Slow archaeology in practice: negotiating institutional pressure and experiential engagement at Comana

Archaeology is increasingly shaped by institutional pressures that privilege speed, monumentality and tourist appeal. At Comana, Türkiye, the Covid-19 pandemic created an opportunity to adopt a slower, more deliberate pace of investigation. Here, the author reflects on how practices adopted during this period promoted a deeper engagement with ritual landscapes through embodied interaction with the land and local community. This experience is used to support the argument that slowing down can resist institutional pressures and renew the discipline’s capacity for thoughtful, contextually grounded understanding; slow archaeology could be seen as a form of best practice under conditions of institutional acceleration.