Quave et al.

“Centering the margins” (preprint)

CENTERING THE MARGINS: KNOWLEDGE

PRODUCTION IN THE INTRODUCTORY
ARCHAEOLOGY COURSE

Kylie E. Quave, Shannon M. Fie, AmySue Qing Qing Greiff, and Drew Alis Agnew

THIS IS A POST-REVIEW PREPRINT OF AN ARTICLE PUBLISHED IN Advances in

Archaeological Practice. PLEASE CONSULT AND CITE THE VERSION OF RECORD
AT http://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/advances-in-archaeological-
practice/article/centering-the-margins/20B3DF276E6B1DB83CF63758402E29CA (DOI:
10.1017/aap.2020.43). The version of record also includes supplementary materials.

Kylie E. Quave University Writing Program and Department of Anthropology, The George
Washington University, 2100 Foxhall Rd NW, Washington, DC 20007, USA
(kquave@gwu.edu)
Shannon M. Fie Department of Anthropology, Beloit College, 700 College St., Beloit, WI
53511, USA (fies@beloit.edu, corresponding author)
AmySue Qing Qing Greiff Independent Scholar, Madison, WI, 53703, USA
Drew Alis Agnew Independent Scholar, Madison, WI, 53703, USA

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Quave et al. “Centering the margins” (preprint)

Abstract: Teaching introductory archaeology courses in US higher education typically falls

short in two important ways: the courses do not represent the full picture of who contributes to
reconstructing the past and do not portray the contemporary and future relevance of the
archaeological past. In this paper, we use anti-colonial and decolonial theories to explain the
urgency of revising the introductory archaeology curriculum for promoting equity in the
discipline and beyond. We detail the pedagogical theories we employed in revising an
introductory archaeology course at a small liberal arts college in the US and the specific changes
we made to course structure, content, and teaching strategies. To examine the impacts on
enrolled students and on who chose to enroll in the revised archaeology curriculum, we analyze
student reflection essays and enrollment demographics. We find that students developed more
complex understandings of the benefits and harms of archaeological knowledge production and
could articulate how to address archaeology’s inequities. We also found that enrollment in
archaeology courses at the college shifted to include greater proportions of students of color.
These results support the notion that introductory archaeology courses should be substantially
and continually revised.

Resumen: Típicamente la docencia de los cursos arqueológicos de universidades de los Estados

Unidos se queda corta de dos maneras: no presentan la imagen completa de quiénes contribuyen
a la reconstrucción del pasado y no retratan la relevancia actual y futura del pasado. Aquí usamos
teorías anti-coloniales y descolonizadas para explicar la urgencia con que hay que modificar el
currículo arqueológico para promover equidad social en la disciplina y más allá de la disciplina.
Detallamos las teorías pedagógicas que utilizamos en la revisión de nuestro curso en una
universidad de artes liberales en EEUU. Especificamos los cambios que hicimos con la
estructura del curso, el contenido y estrategias de instrucción. Para examinar el impacto a los
alumnos y averiguar quiénes tomaban interés en el curso, analizamos ensayos reflexivos y
cambios demográficos de inscripción. Vemos que los alumnos desarrollaron conocimientos más
complejos sobre los beneficios y daños de la producción del conocimiento arqueológico y que
podrían indicar como abordar las desigualdades de la arqueología. También encontramos que las
inscripciones en los cursos de arqueología de la universidad cambiaron para incluir proporciones
mayores de estudiantes de color. Estos resultados soportan la idea que los cursos de arqueología
deberían ser revisados substancialmente y continuamente.

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Post-secondary archaeology and prehistory introductory courses typically do not center

the potential of archaeology to improve human interests in the present and future. At
predominantly white institutions (PWIs; Brown and Dancy 2010) in the United States (US),
these courses are usually organized and presented to students in ways that perpetuate
discrimination and social marginalization. This could be mitigated by “centering the margins,” in
which we mean to center the needs and interests of marginalized peoples and archaeological
stakeholders. Furthermore, we center marginalized theoretical paradigms that are taught as
“alternative” rather than as valid and effective. We reveal the limitations and possibilities of
archaeological knowledge production, encouraging students (and ourselves as educators and
researchers) to ask, “who benefits from archaeology, who is harmed, and how might we imagine
a different way of studying and engaging with the past?”
Our work to revise our course at a predominantly-white small liberal arts college (SLAC)
in the US examined how archaeology can contribute to a more equitable society, which Ann
Stahl recently described as an “effective archaeology” (2020), while integrating inclusive and
justice-oriented pedagogical methods. This work follows calls to re-imagine how we teach
postsecondary archaeology (Hamilakis 2004; Hutchings and La Salle 2014), but is not unique to
archaeological pedagogy (FitzPatrick Sifford and Cohen-Aponte 2019; Harbin et al. 2019;
Shelton 2020). Our approach builds on the possibilities Maria Franklin outlined fifteen years ago
for historical archaeological research: “writing inclusive pasts, challenging traditional, dominant
views of history, and wiping out divisive myths and stereotypes” (Franklin 2005:194).
In this paper we 1) explain the limitations of introductory archaeology and prehistory
courses, 2) demonstrate how we addressed these limitations by redesigning an introductory
course at a US PWI SLAC, and 3) examine the re-design’s impacts on students. In Fall 2017 the
authors taught a revised version of our introductory course,1 formerly titled “Archaeology and
Prehistory,” which Fie has taught in the new format four times. To demonstrate the impacts of
these changes on our campus, we present results from an IRB-approved study of student
reflections, and enrollment trends over time by race and ethnicity.
Archaeology and prehistory courses typically focus on describing archaeological method
and theory, major trends over time, and depicting the human past chronologically or in order of
sociopolitical complexity. To some, this may seem a neutral approach to representing the field
and its study of the human past. However, this approach fails to capture the diversity of
epistemologies used in the field and may lead students to understand the past as a single story; it
also risks reifying the myth of human societies as a teleological march from “savagery” toward
“civilization”. Furthermore, survey courses are typically oriented around testing students’
capacities to memorize facts such as dates and culture names, even while such assessment
methods may not be the most inclusive (Montenegro and Jankowski 2017) or the most effective
for capturing archaeology’s social relevance.
Hutchings and La Salle (2014) recently called for an anti-colonial approach to teaching
archaeology, arguing that the colonialist version of teaching archaeology must be rectified.
Following Tuck and Yang (2012), Dei and Asgharzadeh (2001), and Mahuika (2008), Hutchings

