This paper examines the history of historical categorizations in the North American archaeology tradition, tracing the reconfigurations of these temporalities through time. The shifting terminology is an attempt at decolonizing the temporal categories in archaeology but only serves to mask or reframe colonial narratives while subsuming Indigenous cultures into Western history. This examination is concerned with the impact on and critiques from Native and Indigenous communities. I will specifically engage with Kānaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) histories and literature to illustrate how these modes of categorization fail to account for the lived experiences or epistemology of descendant communities.

The separation of the past into “pre-historic” and “historic” has often been criticized for creating an artificial division that prioritizes Eurocentric written histories over Indigenous oral histories. However, this bias towards Eurocentric histories persists even when Indigenous written histories are available. In Hawaiʻi, texts that are written in ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi (and have not been translated) are rarely used in archaeological analysis despite large quantities of them existing. To highlight the different types of information that can be gleaned from ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi archival documents, this paper compares two types of documents that were part of the 1848 land claim process in Hawaiʻi: the native registrar reports (written in ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi) and foreign testimonies (written in English). Analysis of these documents reveals discrepencies in how land was described. Thus, this paper highlights how learning ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi (including the culture) aids one in landscape reconstruction and in understanding a different history of Hawaiʻi.

This paper examines the ways in which historic period activities have impacted indigenous sites, with a focus on gold mining in California, and how this is documented in the Cultural Resources Management (CRM) industry. Using previous research and geoarchaeological data, we analyze multicomponent archaeological resources comprising historic period mining sites with bedrock milling features or portable groundstone either within or adjacent to mining features. In addition to exploring the ways in which these sites have historically been, and are currently, discussed in site records and their accompanying reports, we propose a more holistic approach to how multicomponent sites are treated in CRM to bridge the gap between indigenous communities and professional archaeology.

The removal of indigenous peoples from the American midwest in the 18th and 19th centuries contributed to the erasure of indigenous lifeways, languages, and sovereignty from public and historic discourse by obscuring indigenous spaces from the visible landscape. Northwestern University was founded on indigenous land in 1850 and has paved over important indigenous spaces through decades of campus expansion and urban development. Not until recently have university organizations such as CNAIR begun challenging this spatial erasure and publicizing the indigenous meanings and values of campus land. This research presents a theoretical framework and methodology for uncovering archaeological landscapes concealed by urban development through a microtopographic analysis of historical infill. Using USGS topographic maps from 1897 and 1928, this research employs digital elevation models of difference (DoDs) to map historical changes in elevation and identify areas where evidence of previous indigenous contexts might remain intact beneath subsequent construction phases.

In 1889, Wahnenauhi (Lucy Keys), a survivor of the infamous “Trail of Tears”, wrote, that “despair in its thickest blackness” settled down on the Chiefs of the Cherokee as they prepared their people to relocate from their traditional homelands to “Indian Territory” in 1838. Her words are compelling—both for how intimate they feel and for the imagery they invoke of an encompassing blackness surrounding this episode. I argue that a similar blackness has developed over time that obscures the realities of Removal. This discussion focuses on how we visualize Cherokee Removal (aka the Trail of Tears) and what effect the lack of visibility has had on our relationship with this atrocity in American history. I will also focus on how archaeological approaches may provide ways to better see aspects of Removal that have been overlooked. I will additionally talk about the process of designing and implementing this work collaboratively.