyze the relational partiality fromwhich such perspectives on the past emerge.The preservationists and the Treme commu

nity shared a great deal in terms of what theyhoped to gain from archaeology, but they failedto recognize this mutual interest because of con

temporary race relations. Therefore, a way to

articulate how archaeology revealed these interests and conditions and a way for the researchto be about the dialogues that drive interest in

archaeology today was found.It is vital to see that the archaeology here

was situated in the interstices of this livingcultural production process as somethingrelated to the partiality of each group's perspective and, more importantly, to how eachgroup, in relating to archaeology and archae

ologists,established their difference from the

other. Archaeological research questions canreflect this interstitial location, for even thougharchaeology and archaeologists have their own

partialities, archaeologists also are the onlyones responsible for representing in public thearchaeological interests that drive them to work.In this manner, their voices may emerge fromthe social dynamics, such as race and class rela

tions, that are fueling the present social actionthat grabbed their attention or, better put, that

drove an interest in the constructions of realitythat archaeology produces. It is not the spacesclaimed by living social actors from which workshould emerge; these are for the most part inaccessible, given already established positions in

modern society. Rather, their work shouldemerge from the processes of social debateand cultural production that condition and createthese living identities.

This approach to the discovery of public

meanings may be seen as an application ofHomi Bhabha's (1994) postcolonial emphasison hybridity. The GNOAP discovered andrecorded a range of public interests regardingarchaeology in Treme and then interpreted theseinterests as evidence of the contemporary cul

ture that the archaeology project was to interpretand represent. It was not just one or the other

perspective that made this project work; thework brought out how they were each formedin relation to each other and how archaeologyitself was implicated in the production of thissocial knowledge. Bhabha's argument is thatsuch other-referencing used in order to knowourselves is the way partial perspectives areformed because the other is not known on itsown terms but solely in the terms of the self.The related point is that every self is then inpart formed through its other and exists as a

hybrid. While modern culture largely suppresses the recognition of this hybrid condition,

it nevertheless resides within all. To discoverthe way social formations produce the spacesoccupied should be reflected upon. For archae

ology this means keying in on how archaeological knowledge relates to the manner in

which diverse constituencies define themselvesand working to learn the archaeological questions that can be developed, given the natureof the social relations that condition access toand presence in these public cultural worlds.

Archaeology maybe

hybridizedwith other

interests (as in the advocacy of the Ludlowproject or in the engagements that producedthe research questions in Annapolis), but inthis effort the already hybrid situations shouldbe recognized that determine any sense of selfassumed or encountered.

Conclusion: Decolonizing Archaeology

Four archaeology projects in a sequencehave been reviewed to show the different sortsof public archaeology that inform a Marxistreflexivity. While these projects have beencriticized, critique was not the point. Each ofthese projects is regarded as among the best in

archaeology when considering the position ofarchaeologists in relation to the public culturalworlds in which they operate. Furthermore,each has based its work, especially its theorizing, on challenging the professionally conceived

relations between the public and archaeologythat need to be rethought if archaeology couldmake a difference in the living world.

The research has identified that a Marxistreflexivity may be developed through a process of critical reflection on the role of doing


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public archaeology in the modern world. Thefoundation is the idea of myth busting or of aconfrontation with dominant tropic narrativesthat marginalize minority perspectives. Publicarchaeology can be a corrective that can balance the effects of these narratives and workto replace them with alternatives. The FivePoints project illustrates this approach but waschallenged to rethink the use of "respectability"as a source for an alternative narrative. It was

suggested that the archaeologists question more

carefully the basis they used to situate theiralternatives. The key is awareness of the classposition of archaeology and thus making a focusof the research to be a critique of archaeologyas a myth-maker as well as any public uses ofits conclusions.

A deeper degree of public engagement wasidentified as advocacy in which archaeologistsspecifically align their work with active social

movements. The Ludlow Collective has donethis by advocating capitalist working-class andunion interests. This position led them to focuson the everyday lives of the Ludlow strikers tobetter understand how class consciousness wasformed. This focus also served as a

bridgebetween the past and present and between

archaeology and the public so that working-classstruggles and consciousness could be disseminated and the status quo of modern social relations challenged. It was argued, however, thatthis approach complicated the project's goals byreproducing the othering techniques embedded inthe creation of archaeological subjects, makingthe Ludlow strikers unapproachable, exceptthrough the middle-class process of abstraction.

It was suggested that the project more explicitlychallenge the temporal implications of archaeol

ogy and conceive of a more presentist consideration that draws on contemporary working-classinterests rather than the memorialization of thoseinterests through an archaeological dig.

To break the hold on archaeology by middleclass interests, an even deeper level of publicengagement is required. The approach to African American archaeology by the Archaeology

in Annapolis project exemplifies this level bybasing its approach on a living public interestand by allowing members of the African American community who subscribe to that interestto produce archaeological research questions.