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and La Salle term their approach “anti-colonial” rather than “decolonial” to go beyond the mere
recognition of colonized ways of knowing to take an “explicitly political stance of resistance to
all forms of colonialism” (Hutchings and La Salle 2014:40). The anti-colonial approach is also
methodologically and theoretically heterogeneous, but particularly centers anti-racist, anti-
oppressive, Indigenous, feminist, queer, and other critical and activist paradigms. The changes
made by Hutchings and La Salle (2014:30) were for courses of 75 to 350 students, while the
classes we taught have a 30-student enrollment maximum; this enrollment difference allowed us
to incorporate different kinds of assignments and ways of learning (particularly using principles
of universal design for learning [UDL]), which we detail below.
Maxine Oland (2020) recently published an urgently-needed guide on teaching
archaeology through inclusive pedagogy. The changes we propose are similar in calling for
greater attention to the pluralistic needs of students and in designing courses that incorporate
UDL principles. In the UDL framework, instructors change the environment (rather than the
learner) in order to support students’ growth as “expert learners” and to help them be “purposeful
and motivated, resourceful and knowledgeable, and strategic and goal driven” (CAST 2018a).
Oland includes actionable suggestions for creating a safe and welcoming environment, offering
students more agency, and generating meaningful, active learning experiences. In this study, we
advocate for deeper structural changes that are particular to the epistemological problems of
archaeology, including re-assessing learning goals, text choices, case studies, and how we
present the potential future of the discipline to students. We further offer evidence for the effects
of these changes.

Why Reimagine the Introductory Archaeology Course?

The purpose of teaching archaeology is not simply to convey the contours of the past, but
also to benefit people in the present and future (e.g., McGuire 2008; Merriman 2004; Richardson
and Almansa-Sánchez 2015; Supernant et al. 2020). The study of the past is not neutral: some
individuals, communities, and populations benefit from learning about archaeology (e.g., Battle-
Baptiste 2007; Franklin and Lee 2020; Franklin and Paynter 2010; Lane 2015; Logan 2016;
Sandweiss and Kelley 2012; Southwell-Wright 2013; Stump 2019; Thiaw 2011), while others
are harmed (e.g., Arnold 1990; Atalay 2006; Deloria 1997; Watkins 2010). Archaeological
representations of the past, whether in an undergraduate course or elsewhere, masquerade as
objectively truthful accounts; however, our understanding of the archaeological record is biased
toward those places where research has been conducted, what kinds of questions have been
asked, and whose experience and worldview are given primacy. Scientific epistemologies--
including archaeological ways of knowing--are often considered natural or neutral, yet a long
tradition of feminist critique demonstrates that is not the case (Haraway 1988; TallBear 2014).
Educators may value the use of archaeology to address social conditions in the present, but

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typical ways of teaching archaeology have limited capacity to explain contemporary inequities
due to biases in how we know what we (think we) know and how we present it to others.
Enrollment of students of color and students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds is
low in archaeology courses (Hamilakis 2004:295). This trend continues into the professional
ranks and every aspect of knowledge production in the discipline (Heath-Stout 2019, 2020;
Heath-Stout and Hannigan 2020; White and Draycott 2020), especially in the
underrepresentation of Black archaeologists (Franklin 1997; Odewale et al. 2018). One factor
affecting racialized and socioeconomic disparities may be whether students see their identities
and their interests represented in both the stories archaeologists tell about the past and who gets
to tell those stories (i.e., whose scholarship they read).
The Society of Black Archaeologists, for example, was established 2011; part of its
mission is to promote the work of Black archaeologists (SBA n.d.). In June 2020, over 2600
people registered for the SBA panel discussion “Archaeology in the Time of Black Lives Matter”
(SBA 2020). While there is newly urgent (yet overdue) interest in these themes within the
discipline, archaeologists have long called for multi-vocality and a greater diversity of
perspectives (Agbe-Davies 2002; Atalay 2008; Bardolph 2014; Gnecco 1999; Perry 2019) and
have found the discipline wanting (Conkey 2007; Fulkerson and Tushingham 2019; Morgan
2019). The voices and perspectives of a few have been made dominant partly through what
instructors and textbook authors tend to present as normative archaeological theory. Moreover,
Indigenous knowledge and archaeological theories informed by Black Marxist and Black
feminist thought are briefly mentioned or ignored within classroom readings and discussions.
In a study of multi-edition archaeology textbooks, Lyman found that theories presented in
textbooks “reflect the state of the art in a discipline at the time of [...] publication” but that “these
volumes [...] do not provide nuanced and thorough reflections of disciplinary history” (2010:1).
Yet rather than merely lacking in nuance, textbooks present the state of the discipline according
to those already afforded the most prominent platforms in the field; these platforms
disproportionately elevate white, middle-class men from elite universities (Conkey 2007;
Fulkerson and Tushingham 2019). As Conkey points out in a survey of archaeological theory
readers, “big scale processes” such as settlement patterns and technology are given prominence
(Conkey 2007:291; see also Cobb 2014) and “Anglo-American archaeology is still nearly a
completely white and middle-class enterprise” (2007:304). Both in theory manuals and in
textbooks, feminist and critical theories are treated as marginal and excluded from mainstream
accounts of dominant theoretical paradigms. They may be cast as unscientific and lacking in
objectivity, while archaeologists writing textbooks consider more processually-aligned theories
essential. Hutchings and La Salle (2014:30) describe this phenomenon in newer textbooks as
well; for example, the fourth edition of Michael Chazan’s (2017) World Prehistory and
Archaeology: Pathways Through Time lists post-processual archaeology as “Alternative
Perspectives” and details gender, agency, and Indigenous perspectives in a section titled
“Branching Out” (Supplemental Table 1). In some textbooks, theories not aligned with
processualism are presented in sidebars rather than paragraphed prose, if mentioned at all.

