Chapter 5. Ethnoarchaeologies of Ontological Immersion: Epistemic Humility, Curiosity, and Inclusion

ABSTRACT

In this chapter, I invite a postcolonial future for ethnoarchaeology that demands theories arise through collaborative longitudinal research to privilege diverse perspectives and challenge ontological perspectives of the Global North. To this end, I critically review my scholarship and reveal what I learned as an ethnoarchaeologist through 30 years of apprenticeship with Boreda Gamo lithic practitioners of the southern highlands of Ethiopia. Ethnoarchaeologists have an obligation to abdicate traditional archaeological theories, because they disrespect other ways of knowing and tautologically restrict understanding of the physical world in Western industrial vocabulary and theories. Ethnoarchaeologies of the future are collaborative endeavors with cultural experts to share and learn diverse perspectives concerning what constitutes “being” (both tangible and intangible) and the processes that shape assemblages of beings and forward these ontologies as valid theories of reality. Committing to this new definition requires ethnoarchaeologists to abandon their academic Western hubris and become cultural apprentices who adopt epistemic humility, curiosity, and inclusion, deferring to cultural experts.