Community-Based Archaeology: Research With, By, and for Indigenous and Local Communities

InCommunity-Based Archaeology: ResearchWith, By, and For Indigenous and Local Communities, Sonya Atalay aptly explains the principles of community-based participatory research and demonstrates how its effective application in archaeology benefits scholarly work. This is an outstanding book clearly written in an engaging style, theoretically informed, well researched, and appropriately grounded in personal experience. Community-Based Archaeology represents the cutting edge of contemporary archaeology, and it will interest all scholars concerned with the development of anthropological theory and knowledge production. Atalay’s book is written primarily to inform archaeologists about the principles and practice of community-based participatory research. However, the book will also interest scholars engaged in community-based participatory research in other disciplines, including cultural anthropology, sociology, forestry, public health, agriculture, and natural resources management. Atalay does an excellent job of situating the development of community-based participatory research in archaeology within the larger context of this methodology in the social sciences. In doing this, she provides a critical reflection on the current and future direction of archaeology as a scholarly discipline. This work entails superior scholarship. Atalay has readwidely in the fields of community-based participatory research and archaeological method and theory, and she judiciously cites the literature relevant to the points she makes in the book. Her scholarship is impeccable and up-to-date. The book makes a significant contribution to the theoretical and methodological literature of anthropology by articulating how archaeological science and indigenous knowledge systems can be combined to the mutual benefit of scholars and the communities in which they work. In the first chapter, Atalay discusses how archaeology is at an exciting juncture, with new directions being forged to create a sustainable discipline. She describes how the tensions and ethical dilemmas of working with indigenous, descendant, and local communities open new possibilities for publicly engaged archaeological research. Atalay passionately argues for an archaeology that matters and one that decolonizes research practices. In the second chapter—and throughout the book—Atalay moves beyond simple rhetoric by using five specific community-based participatory research projects she has worked on as examples of the archaeological approach she advocates. The first of these entails communitybased research at Çatalhöyük in Turkey, encompassing interpretation of an early Neolithic settlement, community theater, and cultural tourism at Küçükköy. There are three projects with the Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe of Michigan, including the Ziibiwing Repatriation Research Project with the tribe’s museum and cultural society; the Ziibiwing Sanilac Petroglyph Intellectual Property Project to interpret and protect the archaeological record at the Ezhibiigadel Asin Sanilac Petroglyph site in association with Anishinabe elders, and the Flint Stone Street Ancestral Recovery and Site Management Project in Flint, Michigan. Atalay also discusses research on the Waapaahsiiki Siipiiwi Mounds Project in Indiana conducted in partnership with the Sullivan County American Indian Council. In chapter 3, Atalay articulates five principles in the archaeological application of community-based participatory research. These include a community-based partnership process, aspirations to be participatory in all aspects, building community capacity, engaging plains anthropologist, Vol. 59 No. 229, February, 2014, 96–97