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Some theories are indeed cited more often than others, and textbooks are simplified
versions of approaches to the past. However, the presentation of certain theories as dominant and
essential perpetuates the marginalization of particular ways of knowing. Archaeologists have the
responsibility to engage multiple perspectives on the past to forge better futures for more
humans. As Colleen Morgan remarks, in reference to the limited representation of racial and
gender identities in archaeology courses at the University of York, “the canon is archaeology’s
own creation story, repeated and handed down through successive generations of scholars. [...]
The first year of undergraduate education is a critical time to form the archaeological canon that
students will take forward and replicate, or repudiate in time” (Morgan 2019:10). We must
challenge normative archaeology by unsilencing marginalized narratives.
The organization of textbook units and chapters warrant further critical consideration
(Supplemental Table 1, Supplemental Table 2). Archaeology courses and their attendant
textbooks are typically organized in a contrived order of seemingly “primitive” to “civilized”,
whether by region or sociopolitical complexity: they progress from hominins to bands, tribes,
chiefdoms, states, and empires (Hutchings and La Salle 2014:30). Whether intended or not, these
seemingly naturalized renditions of progress narratives reify myths about inevitable marches
toward civilization, and they promote an imagined social distance between egalitarian and non-
agricultural societies and the agricultural empires taught at the end of the semester. Some
societies are treated as exceptional in textbooks: where states and empires did not develop, where
states developed within regions dominated by nonstate societies, and where sociopolitical
complexity developed without agriculture. The result is a narrative arc that reinforces stereotypes
and marginalizes the rest.

Addressing Limitations through Course Revision

Revising our introductory archaeology course was informed by larger pedagogical

theories as well as critiques particular to archaeological ways of knowing. First, we subscribe to
a model of learning-focused course design (also known as backward-integrated design): crafting
courses based on what one expects students to be able to do by the end of a course rather than
being governed by content goals (Grunert O’Brien et al. 2008). We thus moved away from a
content-focused, traditional syllabus of geographic and/or neo-evolutionary themes from
“primitive forward”. Instead, we planned the course around values and skills we want students to
hold at the end of the semester and even years later. In this case, we introduced them to
archaeological theory and methods and the human past, but also prepared them to critically
analyze evidence about humans and to apply lessons from the past. We built analytical capacities
that students could take with them beyond the classroom and beyond archaeology.
We also subscribe to the tenets of critical pedagogy and democratic, multi-directional
learning espoused by bell hooks (1994) and Paulo Freire (1985), which involve de-centering the
instructor as an all-knowing orator; we reject the idea that students are empty vessels to be filled

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with unquestionably neutral knowledge. We are also influenced by the pedagogy of kindness,
which emphasizes compassion and understanding of students’ needs rather than positioning
students as antagonists to instructors (Denial 2019). To integrate these pedagogies, and to
respond to the call to action by Hutchings and La Salle (2014), we shifted which voices were
given prominence, the course’s narrative arc, how the past was linked to a better human future,
and how students could demonstrate/develop their place in archaeological knowledge
production.

The Course Prior to Revision

At our US PWI SLAC, the introductory archaeology course was originally designed
around archaeological method and theory coupled with “prehistory”. As an introductory survey
course, we enroll around 30 students per section. Enrollees include intended and declared
anthropology majors and students fulfilling general education requirements who are not
particularly interested in anthropology. While we sometimes have an undergraduate teaching
assistant, there are no breakout sections for labs or discussion.
Prior to Fall 2017, we taught slide-based lectures and assigned a common prehistory
textbook. Sometimes we also assigned Kenneth Feder’s (2017) Frauds, Myths, and Mysteries,
which students used to develop group presentations on epistemology and public knowledge
production. The course began with an introduction to archaeological methods, including the
formulation of research questions, field strategies, excavation methods, and laboratory analyses.
The majority of the semester covered the “prehistory” archaeologists study. Most class periods
consisted of presentations on how different approaches and methods are used to understand the
major cultural developments in geographic regions, from early tool user hominids in Africa
through complex state developments in Eurasia and the Americas. Though discussion was
limited, we often took students into the Logan Museum of Anthropology to engage with course
theme-related objects and exhibits. Assessment of student learning was primarily short-answer
tests.

The Revision Process

While the course textbook, lectures, and lesson plans were regularly updated, we
recognized the need for major revision. Students were primarily drawn to the course to learn
about pyramids and Vikings, while some cultural anthropology-oriented majors merely
participated unenthusiastically to meet requirements. Occasionally, Fie explored re-envisioning
the course, but the lack of an alternative textbook posed a significant challenge.
In Spring 2017, Fie collaborated with independent study students to re-imagine the
course to focus on relevant and applied archaeologies, including themes such as identity, power
and privilege, conflict, sustainability, and climate change; to explore them as recurring issues
addressed in different ways by societies in different places and times; and to illustrate how
archaeologists identify and make sense of how and why societies differ in those ways. Fie, along

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with Agnew and five other students identified new course readings (that were accessible to non-
experts, and others written for archaeologists) and developed supplementary lecture content,
discussions, and activities. They identified sources from a plurality of perspectives and curated a
list for instructors to choose from as they crafted a syllabus. In Summer 2017, Quave revised the
materials and pedagogical approach through the Mellon Foundation-funded “Decolonizing
Pedagogies” workshop at Beloit College. Subsequently, all four authors revisited our objectives
for the new course and made substantial revisions to the course as outlined in Tables 1 and 2
(Supplemental Text 1). During the Fall 2017 semester, we met weekly to discuss and re-calibrate
according to student engagement with the material.

