The trouble with "co-"

Abstract

In 2010, I published a paper on the movement towards collaborative archaeology. Drawing on my personal experiences, I sought to understand the motivations behind this trend, and compared its supporting theory with its often quite different application in practice as I have witnessed it. I expressed doubt that collaboration represents a real break with archaeology’s past and instead suggested that this shift in language simply makes everyone feel better about exploitation. Since 2010, collaborative and community-based archaeology have continued to rise in popularity, yet my doubts have sedimented rather than dissipated. In this paper, I discuss the lingering concerns I have about this growing practice by juxtaposing how collaboration is envisioned with the reality I have observed. In challenging the tenets of what seems more and more likely to be the ‘future’ of archaeology, I suggest that a critical focus on what collaboration is not disrupts the narrative of “decolonization” espoused in a practice that ensures the project of archaeology continues uninterrupted.