Known in English as Mount Taylor, Dewankwin Kyaba:chu Yalanne (“in the east snow-capped mountain”) in northwestern New Mexico is a sacred landscape to the Zuni people. From an archaeological perspective, the mountain is dotted with hundreds of discrete archaeological sites that record 12,000 years of history. From a Zuni perspective, Mount Taylor is a rich cultural landscape—a tangible record of ancestral migrations, a living being, a pilgrimage site, a referent in religious prayers, a spiritual source of rain, and a collecting place for spring water, animals, minerals, and plants. For Zunis, all of these facets of the mountain combine to create a “total landscape” that is both a source and an instrument of Zuni culture. This article presents a case study of a compliance project to document the potential impacts of a proposed uranium mine at the base of Mount Taylor on Zuni traditional cultural properties. The project demonstrates how archaeologists can benefit from a landscape perspective that builds from the traditional knowledge of descendant communities. The Zuni standpoint further helps shape a CRM practice that is anthropologically informed and consistent with a developing federal mandate to use landscape-scale analysis in heritage management and mitigation practices.

The rapid pace of economic, political, and social change over the past 150 years has framed and reframed archaeological practice in Ontario. Indigenous groups have become increasingly involved in and critical of archaeological research. Indigenous peoples who value archaeological investigation of ancestral sites, but also desire to protect their buried ancestors, have restricted archaeological excavation and the analysis of remains. Over the last decade, research and consulting archaeologists in Ontario, Canada, have worked collaboratively with Indigenous peoples with an eye to developing sustainable archaeology practices. In the spirit of sustainable archaeology, a comprehensive research project and field school run by Wilfrid Laurier University is training the next generation of archaeologists to adopt investigative techniques that minimize disturbance of ancestral sites. Here we present the results of our surface, magnetic susceptibility, and metal detecting surveys of a Huron-Wendat village site, which pose minimally invasive solutions for investigating village sites in wooded areas. The water-sieving of midden soils in an attempt to recover 100 percent of cultural materials, and the analysis of archived collections also honor the values of Indigenous descendant communities by limiting additional invasive excavation.

In recent years, scholars have convincingly argued, on both ethical and epistemic grounds, for the need for archaeological research “with, for, and by” descendant communities. Realizing such collaborative projects, however, is often challenging, and the prospect of beginning such an endeavor intimidating. This article shares a successful methodology implemented in the Xaltocan Archaeological Project (PAX) carried out in 2009–2011 in Mexico. This format—field crew-centered education in the context of excavations, culminating in a public symposium by all team members disseminating preliminary findings—is a simple, manageable way to begin engaging descendants. In addition to describing the symposium format, I discuss how I mitigated two major challenges to its implementation: (1) incentive or compensation (and, thereby, funding) and (2) community members’ critical assessments of their own relevant knowledge. I reflect on the impact of the symposium on subsequent collaborative efforts, and I contemplate institutional obstacles that remain for scholars attempting to decolonize archaeological research in Mexico. Finally, I consider how the symposium format could be implemented in other research contexts.

Portable X-ray fluorescence (pXRF) spectroscopy is commonly used for testing toxic levels of heavy metals in modern industrial waste sites, and it has seen growing applicability in the context of archaeological survey and soils. In this study, we present the results of our pXRF analysis of surface soils at a historic silver refinery located near Puno, Peru, in the western Lake Titicaca Basin. The results of our analysis identified hazardous levels of antimony (Sb), arsenic (As), mercury (Hg), and lead (Pb) in excavation soils, necessitating the relocation of planned excavation units and the use of personal protective equipment. This study highlights the advantages of rapid, in situ pXRF analysis of surface soils in contaminated industrial archaeology sites to assess potential harm to human health.

Around the world, archaeological collections are curated in museums, universities, foundations, government agencies, and other organizations. Some are carefully documented and readily accessible, while others are languishing in substandard conditions as a direct result of the curation crisis. This article highlights the value of collection-based research. It encourages the mutually beneficial approach of training students in both collection preservation and collection-based research and demonstrates other ways to obtain data for research projects, aside from excavation. Using my collections-based research carried out in Puerto Rico and the continental United States as a case study, I draw attention to the valuable information that can be derived from acquisition and accession documents and offer ways to incorporate new datasets. This allows for more accurate narratives of collections’ historiographies.