The Revised Course

The revisions to the course re-centered students’ perceptions of authoritative knowledge

and included case studies and theoretical and methodological perspectives that better represent
what applied archaeologists aspire for the discipline to accomplish. Our approach emphasizes
critical assessment of how archaeologists know what they know, whose voices are centered, and
how knowledge is constructed and disseminated (Harbin et al. 2019; Kishimoto 2018). These
changes are not particular to archaeology, but are worth mentioning because they shaped all
pedagogical decisions. In this section, we describe specific pedagogical methods and examples
for meeting the goals laid out in the first half of this paper.
How Did We De-center the Instructor? Following the tenets of democratic and
participatory/experiential pedagogies (Carlson and Apple 2018; Freeman et al. 2014; Freire
1985), we shifted the focus away from the instructor as unquestioned academic authority.
Instead, we developed our course around student engagement and multidirectional learning:
students are collaborators in the production of knowledge within the course and must
acknowledge how their positionality shapes their understanding of course material (Takacs
2003). Rather than emphasize instructor-to-student information transfer through lectures as we
had before, we included short lectures with each unit to introduce a theme and human problem,
but students spent the majority of class time in active learning. Furthermore, we encouraged
students to take our classroom dialogues beyond the course, often asking them to imagine they
were at a family meal explaining difficult course concepts to non-experts. Thus, we emphasized
the application of classroom knowledge production beyond class walls.
How Did We Ensure Pluralistic Perspectives on the Past? Students largely trust
textbooks as authoritative and assume that the writer is removed from the content of their writing
(Olson 1980). Similarly, students are usually detached from the process of course design and
assume that instructors require the most canonical readings beyond the textbook. Of course the
canon is constructed through citation practices within a discipline rather than being natural or
based on some objective intellectual merit. As instructors, we must take responsibility for
constructing the perceived canon in the classroom (and for emphasizing that who we read and
who we cite are decisions shaped by our worldviews and priorities). Fostering equitable citation
practices is urgent (Edmonds 2019; Mott and Cockayne 2017); the “Cite Black Women”

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movement, begun in November 2017, called attention to the need to center the knowledge
production of marginalized scholars, specifically Black women. We replaced the large,
expensive introductory textbook, brought case studies and theories by underrepresented scholars
to the fore, included more “nonacademic” sources written by other types of experts, and
positioned Black, Indigenous, and critical ontologies alongside positivist ways of knowing to
demonstrate the plurality of theoretical approaches.
We realize that many university programs require instructors to use a survey textbook for
introductory courses. For our revised course, we adopted Paul Bahn’s (2012) Archaeology: A
Very Short Introduction to provide one of many perspectives. Bahn’s text does two important
jobs:1) at $12, it costs one-tenth what a typical introductory archaeology text costs and thus
makes the course more accessible, and 2) it precludes the unwelcome role of a single,
authoritative source written by one or two archaeologists. We use it to discuss text authority and
assumptions about textbooks, jumping off from Lee Lyman’s (2010) study. The chapters center
on method-driven topics but also address archaeologists’ responsibilities to the public and
heritage stewardship. The brevity of Bahn’s volume (just 100 pages) prompts students to ask,
“what is missing?”
We also chose open-source readings in addition to institutionally accessed readings.
Including think-pieces and blogs (e.g., Abu Hadal 2013; Black Trowel Collective 2016)
alongside academic journal articles and chapters helped students to see the various venues in
which archaeological knowledge is disseminated and to think about who benefits from and is
harmed by archaeological reconstructions of the past. And starting the semester with different
perspectives from scholarly and non-academic texts showed the value of diverse ways of
knowing the past while also providing an opportunity to question the supremacy of Eurocentric
scientific traditions. In teaching archaeological theory, Black feminist archaeology (Battle-
Baptiste 2011) was one of the first theoretical paradigms with which students reconstructed the
past. In introducing the humanistic and scientific tendencies of archaeologists, we asked students
to read case studies on the Pleistocene origins of the first Americans that offer pluralistic views
in science (Deloria 1997; Grayson and Meltzer 2003).
How Did We Center Ethical Concerns? In order to center Indigenous and antiracist
ontologies, we eliminated the terms “prehistory” and “New World” and drew attention to the
trouble with using those terms and others such as “Classic” and “Horizon.” The first day of
classes, we asked students where they had heard these terms and what they meant to preempt a
discussion of the harm done by their uncritical use. Students examined how “New World” and
“Old World” privilege the “discovery” narrative of European exploration rather than recognizing
deep histories of peoples in the Americas with their own cultural trajectories, and they came to
realize that “prehistory” is a disparagingly primitivizing term. Though “prehistory” is often used
uncritically, it warrants scrutiny due to the fact that it arbitrarily separates societies interpreted to
be “pre-literate” from those with surviving written records (deemed readable by outsiders). The
label others, marginalizes, and primitivizes societies that have largely been subjected to colonial

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rule and thus reifies global inequalities. Having this discussion in the first week gave space for
students to see how seemingly minor language choices can have major harmful impacts.
In previous versions of the class, we taught ethics most directly in the final unit of the
semester (though we taught occasionally with Feder’s Frauds, Myths, and Mysteries
[2017];which prompted additional discussions of ethics throughout). However, in the revised
course, ethical questions were posed from the start of each unit. Students were iteratively
prompted to ask and answer "Who is helped and who is harmed by the reconstruction of the
archaeological past?” Class discussions and assignments focused on how producing and
consuming archaeological knowledge requires ethical approaches. For example, when teaching
the scientific method we watched an episode of Ancient Aliens in order to examine how an
illusion of objectivity was constructed to perpetuate racist myths (Bond 2018). Throughout the
semester, we asked students to consider how they reify marginalizing narratives about the past
through their consumption choices and to consider how to mitigate or avoid the impacts of those
decisions.
How Did We Overcome Progress Myths? Teaching the past chronologically and/or
following a neo-evolutionary progression of pre-humans to empires positions Euro-American
and White perspectives as neutral ways of knowing and reproduces the harmful assumptions of a
lockstep march toward civilization. In this way, any societies not “progressing” are implicitly
represented as backward. To avoid such teleological ways of knowing, we organized the course
conceptually along themes of social relevance. Instead of organizing by geographic boundaries,
chronological units, or evolutionary progress, we chose problems to investigate and case studies
to illustrate them (Table 1, Table 2). Importantly, we explained to students why we avoided the
neo-evolutionary organization for the course. We did not erase regional sociopolitical
trajectories, but we did not present a single trajectory as normative. The themes were wide-
ranging and timely: for example, a unit on migration, climate change, sustainability, and health
included case studies such as Irish immigrant acculturation and respectability politics, biocultural
reconstructions of dairy consumption in Neolithic Central Europe, Neandertals and disability,
Maya responses to climate change, Inka pastoralism, archaeologies of fire management,
historical food insecurity in Ghana, and the Norse collapse in Greenland.

Table 1. Learning Objectives of the Course before and after Revision.

