SAA meetings

I am headed off tomorrow to the annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology in San Juan, PR. I have never been to one of these before, and have never been to San Juan, but it should be fun anyway. I am chairing a session on community archaeology and delivering a paper on praxis in community archaeology. Here is the abstract:

Writing in 1970, Paolo Freire (2005:51) defined praxis as "reflection and action upon the world in order to transform it". In recent years, some archaeologists have begun to include the notion of political action into their work. But how can archaeologists’ reflection and action be transformative? An ongoing archaeological project in the Hampden neighborhood of Baltimore, Maryland attempts to employ this notion of praxis by acting, through education, on public heritage discourse. By promoting a democratic discourse centering on heritage, the project seeks to increase the power of local community members to affect the course of gentrification in their locality.

I will try to post once or twice about the meetings while I'm there, but they are always busy, so I'm not promising anything.