Event: WEDS TALKS: Archaeology Beyond the Trowel: Exploring Frameworks for Community Engagement

ABSTRACT: This panel presents the SEAALAB framework Archaeology Beyond the Trowel, which positions community engagement as a core practice and protocol in archaeology. Moving beyond research design, the approach insists on meaningful consultation, shared authorship, and transparency as foundational to ethical research. We confront questions archaeologists must grapple with: Who defines what counts as knowledge? Whose interpretations matter? What does consent look like beyond paperwork? The presentation reflects on the discipline’s entanglements with colonialism and extraction, and how these legacies continue to shape field practices and assumptions of authority. By foregrounding community priorities and co-developing research goals, SEAALAB challenges the notion that archaeologists are neutral stewards of the past. Instead, we offer a model for collaborative scholarship grounded in accountability, reciprocity, and respect for living communities whose histories are at stake. This framework is relevant not only for archaeology, but for any field-based discipline working with people and places.

BIO: The Southeast Asian Archaeology Laboratory (SEAALAB) at UCLA focuses on community-engaged research in the Philippines and broader Southeast Asia. The lab investigates culture contact, colonialism, and Indigenous responses through collaborative fieldwork. SEAALAB emphasizes ethical practice, local partnerships, and the integration of Indigenous knowledge in archaeological interpretation. Panelists: Maddie Yakal, Earl Hernandez, Mark Francisco, and Stephen Acabado