Before After
Engaging with both academic and public science
resources, as well as completing applied
Students will: archaeology assignments will allow students to:
comprehend the main events, actors, and evidence compare diverse global cases and patterns of early
involved in human history and "prehistoric” human activities
critique archaeological epistemologies, including
summarize changes over time and basic methods
methods and theories, and their historical origins in
and theories, including biases in interpreting the past
colonialism

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demonstrate an understanding of the historical,

cultural, social, and political conditions of identity
formation and function in human society, including
the ways in which these conditions influence
apply anti-colonial archaeology to link lessons
individual or group status, treatment, or
from the past to solutions for the most urgent
accomplishments
issues facing societies today
appreciate the multiple voices represented in
reconstructing the past while developing an
understanding of the critical thinking required to
assess claims about the human past

Table 2. General Syllabus Schedule before and after Course Revision.

Example of a "before" syllabus Example of an "after" syllabus
Unit Weekly themes Unit Weekly themes
Archaeological Science and archaeology; public
What & how Colonial origins of archaeology
and perceptions of archaeology
do
Paleoanthropol
Origins of paleoanthropology and archaeologists Archaeology's big questions;
ogical Methods
archaeology in 19th century observe? methods; garbology
and Theories
Simulated excavation;
Evolution and education debates; hypotheses and theories;
early hominins How do positivism and scientism; Black
archaeologists feminist archaeology
Human explain what Indigenous archaeology;
Evolution and Pleistocene adaptations; archaeology they observe? epistemology and the past as
Migration hoaxes and scientific method political (monuments);
pseudoscience
Anatomically and behaviorally
Stakeholders, representation, and
modern humans; hunter-gatherers in
self-determination
Holocene How we
Mesolithic and Archaic changes in represent the Nationalism and extremism co-
human behavior past matters opting the past
Hunter-gatherer lifeways; Paleodiet Ethics and “looting”;
myths "Discovery" narratives
Emerging
Agriculture, sedentism, and
Complexity Anarchist archaeology,
emergence of inequality;
primitivism
Moundbuilder myths Archaeologies
of inequality, Eurocentricity; archaeology of
North American chiefdoms
power, & enslavement
Old World Early states and empires in Asia and privilege Black feminism and human
Complex Africa; Egyptian pyramid evolution; gender disparities;
Societies construction myths challenging the gender binary

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State development theories; Bronze

Food access inequality; limits of
Age/Iron Age/Neolithic Europe;
archaeology textbooks
Atlantis myths
Migration and assimilation;
Archaeologies
Early Mesoamerican complexity respectability politics in
of migration,
New World historical archaeology
climate
Complex Mesoamerican chiefs and lords; Health, disability, and care; food
change,
Societies mortuary cultures insecurity and access
sustainability,
Ancient aliens myths; Andean
& health Climate change denial; collapse
statecraft; collapse
Portraying
Ethical concerns; the past for the past peoples Presentism and popular media;
future for plural archaeology for the future
publics

How Did We Orient the Past toward the Future? Another guiding principle of the course
was how both the past and explanations of it are political. We featured case studies on how
archaeologists have studied monuments, their destruction, and the value of public memory. We
discussed how cross-cultural understandings of monument destruction in the past could be
applied to decisions about Confederate monuments’ futures and what was at stake for human
wellbeing (Carter 2018). We also critically considered “looting” and unauthorized excavations
by examining ethnographic studies of artifact destruction and collection in different regions and
times (Dunn 2016; Hart and Chilton 2015). Differentiating why some types of non-scientific
excavations are considered illegal or immoral gave students an opportunity to examine
colonialist attitudes about heritage conservation. Supplemental Text 1 expands on more themes
and case studies, with lesson planning notes for instructors.
How Were Assessments of Archaeological Knowledge Made Accessible and Relevant?
Using UDL principles and active learning, we created assessments that prioritized garnering the
past in service to a better future. Like Oland’s (2020) changes to her introductory archaeology
course, we designed assignments for diverse learning needs with multiple ways of consuming
course materials and of producing course knowledge for assessment of student learning (CAST
2018b). This meant that assignments went beyond writing prose: we incorporated presentations,
listening exercises, and multimedia/multimodal projects (e.g., blogging [Figure 1]). Learning
was enhanced by technology, was collaborative and cooperative, and was linked to real-world
scenarios. Students were provided with rubrics, activity formats were varied, student diversity
was respected, and we used frequent, scaffolded assessments (Boothe et al. 2018:Table 1). We
offer details on a selection of assessments in our supplementary materials.

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Quave et al. “Centering the margins” (preprint)

Figure 1. Screenshot from the student-reviewed and student-written course blog site: “Past
Forward”.
Students critically interrogated archaeological ways of knowing through a simulated
excavation. A rejection of the “sandbox approach,” this alternative method by Paul Thistle
(2012) uses paper units and late 20th-century artifacts, and drawn features, to simulate spatial
relationships to be carefully and accurately recorded. Students must collaborate to properly
contextualize individual units that are compared across the simulated site. Upon completion of a
collaborative site map, students wrote reports in which they were required to generate
hypotheses, reflect on how their positionality shapes their epistemology (Takacs 2003), and
examine their biases in interpreting the past through the material record (Supplemental Text 2).
They also had to discuss to whom this past is relevant and who gets to decide where to do
research and how, while considering the findings of the simulated excavation in comparison with
excavations at a historic site on campus (Starck and Green 2014).
Assignments were designed to call attention to issues of access to the past. Archaeology’s
visual emphasis, particularly when teaching in the slide-lecture format, comes at the cost of
accessibility for visually impaired students and stakeholders; 3-D printing is proposed as one
way to mitigate this problem (Hugo 2017). To supplement our teaching collection of artifacts
and reproductions, we brought printed objects into the classroom. 3-D printing could be used at

