Trowels in the Trenches: Archaeology as Social Activism

research exploring broader landscapes, persistent places, and Indigenous people’s resilient traditions” (p. 17). This long-standing paradigm has been reinforced by the narrow time span of most research (initial Spanish colonization), the application of archaeological periodization and associated field and laboratory methods that leaves little theoretical room for researching perspectives and approaches that trace Native persistence and the ways in which these communities were able to do so. The author further stresses that this paradigm has harmed Native people, and that one must “decolonize archaeological discourse, specifically to decenter conventional perspectives on space and time without unconsciously adopting the grammar of colonialism” (p. 10). Moving forward, it is necessary to focus on Native agency, recenter research on the Indigenous hinterland and Native places, recognize the limits of colonial power, and reject narratives of cultural loss or change-as-loss. This powerful, thought-provoking study is a marvelous addition to the University of Arizona Press’s influential Archaeology of Indigenous-Colonial Interactions in the Americas book series. It is also a wakeup call to all researchers in California (including myself) and elsewhere as it explicitly challenges our paradigmatic biases, the way we frame and construct narratives about the past (especially from the sixteenth century onward), our research perspectives, the questions we can be asking about the past, long-held ways of doing fieldwork and analysis of the archaeological record, and how we ultimately organize, present, and interpret our research results. The significant perspective and insights provided in this book are also applicable in any colonial setting, and I have been personally inspired – as a citizen of the Shawnee Tribe – to begin applying the insights offered here to better understand facets of our long colonial history in the eastern U.S.