Digital Archaeology and the Living Cherokee Landscape
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Digital Archaeology and the Living Cherokee Landscape Russell Townsend 1 & Kathryn Sampeck 2
& Ethan
Watrall 3 & Johi D. Griffin 1
# Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Cherokee Landscapes is a digital conservation project to protect and preserve heritage in ways determined by Ani-Kitu Hwagi (Cherokee) stakeholders. This digital repatriation project requires new ways of visualizing archaeological information and geographically integrating Ani-Kitu Hwagi materials that are dispersed among many national and international institutions. The platform for Cherokee Landscapes is mbira, an open-source program developed by Michigan State University’s MATRIX: The Center for Digital Humanities and Social Sciences. Mbira, an interactive map interface, and other open-source programs offer novel ways of visualizing spatial data that benefit archaeological professionals and the public. Keywords Digital heritage . Cherokee . Critical indigenous studies . Curation
* Kathryn Sampeck [email protected] Russell Townsend [email protected] Ethan Watrall [email protected] Johi D. Griffin [email protected]
1
Tribal Historic Preservation Office, Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, Qualla Boundary, PO Box 455, Cherokee, NC 28719, USA
2
Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Illinois State University, Campus Box 4660, Normal, IL 61790, USA
3
Department of Anthropology, Michigan State University, 655 Auditorium Drive, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA
International Journal of Historical Archaeology
Radical Placemaking and Cherokee Heritage At its most basic level, mapping orients knowledge and experience. Indigenous contexts offer several complementary senses of mapping, some of which include how contemporary understandings of place shape experience and knowledge as a cartographic space. Together, these senses of mapping can support radical placemaking and resistant sovereignty (Byrd 2016; Simpson 2014). This potential of cartography for advocacy is even greater when the mapping takes place in a digital realm because of its flexibility, speed, and direct access for stakeholders. The internet and digital worlds can be egalitarian in ways and at speeds that surpass print. Because mapping is a fundamental method in archaeology, digital applications of archeological work have the potential to confront inequalities, re-integrate knowledge dissociated from place, and align with Native values and priorities. The case study explored in this work is of Ani-Kitu Hwagiy (Cherokee) cartographies of knowledge and experience in the context of the digital conservation project Cherokee Landscapes (http://firstlandscapes.matrix.msu.edu/). This project is an interactive space to navigate regions in terms observed by Cherokees today. Within these regions, numerous kinds of information are available to explore: several years of archaeological fieldwork in several locales; Cherokee belongings currently held in numerous institutions in widely scattered parts of the world; and documentary evidence that inc
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