These specific community concerns contrasted

with the more-generalized class interests definedat Ludlow and bring to bear on the archaeological record the established criticisms of modernsocial relations that included specific meansfor

knowing(or not

knowing)and

usingthe

past. This method challenges archaeology tobe more open to public authority for the purpose of making room in archaeological work forexplicit criticisms of archaeology's capacity toserve alternative public interests. The Annapolis project was urged to be more aware of thepower involved in the creation of the dialogicspaces that allow the identification of archaeological publics and their interests. Specifically,archaeology itself must remain open to the

critique it seeks to understand and employ byfocusing on marginalized people and groups.

A last step was defined as hybridity andexplained in the work of the GNOAP in theNew Orleans neighborhood of Treme. TheGNOAP expanded on the Annapolis approach bycritically analyzing multiple present interests inthe archaeological past. This work was basedin the discovery of archaeological questionsstemming from the interstices of modern socialrelations as

they pertainedto race and archaeo

logical knowledge. From there, the uneven sharing of historical and archaeological knowledge

within the living community was questioned.These varied interests in archaeology thenbecame the force that guided the archaeologicalwork. This deeper engagement worked at thelevel of social and cultural production so thatthe perspectives in the living world were not

only engaged and critiqued through archaeologybut also more fully exposed for their hybridity,especially in the way each used their interestsin archaeology to define themselves as differentfrom the other. These hybrid categorizations of

public archaeological knowledge were framed ascentral, yet accepted as partial, and then definedas the proper means for archaeology to enter tothe social world.

These approaches exemplify the sort of Marxist reflexivity described in the first section.

Each project challenges the Cartesian subject

object opposition that underlies most archaeology by working with the public to establishan archaeological perspective. The analysis,however, suggests that the route towards amore-radical public practice for archaeologyis the one that sustains the critical dialogue of


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the hermeneutic relationship between archaeology and its publics, especially for seeing exactlyhow archaeology already works within the cultures and communities that sustain it. Thereis much to learn from

postcolonialcriticism

to make sense of the differences between theprojects. Thus, one overarching goal of Marxist

reflexivity is to decolonize archaeology (cf. Harrison 1991; Apffel-Marglin and Marglin 1996).

All of the projects discussed seek to do this,but the more successful are those that take aimat not only the interpretation of the past, even

given diverse and competing public interests, butalso at the signifying practices embedded within

archaeology that make it a legitimate discourse

that people may use to define their positions inthe world today. To decolonize archaeology isto challenge the means it employs to produceits subjects as knowable and to critique thecolonialist and essentialist politics that theserepresentations often involve. Thus, aspectsthat make archaeology appear stable in public,such as the regular passage of time, the distant location of the past, or the viability of

working-class and African American identities,

require the attention of archaeologists as muchas the social issues they seek to connect withand allow archaeology to serve.

Decolonizing archaeology, furthermore,requires that archaeologists strive to knowthe meanings and purposes of archaeologicalresearch and practice in the partial terms ofthe publics. Archaeologists must be able toarticulate why others find archaeological workinteresting and useful to understanding andchallenging their current conditions. With thisawareness a rationale for the work can be estab

lished that draws on the interpretations made ofthe cultural worlds and social matters engaged

with by initiating archaeological research. In thisway, the social constructions produced by working in public remain active in the manner thathermeneutics encourages, so that as researchers

work and produce new understandings, they cancontinue to tack between their knowledge of theworld and the way that knowledge guides them

towards archaeological interpretation.Finally, decolonizing archaeology means that

archaeologists should work to elicit the criticalalternatives that already exist to knowing thepast and that these will be found among thosealready positioned to talk back to the modern

world. The Ludlow project found this inunions; the Annapolis project found this in theAfrican American community; and the GNOAPfound it in the critiques of race that produced

partial knowledgeof a local

past.These alter

natives are not simply signs of difference butare routes for seeing how the past works in theway the world is constructed by those strugglingfor change today. Archaeologists committed tosocial change must learn and embrace thesealternative perspectives on the past and thenuse them to direct how archaeology is done.The most significant impact that can be madeis thus to redefine the location and responsibility of archaeology in public from the past to

the present, or from the other to the self, sothat an archaeological voice is produced througha critical engagement with the cultural worldsthat allow archaeologists to have a public voiceat all.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Earlier versions of this paper were presented at theFifth World Archaeological Conference inWashington,DC, in June 2003 and at the RATS conference in

Binghamton, NY, in October 2003. Iwish to thank

Randy McGuire for his invitation to prepare this paperfor both conferences and for his comments on earlierdrafts. The paper has also benefited from the readingsof two anonymous reviewers, Kurt Jordan, Paul Mullins,Zoe Burkholder, Jenna Coplin, and the support of MarkLeone and Ian Hodder. While I hope these readerssee their suggestions incorporated here, any mistakesor shortcomings remain my own responsibility.

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Christopher N. MatthewsDepartment of AnthropologyHofstra University

Hempstead, NY 11549

matthew public dialectics 2006

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