Midwest Historical Archaeology Conference

Positioning Archaeology for the Future

October 3-5, 2019

15th Midwest Historical Archaeology Conference
Location: Michigan Technological University, Houghton, MI
Hosts: Department of Social Sciences | Great Lakes Research Center
mhac15@mtu.edu

Can historical archaeology help people imagine a sustainable world? Sustainable Archaeology highlights the critical juncture that human societies face at this moment. How are historical, industrial, and contemporary archaeologies relevant? How do they contribute to evolving dialogues about sustainable interactions among communities, societies, and environments? Can archaeology inform discussions regarding mitigation, adaptation, and resiliency? Archaeology illuminates patterns of human behavior in time and over space, examining the complex, and sometimes confounding, nature of change and risk. Like any community, archaeologists work with different methodological modes, from scientific to humanistic, ecological to aesthetic. Such eclectic perspectives, requiring movement between different domains of understanding, become a wellspring of creativity. If future communities are going to value archaeology, however, those who do it must not pretend to study only the past or do too much navel gazing. Practitioners must engage with the present and work to inform the future, blending the boundaries between academic and applied work.

Humanity faces acute questions related to social and environmental sustainability. Archaeologists often engage these issues while thinking about global forces such as capitalism and colonialism, but also (and more critically) within communities, examining the articulation between the local and the global. But are we as critical of the sustainability of our own field? Our own communities of practice? We must build projects with diverse stakeholder participation, ranging from outreach to collaboration, if we will productively engage societal issues. If we fail to do this, archaeology will not matter to communities of the future.

At this conference, we will position archaeology as a sustainability science, a systematic examination of the sustainability of interactions among different social and natural systems. The theme of sustainability underscores the relevancy of the discipline and contributes to contemporary discussions about the future in creating a just and sustainable world. MHAC15 participants will bring their own experiences and perspectives to explore the issue of sustainability and archaeology. We invite presentations by archaeologists and their allies that share intellectual concerns for the past five centuries and the century to come.

The MHAC is a meeting that emphasizes non-traditional interactions. While there will be a small number of slots for traditional slide-based presentations, the majority of conference time will be spent in community and site visits, walking engagements with post-industrial landscapes, roundtable discussions, workshops, and facilitated and informal discussions. Posters, Performance, and Petcha Kutcha-style speed talks are also welcome. Some structured interactions will lead archaeologists to expand their perspective of sustainability by engaging with non-archaeological and non-academic provocateurs working in heritage and sustainability issues.

The conference committee notes that the 2019 MHAC will meet in Ojibwa (Chippewa) homelands and ceded-territory established by the Treaty of 1842. The Keweenaw and larger Upper Peninsula are the territory of Native American nations in Gakiiwe'onaning (Keweenaw Bay), Gete-gitgaaning (Lac Vieux Desert), Mashkii-ziibing (Bad River), Odaawaa-zaaga'iganing (Lac Courte Oreilles), Waaswaaganing (Lac Du Flambeau), Miskwaabikong (Red Cliff), Wezaawaagami-ziibiing (St. Croix), and Zaka'aaganing (Sokaogon Mole Lake).

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