Mapping and (re)lating: Indigenous geographies and archaeology

Academic departures from dualistic Western thinking—such as the so-called ‘ontological turn’—in recent decades have spurred a number of archaeological approaches to relational ontologies, though the centrality of Indigenous theory to these approaches remains underrecognised. This paper contributes to the conceptualisation of an Indigenous relational archaeology by placing archaeology in conversation with Indigenous geographies. This framing situates archaeological research, like Indigenous geographies, as a form of mapping centering place-based knowledge and relations, often involving a (re)mapping of knowledge and relations disrupted through processes of colonialism and abstractive Western research. I explore this conceptualisation of archaeological research particularly as it applies to legacy collections—those assemblages removed and placed within museums or other secondary spaces. By conceptualising archaeology as mapping, we can begin to frame both the theoretical approach to material culture and our methodological approaches to archaeological study through the lens of Indigenous relationality.