Without a Roadmap: Reflections on the Emergent Methods of Community-Based Archaeology

Abstract Community-based archaeology does not always arrange itself cleanly into standard frameworks of practice. As archaeologists, our relationships with communities are situated and emergent. It stands to reason that our methods should be as well. Several years ago, as a graduate student at the start of a community-based project, I remember my anxious desire for a roadmap—a prescribed set of methods that would guide my work with and in community. Actual practice, however, demonstrated that roadmaps have little utility on this type of terrain. Community-based archaeology is rooted in relationship building as much as research design, and relationships push us to reorient how we do (and write about) archaeology. This article examines my on-the-ground and emergent experiences using three methods during a community-based project: (1) working with oral histories as narrative sources, (2) navigating community archives in the field, and (3) learning and applying close-range photogrammetry. I argue that examining how methods emerge and change during community-based projects is a valuable aspect of archaeological practice and that a narrative approach to discussing methodology allows us to interrogate how specific challenges push us to develop creative and interdisciplinary ways to do archaeology with others.