The CCA has been honored with the Outstanding Public Archaeology Initiative Award from the Society for American Archaeology for the event “Archaeology in the Time of Black Lives Matter” which we organized together with the Society for Black Archaeologists and the Theoretical Archaeology Group (North America) (co-recipients of the award). The SAA award committee commented:
On June 25, 2020, amid a national reckoning with racism following the police killing of George Floyd, the Society of Black Archaeologists, Theoretical Archaeology Group (North America), and Columbia Center for Archaeology, as well as Maria Franklin, Justin Dunnavant, Alexandra Jones, Alicia Odewale, Tsione Wolde-Michael, and Ayanna Flewellen, convened a virtual panel “Archaeology in the Time of Black Lives Matter.” The panel, coupled with resources compiled by participants in subsequent workshops, offered real, tangible steps toward building a new anti-racist archaeology. The transformational webinar encouraged participants to hold institutions accountable for racial justice; diversify course syllabi, publications, pedagogical approaches, and all products of archaeology; and facilitate ongoing conversations about fostering an anti-racist archaeology. This seminal initiative will feature prominently in archaeological history as a turning point in the quest for a more inclusive discipline.
