ArcheoThursday Webinar: Sustainable Archaeology The Estate Little Princess

This webinar was presented as part of the National Park Service's ArcheoThursday Topics in Archeology Webinar Series. The host is NPS archeologist Michael Roller. Sustainable Archaeology: The Estate Little Princess Archaeological Field School in St. Croix The Estate Little Princess Archaeological Field School (ELP) expands the practice of community-engaged archaeology by focusing on sustainable project designs and capacity building within impacted communities. Thus, we are concerned with not only including communities in the research design, implementation, and dissemination of scholarship produced, but specifically in training local youth in archaeological praxis. The goal of this project has been to produce more Crucian archaeologists, develop student interest in STEM fields, facilitate avenues of cultural stewardship among youth, and develop an interdisciplinary research agenda that caters to multiple PIs and stake holder communities. To this end, ELP combines one week of terrestrial archaeology and oral history training with maritime archaeology to give students experience in the rigors of archaeological praxis. This webinar provides an overview of the Estate Little Princess Archaeological Field School, explores our notion of Sustainable Archaeology, and discusses the challenges and opportunities of conducting community-based archaeology in the wake of a major natural disasters and the reality of climate change. Presenter bios: Justin Dunnavant, PhD Dr. Justin Dunnavant (he/him) is an Academic Pathways Postdoctoral Fellow at Vanderbilt University’s Spatial Analysis Research Laboratory. He holds a BA in History and Anthropology from Howard University and an MA and Ph.D. from the University of Florida. While his former research interrogated the history and representation of minority groups in southern Ethiopia, his current work in the US Virgin Islands investigates the relationship between ecology and enslavement in the former Danish West Indies. Justin has conducted archaeological research in US Virgin Islands, Belize, Jamaica, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Mozambique, and The Gambia. As a regular participant in Diving with A Purpose’s Maritime Archaeology Training Program, Justin is developing his skills in maritime archaeology. Working with DWP, he has assisted with the documentation of the Slobodna and Acorn wrecks as well as the search for the slave ship, Guerrero. In addition to his archaeological research, Justin is co-founder and President of the Society of Black Archaeologists, an AAUS Scientific SCUBA Diver, and consults for the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. Ayana Flewellen, PhD Ayana Omilade Flewellen (she/her) is a Black Feminist, an archaeologist, a storyteller, and an artist. She is the co-founder of the Society of Black Archaeologists and sits on the Board of Diving With A Purpose. Currently Dr. Flewellen is a UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California Berkeley. Flewellen will start an appointment as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Riverside in the Summer of 2020. Her research and teaching interests are shaped by and speak to Black Feminist Theory, historical archaeology, maritime heritage conservation, public and community-engaged archaeology, processes of identity formations, and representations of slavery. As a regular participant in Diving with A Purpose’s Maritime Archaeology Training Program and Coral Conservation Program, Flewellen is developing her skills in maritime archaeology. Working with DWP, she has assisted with the documentation of the Slobodna and Acorn wrecks. Her current book project, tentatively titled A Black Feminist Archaeology of Adornment, examines sartorial practices of self-making among African American tenant, sharecropping and landowning farmers in post-emancipated Texas. Sartorial practices, in this forthcoming work, are defined as social-cultural practices, shaped by many intersecting operations of power and oppression including racism, sexism, and classism, that involve modifications of the corporal form (e.g., scarification, body piercings and hair alteration), and all three-dimensional supplements added to the body (e.g., clothing, hair combs, jewelry).