One Size Does Not Fit All: Theory and Practice of Decolonizing Archaeology in Africa

Abstract

Despite claims to data-driven, objective, scientific approaches, archaeology is unavoidably political and does not exist in a social vacuum. The focus on recent time periods and places that are relevant to local living communities, often with a colonial history of displacement, disenfranchisement, and power relations based on systems of oppression, has driven some archaeologists to grapple with the social, ethical, and political implications of their work. This has propelled calls for a critical and activist archaeology and efforts to decolonize the discipline. While critical archaeology reflects upon political and social impacts that research has on descendant populations, decolonizing archaeology intends to recover knowledges and materials made invisible by colonial relations of power, using heritage to promote self-awareness and empowerment through different ways of knowing and subaltern narratives. However, under the cloak of conspicuously political, radical, and critical archaeology, some authors resort to iconoclastic finger-pointing and simple accusatory language, with limited pragmatic results – that is, beyond publications and lectures for academic purposes and like-minded archaeologists – risking the perception that their arguments constitute just another hegemonic epistemology.