Archaeological collections repositories have two principal aims: preserving collections while also making them accessible. This accessibility is critical for the growing number of researchers turning to collections to study the past. This article describes steps that repositories can take to enhance access to collections in their custody, based on the experience of the Maryland Archaeological Conservation Laboratory, the state's public archaeological curation facility. These steps include the identification of stakeholders—archaeologists, Native American tribes, and stakeholder communities; creation of a detailed and prioritized collection inventory including artifacts and records; development of finding aids; reconstruction of provenience systems; and exploration of the digital delivery of collection information. For repositories ill equipped to hold archaeological collections, consideration should be given to transferring the collection to one with the appropriate resources and expertise.

In the past 30 years, archaeologists have taught children and youth about the processes of archaeological inquiry and the results of archaeological research. Hundreds, if not thousands, of education programs have sprouted up over the last 30 years; some have endured, while others have faded away. Some efforts and programs are aimed at formal learning in school classrooms, while many others are based in informal settings, such as museums, outdoor learning centers, after-school programs, and many others. A few of these programs have been assessed for learning outcomes, but many others have not. For example, all Project Archaeology education materials are intensively assessed in classrooms and peer reviewed prior to release for their efficacy in teaching predetermined goals or enduring understandings. Additionally, the Project Archaeology curriculum was assessed for its efficacy in teaching conceptual understanding of science inquiry. Program assessment is critical for the long-term success and sustainability of archaeology education.

Seasonal wetlands and exuberant crop growth present challenges to systematic archaeological survey in alluvial settings, particularly in the tropical lowlands. Lidar can reduce the time and cost required to survey such areas by allowing targeting of elevated features not buried under recent alluvium, but demographic interpretation requires estimating post-abandonment alluvial depths. The broad alluvial plain between the Papaloapan delta and the Tuxtla Mountains in southern Veracruz, Mexico, offers a valuable case study, featuring seasonally inundated marshes, lakes, and vast fields of sugar cane, a crop infamously obstructive to lidar mapping. Undertaken to reconstruct demographic and organizational change in the Tres Zapotes polity, this study evaluates the benefits and limitations of lidar for archaeological survey in tropical alluvial settings based on overlap between lidar and systematic pedestrian survey and estimates of alluvial depth obtained by auger testing and underscores the importance of timing for lidar mapping in sugar cane.

Recent trends in the practice of archaeology have seen the emergence of the active involvement of stakeholders in the research process. This is an important development, given that the relationship between archaeologists and the communities that they work with has been tenuous, particularly when archaeological findings contest ethnic identities. As a case in point, the findings of the Ifugao Archaeological Project (Philippines) question the bases of Ifugao identity. Ifugao identity is centered on wet-rice production and resistance to colonialism. Previously, the dating of the inception of the Ifugao rice terraces was placed at 2,000 years ago. The findings of the Ifugao Archaeological Project (IAP), however, suggest that the construction of the terraces coincided with the arrival of the Spanish in the northern Philippines. Initially, this finding did not sit well the larger Ifugao descendant communities, but, as our article narrates, the pursuit to actively involve stakeholders in the research process resolved this issue. Our experience in Ifugao has shown that the inclusion of the voices of stakeholders in the interpretation of the past is inadequate because it suggests that indigenous stakeholders are simply contributors to, and not co-investigators of, research projects. As our work in Ifugao demonstrates, primary stakeholders are now co-investigators (exemplified by this coauthored article).

We have all read the headlines heralding, often hyperbolically, the latest advances in text- and image-based Artificial Intelligence (AI). What is perhaps most unique about these developments is that they now make relatively good AI accessible to the average Internet user. These new services respond to human prompts, written in natural language, with generated output that appears to satisfy the prompt. Consequently, they are categorized under the term “generative AI,” whether they are generating text, images, or other media. They work by modeling human language statistically, to “learn” patterns from extremely large datasets of human-created content, with those that specifically focus on text therefore called Large Language Models (LLMs). As we have all tried products such as ChatGPT or Midjourney over the past year, we have undoubtedly begun to wonder how and when they might impact our archaeological work. Here, I review the state of this type of AI and the current challenges with using it meaningfully, and I consider its potential for archaeologists.

