Bear Bones Lab, UC Berkeley

Community-accountable archaeological work is often focused on how the past is a living part of processes that have translated into racialized or other inequalities in the present and subsequent struggles by the disenfranchised for self-determination. Through community-partnered co-design and management of research process and products, reformulations of archaeological praxis inform work aligned more closely to the priorities of community partners. With mandates from those with the most to lose in the process of doing archaeology, community-accountable archaeological research is a powerful commitment to decolonizing how stories about the past are created and shared. We are fortunate to be invited to work on projects that matter in the here and now, beyond the academy and with those who so generously host us in their heritage places. Our lab also specializes in the analysis of faunal remains, and uses innovative approaches to identify taphonomic signatures on bone, allowing for the identification of a variety of activities associated with human-animal interactions and cuisine. We are also an experimental archaeology lab with diverse interests in the use of technology such as geophysics and modeling to not only better understand the past, but also better serve the research mandates of our community partners. As a result, the Bear Bones Lab has hosted data and collections from archaeological sites of diverse spatial and temporal origin, with research foci that engage an ever expanding network of cross-campus and community partners.