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Quave et al. “Centering the margins” (preprint)

institutions that do not have direct access to collections or which have fragile or sensitive
collections, or where enrollments are too high to mitigate risks. With concern for visual
accessibility in mind, we designed a visual/tactile sensory lab with anthropology museum staff.
(Supplemental Text 3). Additional learning goals were to examine how heritage and artifacts are
made accessible to particular audiences and to critique how anthropology and art museums foster
an exoticizing gaze of the “other” (Hodge 2018). In the lab, objects were placed on tables and
covered with cloth. Students interacted with the objects either with their eyes closed, feeling
underneath the cloths, or only experienced the object visually. Students then switched roles and
interacted with a different set of objects. Relying on touch without sight challenged biases of
aesthetic connections to cultural material and raised questions of producers’ intent. Variations of
this activity could be conducted with household and/or classroom items. The goal is to challenge
people’s preconceptions of objects and their use and to experience multiple ways of interacting
with the material record.
Other assignments focused on addressing exclusionary or limited ways of representing
the past (Supplemental Text 4). Students applied theoretical and methodological concepts from
Whitney Battle-Baptiste’s (2011) Black Feminist Archaeology to virtual representation of
Andrew Jackson’s Hermitage. They reviewed the Hermitage website to identify how past people
were represented. Students then explored the Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative
Slavery (DAACS) resources from the Hermitage (specifically the Triplex to see materials
recovered from within the living quarters of the enslaved). Students analyzed whose past was
represented and for whom and whether the Hermitage pages muted the experiences of enslaved
peoples. They were prompted to discuss lived versus imagined pasts, who has the right to
excavate a plantation, and whether the Hermitage should serve as a tourist destination, much less
a special events venue (Mullins 2017). Subsequently, students chose an artifact from DAACS
and re-wrote a section of the Hermitage website to include the artifact and to center the
experiences of the enslaved truthfully.
Another assignment analyzed how multiple stakeholders experience the sacred burial and
effigy mounds on the Beloit College campus. Currently, faculty and students work inside and
outside of the classroom to acknowledge Indigenous land and heritage, and the resulting
institutional harm that comes with building a college atop a mound group. In this course, we
have students explore campus and the surrounding areas to identify and assess the conditions of
the Beloit College Mound Group. Students thus learn about Native earthworks and related
responsibilities for non-descendant stewards on Native lands. When possible, HoChunk tribal
members participate in conversation with the students about their lived experiences today; these
conversations underscore the experiences of Native communities, and why their priorities and
concerns often do not align with those of non-Native archaeologists.
A final project--the “anti-colonial archaeology textbook--bound archaeological
knowledge-making to current social concerns and was made accessible by offering a menu of
modalities in which students convey their knowledge: writing prose, infographics, animations,
podcasts, or other media. Students collaborated in teams to create multimedia chapters for the

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Quave et al. “Centering the margins” (preprint)

textbook they would want to read in an introductory archaeology course following our
pedagogical principles (Supplemental Text 5).

Outcomes of Revising the Introductory Archaeology Course

Students Reflect on Outcomes

To assess the outcomes of these changes to our course, Quave assigned reflective essays,
following Hutchings and La Salle (2014:49). Students answered the same questions about
archaeology at the beginning and end of the semester to assess if/how their understanding of
archaeology’s relevance changed. With IRB approval, Quave obtained informed consent from 16
of 24 students from a Fall 2017 section for textual analysis of their pre-course and post-course
essays. We focus our analysis on two of the questions (Supplemental Text 6):
● Who does archaeology benefit and who does it harm?
● How, if at all, do you see your interests reflected in the practice and profession of
archaeology?
Students wrote their pre-course assessments after we had discussed the problems of terms
such as “New World” and “prehistory”, which likely impacted some views. However, we believe
these assessments reveal how students moved from a superficial understanding of archaeology
being both beneficial and harmful to living people (as 13/16 students stated in the pre-term
assessment)2 to a post-term understanding of the complex ways that archaeology is beneficial
and harmful to different kinds of stakeholders in various situations. We are not suggesting
students were ignorant of the field at the start of term; in fact, many were anthropology majors
who already had a passing understanding of the field. For example, one student wrote, “By
studying artifacts and other physical remains it can give clues not only to the past but to our
present and our future.” Rather, we hypothesized that they would--by semester’s end--be able to
articulate the challenges and possibilities of the field more confidently and with greater nuance
and that they would orient toward solutions.
In the pre-term assessment, the majority of students stated archaeology could be both
harmful and beneficial and there were some patterns in how they described the impacts. Several
mentioned the harmful effects on Indigenous peoples, especially when sacred objects are
decontextualized in museums and when researchers enter into (formerly) colonized places to
conduct fieldwork without community collaboration. A few students started the semester with a
bleak outlook on archaeology; for example: “In the past, archaeology has always benefited white
men, the conquerors and imperialists, and was unfair to the native populations of many areas of
the world. Archaeology is similar to other branches of anthropology which have been used to
form hierarchies and help with the colonization and manipulation of certain groups.” Another
theme from the pre-term assessment was a nostalgia of associating archaeology with childhood
memories of visiting ancient sites and museums or seeing artifacts on family farms. Even among

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Quave et al. “Centering the margins” (preprint)

students who critiqued the colonial roots of the field, there were nostalgic responses to the
prompts (with emphasis on visiting monumental sites or collecting).
In the post-term assessments, we did find shifts in students’ understanding. They
explained the effects of archaeology on different stakeholders with greater nuance. They
described the impossibility of archaeology being done without bias and focused on the
unintended impacts on descendant communities’ wellbeing, especially related to human remains
and sacred objects. Many responded that some archaeologists are aware of the ways the
discipline is harmful and are working to mitigate the negative impacts on stakeholders (12/16).
While some students began the semester indicating that they saw archaeology as
irredeemably harmful, by the end of the semester, those same students articulated ways of
lessening harmful impacts. They wrote that some descendant and stakeholder communities that
are socially marginalized can reap benefits from archaeological research when it is undertaken in
ways that de-center normative viewpoints or promote self-determination (9/16). They had not
written in those ways in the pre-term assessments. One post-term assessment included: “If we try
to look through the past with different theoretical lenses that are not centering our own privilege
and our own culture we may come up with different answers. We can use archaeology to make
space for those who are not given space currently.” In contrast, the one student who explicitly
stated in the pre-term assessment that they did not see archaeology as harmful offered several
examples in the post-term assessment about the potential for harm.
The overall takeaway from the student responses was that the course impacted their
understanding in productive ways. In describing how archaeology specifically benefits people,
students were able to articulate lessons from the past for climate change responses, sustainability,
and identity and wellbeing. Two quotes from the post-term assessments highlight how the course
helped students question what they thought they already knew and to value the revisions we
made:
Example 1: “As someone who cares deeply about social-justice and the inequities that I see and
experience [..] I see it as my job to use archaeology as a tool to reorient my understanding of the
world. Much of what I was taught as fact throughout my schooling is nothing more than
interpretation, full of biases and inaccuracies. This course has given me the tools to take nothing
I learn for granted, to humble and silence my voice in respect of those around me, and how to
take pride in confronting my own preconceived notions and biases, both conscious and not.”
Example 2: “I feel like what I’ve done in this class is more important than knowing the exact
timeline of human existence.”
Pursuant to the revisions made to the course, the archaeology introduction survey became
an elective for students majoring in the college’s Critical Identity Studies program (CRIS). The
CRIS program is interdisciplinary, intersectional, social justice-oriented, and investigates “how
gender, race, ethnicity, socio-economic class, sexuality, dis/ ability, nation, non/religiosity, and
region shape identities” (Beloit College 2019b). The inclusion of the archaeology course into the
CRIS curriculum is a recognition that learning about the past is a way to understand and improve
society’s present and future.