Museum educators and graduate students at Brown University’s Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology and the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World, along with the RISD Museum at the Rhode Island School of Design, are entering their eighth year of partnering with sixth-grade social studies teachers in Providence Public Schools in a five-session classroom and museumbased archaeology program called Think Like an Archaeologist. This experiential program uses the study of archaeological methods to address state and national social studies standards and bridges social studies content with the literacy standards of Common Core State Standards (CCSS) that aim at moving students toward twenty-first-century skill building. Students not only understand the science behind the content in their textbooks but also learn how to use museum objects and archaeological artifacts as primary resources. Students also learn to “read” artifacts, express their ideas in spoken and written language as historians, and use academic vocabulary as required by CCSS while thinking like archaeologists. Through teacher feedback and student evaluations, we know this program to be a successful example of the benefits of teaching archaeological skills in middle school curricula—so much so that it has now been re-created at additional schools in other regions.

Over the past several years, we have seen many attacks on publicly funded and mandated archaeology in the United States. These attacks occur at the state level, where governors and state legislatures try to defund or outright eliminate state archaeological programs and institutions. We have also seen several attacks at the federal level. Some members of Congress showcase archaeology as a waste of public tax dollars, and others propose legislation to move federally funded or permitted projects forward without consideration of impacts on archaeological resources. These attacks continue to occur, and we expect them to increase in the future. In the past, a vigilant network of historic preservation and archaeological organizations was able to thwart such attacks. The public, however, largely remains an untapped ally. As a discipline, we have not built a strong public support network. We have not demonstrated the value of archaeology to the public, beyond a scattering of educational and informational programs. In this article, we—a group of archaeologists whose work has focused on public engagement—provide a number of specific recommendations on how to build a strong public constituency for the preservation of our nation's archaeological heritage.

Since its founding in 2009 at the behest of local leaders, Proyecto Salinas de los Nueve Cerros has had the dual goals of scientific research and community development. Due to the regional political landscape, the initial goal of community-run ecotourism had to be abandoned. In its stead, the project has been seeking high-impact, low-cost development initiatives in collaboration with local villagers. The initiatives have had mixed levels of success, with best results in providing resources for multi-family wells and in organizing an ongoing lecture and workshop series detailing the results of the archaeological project. Through trial and error, project members have learned multiple lessons that can help other similar projects in the future. (1) Community investment in the project is essential, (2) as is the presence of a development specialist who can lead the efforts, leaving archaeologists to do archaeology. (3) Both the project and the local residents must have realistic expectations regarding the time the initiatives take and how ambitious they can be. (4) All of the initiatives must be informed by problems the locals themselves identify, and (5) it is possible to positively impact the region.

As the role of digital methods in heritage and archaeology has increased in prominence, so has the question of capacity and community building. Who should receive training in digital methods? How should training take place? What concepts, platforms, technologies should be taught? These are relevant questions requiring careful planning and thoughtful implementation; yet beyond these questions, there is an issue of even greater importance: the planned development of communities of practice. The teaching of digital methods has a greater chance of success if it takes place in an ecosystem of scholars who are connected to one another through shared perspectives on those methods. This article presents and discusses the details of a model developed at Michigan State University that speaks to teaching digital archaeology and heritage methods, and to the development of communities of practice in which those methods are shared and relevant. The model is driven and informed by the activities of three projects: the National Endowment for the Humanities-funded Institute on Digital Archaeology Method & Practice, the Cultural Heritage Informatics Graduate Fellowship Program, and the Department of Anthropology Digital Cultural Heritage Fieldschool.

The creation of digital repositories of human skeletal remains offers bioarchaeologists a variety of potential means of aiding efforts related to curation and analysis. We present a discussion of how issues of preservation and access can affect research and argue that digital repositories not only maintain a record of objects but that the digital format allows researchers to expand their studies to include otherwise inaccessible collections. Digital models can be utilized by bioarchaeologists to collect and analyze a wide variety of quantitative and qualitative data. We review several digital capture methods employed by bioarchaeologists, including CT scanning, laser scanning, and photogrammetry. While photogrammetry is underutilized by bioarchaeologists, we point out its many advantages over other methods.

