Concepts of community in the pursuit of an inclusive archaeology

Abstract Community is a key concept that shapes how we approach our relationships with other individuals and groups. In this article, the author reviews how scholars and laypeople alike use the concept of 'community' in both theoretical and applied contexts. What do heritage professionals expect from the communities with whom they work? How do these communities define and constitute themselves? The answers to such questions have broad implications for the way that scholars interact and collaborate with stakeholders. Examples are presented from the author's archaeological projects at sites associated with communities in the African diaspora that illustrate the importance of an explicit and critical approach to the idea of 'community'. The discussion concludes with preliminary findings from an investigation of the meanings of community among black Chicagoans in the twentieth and twenty‐first centuries. Keywords: African diasporaNorth Americaarchaeologyengaged scholarshipcollaborationcommunity Acknowledgements I am tremendously grateful to the people who have permitted me to practise archaeology in their midst, and to the organisations who have sponsored that work. Thanks are also due to the individuals who have commented upon this paper at multiple stages: Jodi Barnes; Jean Dennison; Maria Franklin; Shannon Mahoney; Christopher Matthews; Laurajane Smith; and two anonymous reviewers. I, and this article, have benefited greatly from their insights. Notes 1. Such developments are particularly clear at a meeting like the World Archaeology Congress (where some of the ideas in this paper were first presented), an organisation and conference that works consciously to break down international hierarchies and inequities within the discipline. 2. All of the above is not to say that every archaeologist agrees with the importance accorded to some other community. For example, some archaeologists express concern that by emphasising the political context of excavation and analysis (Armstrong Citation2008), or by including stakeholders' perspectives in developing research objectives (McKee Citation1994), that we undermine our authority to speak clearly on matters relating to the interpretation of the past. 3. There are important exceptions, of course. Indeed, one of my first steps towards thinking through this question of communities came through my participation in a session organised by John McCarthy in which the emphasis was on 'the individual' in contrast to 'community' (McCarthy Citation2001). It was a strategy to emphasise agency and to circumvent the tendency to lump people into an undifferentiated mass that gets called, for lack of a better or more precise term, a 'community'. In the case of the scholars assembled by McCarthy, the focus was on individual and community in the past, rather than the present. 4. This project was sponsored by the Barbados National Trust. The analysis of the house was a joint venture between architects from the University of Florida, along with architectural historians and archaeologists from the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. I was the project archaeologist in charge of two of our three excavation seasons, under the direction of Principal Investigator Marley R. Brown, III, Director of the Department of Archaeological Research, Colonial Williamsburg. 5. Archaeology at the eighteenth‐century slave quarter structures took place from 1993 to 1995, under the auspices of the Department of Archaeological Research, The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Marley R. Brown, III, Principal Investigator. Maria Franklin directed the project at the duplex site, where I was one of her assistants in the field, lab, and development of public programming. 6. My remarks here represent my perception of our efforts and certainly do not reflect the extent of Franklin's thinking on these issues. 7. The Bermuda National Trust was the project sponsor. I directed the excavation as a staff archaeologist with the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation's Department of Archaeological Research, Marley R. Brown, Principal Investigator, with assistance from J. Eric Deetz. The Time Travelers program was developed by Trust Education Officer Nicola O'Leary. 8. Funding for this project has come from the Department of Anthropology at DePaul University for whom the site has served as the location for the summer field school. I co‐directed excavations with assistance from Rebecca Graff (2006, 2007) and J. Eric Deetz (2009). 9. I used a keyword search to select articles from three evenly spaced years: 1926, the year the Home on Michigan Avenue opened; 1966, in the waning years of the Home's operation; and 2006, the year of our first field season. There were 536 total items in 1926, 3792 in 1966, and 1069 in 2006. I took a random sample of 50 items from each year and analysed the sense of 'community' and the kinds of items in which the word appeared.