Sigiriya Rock

This chapter critically discusses the current heritage management processes deployed at the Sigiriya World Heritage site in Sri Lanka, a significant tourist attraction. We examine the current condition of the site and the lack of involvement of the associated communities in its management. Through a series of inquiries among healers, artisans, and irrigation managers, new insights are gained into indigenous heritage values and meanings that are separated from heritage values assigned to Sigiriya. These insights compel an argument for the necessity to incorporate the ideas and opinions of the traditional knowledge keepers of the ancient villages in the vast forest land around Sigiriya. We end with suggesting a template arising out of local analyses for changing the management protocols at Sigiriya.

Listening and Waiting, Excavating Later

Careful listening to oral traditions, a significant part of Tanzanian Haya heritage, for nearly a year led to an ancient shrine where Haya elders encouraged excavations. This was early participatory community archaeology, where indigenous knowledge and the initiative of elders paved the way to significant archaeological finds about iron technology and the enduring qualities of knowledge preserved by ritual performance. Patient apprenticeship to knowledge-keepers during ethnoarchaeological observations of iron technology also led to significant insights into inventive techniques in iron technology that otherwise would have gone unnoticed. Listening with epistemic humility, opening ourselves to other ways of constructing history and heritage, unveils heritage under treat. A forgotten massacre by German colonials, the knowledge of which has been erased by disease and globalization, was revealed and is now preserved only by listening closely to Haya elders five decades ago.

Listening and Learning

This chapter outlines some of the benefits of collaborative research. It draws on the experience gained and the lessons learned from close to a decade’s collaboration between the Fiske Center for Archaeological Research at the University of Massachusetts Boston and the Nipmuc Nation of Massachusetts. Close collaboration as part of the Hassanamesit Woods Project between Nipmuc archaeologist Dr. D. Rae Gould of the University of Massachusetts Amherst, a member of the Hassanamisco Nipmuc, and the author has resulted in numerous ontological shifts. One of the more noteworthy has been a reassessment of the history of the seventeenth-century “Praying Indian” communities of colonial Massachusetts and Connecticut that have always been viewed as having been “established” by English missionary John Eliot. Such a view, long held by historians and archaeologists alike, was challenged as an outgrowth of collaborative dialogue resulting in a reassessment of notions of community and deeper connections to traditional Nipmuc lands. As a result, research examined deeper connections between the seventeenth-century community of Hassanamesit and earlier Nipmuc use of the area. Through a series of analytical studies, it was determined that cultural and spatial continuity could be demonstrated between recent Nipmuc communities and a deeper past.

Continuing Writings on Stone

This chapter explores the concept of contemporary rock-art making as a form of repatriation. According to Blackfoot culture the making of rock art is considered a sacred act that involves communication with the spirit world. Current policies help protect existing, tangible rock art, but at the expense of continuing the intangible heritage of communicating with the spirit world. Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park is in the process of creating a new policy which would allow the making of contemporary rock art in a traditional sense.

Archaeologies of Listening Beginning Thoughts

This chapter introduces the foundational principles of Archaeologies of Listening. It takes the reader back to the genesis of anthropological method as well as the debates that have influenced attitudes toward indigenous knowledge and oral traditions over the last century. It critically examines the failure of “New Archaeology” to employ anthropological methods and proposes a complementary practice that does not eschew science but advocates a broader practice incorporating empirical evidence from those with deep experience with material cultures and landscapes. This chapter brings into focus how a richer interpretative posture occurs when we open our practice to the knowledge of others by employing the principles of apprenticeship and patience when working with communities. By putting into action the principle of epistemic humility, alternative views of the past open as do alternative ontologies that structure how the archaeological record is formed and heritage is performed.

Listening, Hearing, Choosing?

Drawing from efforts to engage archaeology as an integral part of peace-building in post-Troubles Northern Ireland, the risks and the rewards of collaborative cross-community practice are addressed. Focus is on the ethical challenges of negotiating the politics of the present while staying true to the evidence of the past. Positioning archaeology as a means of bridging the divisions in post-conflict settings toward the creation of a stable, shared society requires an ability to not only listen, but also to hear and respect the strength of personal and community narratives, even when those narratives may be founded on fundamental misrepresentations of the past.

“Listening to Whom and for Whose Benefit?”

The values that descendant communities place on heritage objects and places have historically been eclipsed by science-oriented approaches to the archaeological record. However, local knowledge is vital to making decisions about the protection or use of tangible or intangible heritage, and knowledge derived from it. Learning to listen must thus be a part of the archaeologist’s tool kit. In this chapter, I describe the value of what can be learned from Indigenous community members (Community-based participatory research), as well as how ethnoarchaeological studies contribute to a fuller understanding of heritage, directly benefit community needs and interests, and make substantial contributions to archaeology and heritage preservation. I focus on community-directed projects funded by the Intellectual Property Issues in Cultural Heritage (IPinCH) project. These initiatives directly benefit community needs and interests, while also making substantial contributions to archaeology and heritage preservation.

Listening to History Performed in Pilgrimage

Understanding a community’s things, practices, and words from their situated perspective motivates alternative histories. This chapter examines how an archaeologist’s practice might shift in circumstances where observing and listening to people are necessities. The case study addresses repurposed objects, ritual acts of healing, and the spoken words of healers to remake aspects of the Zigua past in lowland northeastern Tanzania. Knowing the meanings of their expressions – including an annual pilgrimage to gather healing items - creates an intellectual space for Zigua history within a global history. Living among the Zigua helps to understand them and to employ their historical approach and social condition to make an alternative history they render meaningful. As the Zigua case shows, an approach to science that values people first is transformative to African history.

Local Narratives, Regional Histories, and the Demise of Great Zimbabwe

Archaeologists struggle to understand the demise of Great Zimbabwe because of poor appreciation of local and regional histories of the southern Zimbabwe plateau, post-fifteenth century. Listening to some of these extant regional histories and living narratives is key to understanding developments around Great Zimbabwe from the sixteenth century onwards. The focus in this chapter is on two sites, Boroma, a toponym east of Great Zimbabwe, and Chizhou Hill, some 80 kilometers to the north. In sixteenth-century Portuguese accounts, "Burrom" (Boroma) is presented as a prince in charge of a 'fortress' whose location coincides with Great Zimbabwe. Local narratives and indigenous histories collected from villagers near Chizhou Hill, as well as documented written sources, connect the site to the resettlement of the area by migrants from the Mutapa State in northern Zimbabwe. Combined, both sites attest to a complex process leading to the demise of Great Zimbabwe and its culture from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries.

Ethnoarchaeologies of Listening

This chapter focuses on the importance of understanding how a researcher’s long-term relationships within in a community and willingness to accept other ways of being and learning make space for intersubjective exchanges and deeper understandings of technological ontologies. Borada-Gamo lithic practitioners of southern Ethiopia shared with me bit by bit their perception of stone as living beings, their proverbs, and their technological practices, which have the potential to reshape archaeological discourse surrounding lithic technology. It is critical that we privilege non-Western theories of the human and nonhuman world to acknowledge a wide range of intellectual contributions that produce inclusive and meaningful narratives of the past.