Anthropology 690A - Archaeology of Us

We live in a world of excess stuff: commodities, garbage, pollution, and industrial ruins. As anthropologists, how do we approach the accumulating detritus of contemporary life? What can it teach us of our current era, and what critical potential does it hold for imagining different futures? Despite the seeming paradox of an archaeology of the present, over the past twenty years, archaeologists have turned their attention towards studying the material traces of the contemporary era. Combining archaeological techniques with ethnography, photography, and forensic science and drawing on theories from allied fields such as heritage studies, art history, and material culture studies, these archaeologists have highlighted the methods and sensibilities of archaeology as potent tools for exploring contemporary society and recent history. Starting from otherwise unnoticed or forgotten objects these studies have provided otherwise inaccessible analysis about daily life, marginalized communities, and silenced violence. Beyond providing analysis of these contemporary phenomenon, archaeology of the contemporary past has identified itself as a self-consciously political subdiscipline, interested in not just studying the contemporary, but helping to change it. Drawing on the theories and methods of scholars who interrogate the unique materiality of the present, this graduate seminar explores how archaeology (broadly defined) has been mobilized to investigate contemporary phenomenon. At the same time, beyond the limits of this subdiscipline, this course examines the political stakes and political promise of archaeological research that is not just of the present, but for it.