In 2008, the Carlsbad Field Office of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) made a fundamental change in how they work with the energy industry in the Permian Basin of southeastern New Mexico, one of the nation's busiest “oil patches.” Through a collaborative effort that involved the Bureau of Land Management, the New Mexico State Historic Preservation Officer, the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, the Mescalero Apache Tribe, and industry representatives, they developed and implemented the Permian Basin Memorandum of Agreement (MOA). This agreement allows energy development proponents to contribute funds to archaeological research in lieu of spending an equivalent amount of money on traditional archaeological field survey. The mitigation program governs how BLM addresses long-term damage and cumulative impacts to archaeological resources as new development proceeds in the Permian Basin MOA area. Now in its fifth year, the program has succeeded in key ways: industry has gained control over schedules and time, while archaeologists have gained control over where and how they do archaeology. Key lessons have been learned along the way: The funding mechanisms of the program work well, but doing archaeology through a collaborative working group takes a lot of time and energy.

There is considerable and largely untapped potential in individual-scale research in the discipline of archaeology. Innovative methods described in this article were developed to identify the work of individual prehistoric flintknappers. Theoretically, the approach was informed by previous researchers' discussions of technological style and utilizes an individual- or nano-scale focus for that concept. New analytical methods were then used to investigate individual flintknappers' participation in the community organization of the prehistoric eastern Tonto Basin, Arizona. Specifically, small triangular stone projectile points (n = 149) collected from Roosevelt phase (A.D. 1275–1325) sites were analyzed to inform an assessment of the spatial distribution of individuals' handiwork in late prehistoric multi-site settlements. This research illustrates how improved individual-scale techniques may provide new insight on topics of considerable interest to archaeologists. For the Tonto Basin case, this project offers a new perspective on the integration of immigrants into local systems and the strength of community ties across natural barriers such as the Salt River during the Roosevelt phase.

Since hosting its first archaeology fair in 2001, the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA) has organized 23 more fairs and informed thousands of people through this popular outreach activity. The AIA fair model brings together independent archaeological organizations representing a rich array of archaeological subfields to present their programs and resources to a local community in an interactive and engaging manner. The goals of AIA archaeology fairs are to promote a greater public understanding of archaeology, raise awareness of local archaeological resources, and bring together proximate archaeological groups with a shared outreach goal. In this article, the authors discuss how the AIA fair model was developed through feedback cycles that include evaluation, data analysis, reflection, and trial and error; how it evolved; and how it is spreading to other groups around the world. To date, 26 AIA local societies have hosted fairs, and the popularity of this program as an outreach event is increasing among other archaeological groups across the United States, as well as in Belize, Canada, Colombia, the Czech Republic, Iran, and Myanmar. This growth in popularity and implementation presents us with unique opportunities to collect and reflect upon data essential to conducting archaeological outreach around the globe.

Preservationists and archaeologists often assess cemeteries for their research value as cultural resources of communities. Cemeteries hold significant interpretive and educational value because they serve communities as outdoor museums (Meyers 1996). The Cemetery Resource Protection Training (CRPT) workshop, developed by the Florida Public Archaeology Network (FPAN), engages the public by providing an archaeological perspective and hands-on experiences for local communities to aid them in addressing the real-world problem of neglected historic cemeteries. After completing over 36 workshops in 28 different communities, the CRPT workshop template has proven to be a highly transferable means to provide education and outreach to underserved communities and sites, as directed in FPAN’s mission. This paper considers cemeteries as participatory museums using Nina Simon’s (2010) co-creation framework. Following a brief summary of cemetery training programs and a review of the larger cemetery crisis in Florida, the rationale for creation of the CRPT program and building blocks of the workshop are provided for other public archaeologists to adapt for training cemetery stewards. Finally, the creation of training opportunities for nonprofessionals as an advance in public archaeology practice is discussed.

Swede Hollow Park, in St. Paul, Minnesota, was originally inhabited by immigrants to St. Paul. Despite an engaged surrounding neighborhood, the park and its history are not widely known. The park was recently the site of a public archaeology project, providing an opportunity to explicitly examine who participated and why, as a means of assessing the success of public education. The project team used surveys and informal interviews as assessment tools for analyzing the demographics and motivations of the participating public. Understanding demographics and motivations is an understudied aspect of public archaeology and yet is crucially important in influencing how archaeologists interact with the public, frame their research questions, and create learning objectives. This information has the potential to help create more inclusive public archaeology projects (for example, drawing in more recent immigrant communities as well as descendants) and to indicate where more work needs to be done to accommodate diversity (in our case, understanding the homeless as stakeholders). It also can help clarify whether archaeologists can, or should, prioritize site, method, or narrative when engaging with the public, or whether the public should choose.