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Quave et al. “Centering the margins” (preprint)

Continued research on student reflections should include reporting on demographics in

order to cross-reference student responses to the course with their social identities. At this point,
we can report on some aspects of the enrollment trends that resulted from the course revision.

Quantifiable Outcomes in Enrollment

Adoption of the new curriculum shifted the racial demographics of who enrolled in the
introductory course (Supplemental Table 3), but also in the elective follow-up Principles of
Archaeology course (Supplemental Table 4). While there are many social identities systemically
excluded from archaeology, these enrollment data allow us to quantify transitions in race and
ethnicity for now.3 The new curriculum was adopted in Fall 2017 and taught under the previous
title and course description, meaning that students who enrolled in the Fall 2017 course expected
to encounter the traditional content and structure. The new course title and description appeared
in time for Spring 2018 registration. Beginning in Spring and Fall 2019, students could enroll in
a cross-listed section in Critical Identity Studies (CRIS) as an elective for that major. The
enrollment data suggest that the new content and approach, bolstered by inclusion within the
CRIS curriculum, disrupted the previous demographic makeup of the course. In 2018, following
the course revision, we saw an increase in the proportion of students of color (all race and ethnic
identities other than white, non-Hispanic) above that found prior to the revision (Figure 2).

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Quave et al. “Centering the margins” (preprint)

Figure 2. Enrollment trends for ANTH 110 by race and ethnicity (simplified as white, non-
Hispanic versus students of color) from Fall 2014 to Fall 2019 (course N = 362). The light grey
area is when the revised course was introduced and dark gray is when the course was cross-listed
with Critical Identity Studies. (note that underlying data are found in the supplemental materials
on AAP website for this article)

However, the trajectory differs in Spring versus Fall semesters for the last two years. We
attribute this to the current catalog description which does not adequately capture the anti-
colonial approach taken since Fall 2017. It reads:
Archaeology: Lessons from the Past. All human societies face challenges, including
those relating to power, identity, conflict, health, sustainability, and climate change.
Using scientific and humanistic methods and theories, archaeology provides unique
lessons for addressing such issues in the present and the future. In this course, we begin
with an introduction to basic archaeological methods and theories, as well as the major
trends of prehistory. Throughout the remainder of the class, we analyze case studies to
better understand how societies succeed or fail when faced with specific challenges
within different social, political, and environmental contexts. (Beloit College 2019a)
Students are more likely to hear about the course’s anti-colonial position through word-of-mouth
on a SLAC campus. Because so many first-year students enroll based only on the catalog
description, the enrollment demographics appear different in the Fall versus the Spring, when
more students of color tend to enroll.
The impact of the course revision is more apparent down the line in the mid-level
methods course, Principles of Archaeology. This course involves active learning, including
small-scale excavations on campus and class projects directed at preserving and educating the
community about the importance of the campus mounds. However, enrollment by students of
color historically sat well below the college average. This trend shifted, however, in Fall 2019.
Most of the students in the Fall 2019 ANTH 216 class were introduced to archaeology through
the new ANTH 110 curriculum and, at 46.7 percent, the Principles course enrolled students of
color well above the college average of 28.2 percent (Figure 3). Principles of Archaeology is not
a required course in the general college curriculum nor the major/minor, so students choosing to
continue to the intermediate level in the subdiscipline is notable (it’s not just that the pipeline
demographics shifted at the college, but also that students of color chose to continue learning in
the archaeology subfield). We will continue to assess these enrollment trajectories and hope to
collaborate with other campuses to implement these reforms for a more inclusive and
representative archaeology.

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Quave et al. “Centering the margins” (preprint)

Figure 3. Enrollment trends for ANTH 216, the mid-level methods course in archaeology, by
race and ethnicity from Fall 2011 to Fall 2019 (N = 76). Fall 2019 was the first time students
enrolled after the revision of the introductory course.

Conclusions

In this study of the processes and impacts of revising our introductory archaeology course
we demonstrate that there is an urgent need to reimagine how we teach postsecondary
archaeology. This urgency is due to the exclusionary and marginalizing character of much
archaeological work and archaeological knowledge production, both historically and presently.
The campus on which this course was developed is the ancestral territory of Indigenous peoples,
made visible by the presence of 20 conical, linear, and animal effigy mounds that sit between
academic buildings. As settlers on this Indigenous land, and in a country built by enslaved
Africans, we have a responsibility to actively address past and present structural violence.
In teaching archaeology and thus producing archaeological knowledge, we advocate for
re-centering the archaeological curriculum by rejecting traditional textbook-guided ways of
presenting the study of the past. We show how harnessing the methods, theories, and case studies
already in the academic and non-academic literature can generate a classroom that better meets
the needs of all learners. Furthermore, we find that this way of teaching archaeology facilitates
greater diversity and increases diversity in ways of knowing, and thus could lead to greater
equity and justice within the profession. Revising the introductory archaeology course is one of
many changes that must be made in the discipline.

