On March 14-15, the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology and the Museum of Anthropological Archaeology (UMMAA) opened a new Center for Community Archaeology and Heritage. Designed to support community-engaged practice in archaeological and heritage research, the Center is the result of more than 35 years of fieldwork and teaching by a small but intrepid group of academics based at U-M. It represents the growth of a like-minded community of scholars to a critical mass.
Hosted at U-M’s Michigan League, the Center’s inaugural conference and visioning session included 20 speakers who discussed their community archaeology and heritage projects in Italy, USA, Mongolia, Kosova, Sierra Lione, Mexico, Belize, Tunisia, South Africa, Egypt, and Sudan. The conference paper abstracts and presenter biographies can be found here.
Keynotes were given by Dr. Sonya Atalay (U-M alumna) and Dr. Richard Leventhal, who direct the Center for Braiding Indigenous Knowledges and Science (CBIKS) and the Penn Cultural Heritage Center (PennCHC), respectively, and were highly instructive in terms of what best practice looks like for a venture such as ours.
The conference was attended by more than 100 people and gained media attention from our own University Record as well as ClickOnDetroit, Michigan Today, and the Michigan Daily. The results of our collaborative vision sessions are forthcoming but have already proved helpful in providing innovative ways in which the Center can contribute to strengthening the ecosystem of community-engaged practice in archaeological and heritage research here at U-M and in our global communities of practice.
