Current Archaeological practice in Southeast Asia: Collaboration, engagement, and community involvement in field research in Southeast Asia

Archaeological practice in Southeast Asia has recently shifted to active engagement with local stakeholders. This is due to the realization that involving communities results in meaningful research outcomes. A growing number of investigations are actively seeking the involvement of communities as both contributors and as active and involved research participants. These undertakings humanize our community partners and counter the exclusivity often associated with scholarly authority. An increasing number of scholars approach research as inter-disciplinary, breaking state and ethnic boundaries and engaging communities, emphasizing that we no longer work alone. This special issue of the Journal of Community Archaeology and Heritage provides examples of this trend. It is predicated on the concepts of practice and agency and their impacts on cultural heritage in Southeast Asia. As every article in this issue focuses on communities drastically transformed by colonialism, we hope it will illustrate how archaeological and heritage scholars can empower indigenous and descendant communities through heritage conservation. We focus on the concept of cultural heritage here since it encompasses and transcends disciplinary boundaries. It also has its origin in Western scholarship, and thus, has colonial connotations in post-colonial Southeast Asia. It is also important in identity formation, nation building, and empowerment. Although there is no all-encompassing definition that catches its magnitude, heritage unifies an interdisciplinary study and practice that focuses on the perceived importance of cultural or historical phenomena. As Smith (2006, 83) puts it, heritage is an intangible process replete with cultural and social values. In other words, heritage goes through a process of negotiation based on each community’s experience. Therefore, it becomes important to those who have a shared history, experience, and memory. Intrinsic in the concept of heritage is the idea of community. There can be no heritage if there is no group composed of multiple individuals who own history or a building or an artifact. Heritage has different levels of meaning to different groups and it is also a cultural product (Lowenthal 1985; 1996). In the social sciences, the term heritage invokes our relationship with the past. It also provides a paradigm to link present-day identities to historical narratives. As such, the term becomes a powerful political tool that can be used for either inclusivity or exclusivity in nation-building (Tunbridge and Ashworth 1996; Shoocongdej 2007). Indeed, heritage has been used to call for unity among peoples with similar historical experiences (Stark and Griffin 2004; Glover 2006; Majid 2007; Shoocongdej 2007).