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Quave et al. “Centering the margins” (preprint)

The values that guided our work here are not novel; we build on the aspirations others
share for an “effective archaeology” (Stahl 2020). While we did not use the Society for
American Archaeology’s Principles for Curricular Reform (Bender 2000) in our course design,
we find that we are closely aligned with them. Drafted at the turn of this century, they emphasize
archaeology as a nonrenewable resource to be stewarded in consultation with “various publics”
(Bender 2000:32) and urge archaeologists not to claim sole ownership over the past. They
emphasize the role that archaeology plays in helping “students think productively about the
present and future,” engaging “diverse audiences” (Bender 2000:32-33).
As society changes and we as instructors come to new realizations of the barriers to and
possibilities for equity and justice, we continue to revise our approach by asking who is helped
and who is harmed by archaeological knowledge production? To teach archaeology is to
produce the discipline and we find that this comprehensive revision of our curriculum more
closely adheres to the discipline we aspire to work for and within. What makes us interested in
archaeology is the endeavor to reconstruct the processes of the past in service of a better future
and to do so in a way that centers the needs and priorities of diverse stakeholders. Those values
should be incorporated into teaching the discipline from the very first day students encounter it.

Acknowledgments. The study of student writing responses was undertaken with permission from
the Institutional Review Board of Beloit College and we thank them for their timely review.
Quave’s efforts in course revision were funded through a grant from the Andrew Mellon
Foundation to Beloit College (“Decolonizing Pedagogies”) while she was faculty there and she is
grateful to Lisa Anderson-Levy for consultations on the course. Greiff and Agnew thank Dr.
Sonya Maria Johnson for teaching us to prioritize inclusive nomenclature and be empathetic
learners and educators. We thank Ellenor Anderbyrne for providing enrollment data, the Logan
Museum staff (Nicolette Meister, Dan Bartlett, and Bill Green) for assistance with museum
collections, and Jedidiah Rex for UDL consultation. With Fie and Agnew, the following students
collaborated in Spring 2017 to identify case studies: Christopher Allen, Alex Flores, Faith
Macdonald, Sarah Record, and Heather Warner. Sarah Kennedy and Scotti Norman generously
provided feedback in the draft stage. We thank the very helpful anonymous reviewers and Sarah
Herr. Most of all, thank you to our BIPOC peers, collaborators, and community stakeholders
who have influenced our thinking on these issues and thank you to the students of ANTH 110
who patiently allowed us the space to experiment and consented for us to share their thoughts
about the impacts of the course changes.

Notes
1. Quave and Fie were each instructors-of-record for their own section of the course,
while Greiff and Agnew were teaching assistants in one section each. Our various social
identities and backgrounds are germane to how we approached the course and its revision. We
recognize that instructors of marginalized identities may be confronted with higher levels of

20
Quave et al. “Centering the margins” (preprint)

student resistance when teaching in the ways recommended here, as literature on student
perceptions and evaluations demonstrates (Aruguete et al. 2017; Smith et al. 2017).
Quave: I am a white, cisgender woman from a low-income, first-generation college student
background. The risks I take on when teaching this way are few compared to my colleagues who
are Black, Indigenous, and/or people of color (BIPOC), especially those from multiply
marginalized identities (e.g., Shelton 2020).
Fie: I am a cisgender, heterosexual, white woman from a middle-class, first-generation college
student background. As a tenured faculty member in a department recognized for its strong
enrollments and forward-thinking pedagogies, I assume little risk in embracing an anti-colonial
stance. I also benefit from the hard work of my colleagues of color who have shouldered much of
the work of decolonizing the department and the college.
Greiff: I am a cisgender, asexual adopted Chinese American from a low-income family, raised in
a rural, predominantly white town. I often use my identity and experiences to help inform my
teachings. I use these aspects to help cultivate a palpable example to people of privilege and
empathize with people from other marginalized groups.
Agnew: I am a cisgender, bisexual white woman from a middle income, privately educated,
conservative church family. I aim to use my privilege and energy to help others and myself
(un)learn in a constructive and sustainable manner.
2. 2/16 students stated pre-term that archaeology benefits nearly everyone. 1/16 did not
submit a pre-term assessment.
3. We chose not to describe gender or race-gender patterns here due to the fact that each
year’s enrollments are too small to meaningfully identify patterns cross-tabulating more than one
variable. We also chose to maintain a simplified dichotomy of white students and students of
color in order to avoid revealing identifying information about students. “People of color” is a
reductive category (Vidal-Ortiz 2008) and we intend for future research to include specific racial
and ethnic categories once sufficient time has passed to be able to collapse multiple post-revision
semesters for comparison to the pre-revision enrollment trends.

Supplemental Materials
For supplementary material accompanying this paper, visit [link].

Supplemental Text 1. Syllabus from the first semester in which the course was revised, with an
additional column in the schedule that includes notes for lesson planning.

Supplemental Text 2. Excavation report/reflection assignment instructions.

Supplemental Text 3. Instructions for in-class activity on sensory experiences with artifacts,
comparison of art/artifact dichotomies, and critique of the anthropological gaze.

Supplemental Text 4. Instructions for in-class activity on interpreting histories of enslaved

peoples.

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Quave et al. “Centering the margins” (preprint)

Supplemental Text 5. Assignment instructions and evaluation criteria for the Anti-Colonial
Archaeology Textbook.

Supplemental Text 6. Pre-term and post-term assessment instructions. Responses were used to
investigate the impacts of the course revisions.

Supplemental Table 1. Comparison of Tables of Contents of Major Introductory Archaeology

Textbooks That Are Organized by Complexity.

Supplemental Table 2. Comparison of Tables of Contents of Major Introductory Archaeology

Textbooks That Are Organized by Geographic Regions.

Supplemental Table 3. Historic Enrollment Data for Introductory Archaeology Survey Course.

Supplemental Table 4. Historic Enrollment Data for Intermediate-level Archaeological Methods

Course.

Data Availability Statement

Sample course materials, including syllabuses and assignments are available in the Supplemental
Materials. The student reflection papers are not available for sharing due to consent agreements
that the papers remain password-protected. Simplified college enrollment data discussed here is
included in the Supplemental Materials. The authors chose to include the dichotomized
race/ethnicity variable rather than full details of race and ethnicity in order to avoid making
students identifiable. For that same reason, gender and other social identity variables are
excluded.

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