Archaeology as Necessarily Political

Abstract

Archaeology is indeed one of the whitest disciplines. In the report American Archaeologist carried out by the Society for American Archaeology (SAA), 89% of respondents identified themselves as having European ancestry, i.e. being white (Zeder 1997: 13). More recently, the 2020 Profiling the Profession report states that 97% of archaeologists in the UK are white (Aitchison et al. 2021). There are no official data for the European Association of Archaeologists (EAA), but I surmise a similar percentage of white people. There are only few initiatives whose work has been crucial to truly diversify ethnicity within the discipline, namely the Society of Black Archaeologists (SBA) and the Indigenous Archaeologist Collective (IAC) in the US and the European Society of Black and Allies Archaeologies (ESBAA).