CMES Colloquium: Why Those Who Shovel Are Silent: A History of Local Archaeological Labor and Knowledge

Allison Mickel is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Sociology & Anthropology, and Assistant Director of Global Studies, at Lehigh University. Her research focuses on how local communities have impacted and been affected by the long history of archaeological work in the Middle East. She has excavated in Jordan, Turkey, Kenya, and the United States. Her first book, Archaeologists as Authors and the Stories of Sites: Defending the Use of Fiction in Archaeological Writing, focused on the politics of representation and public engagement in publications about archaeology. Her new book, Why Those Who Shovel are Silent: A History of Local Archaeological Labor and Knowledge, is out now and examines the ways in which the economics of labor management and the epistemology of archaeology are intertwined. Mickel was recently awarded a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities to undertake an ethnographic project centering on two new private companies in Jordan advocating for the recognition of local expertise and fair labor conditions on archaeological excavations.