10 Living in the Past for a Better Future

This chapter provides a review of the papers focused on developing the ways that Contemporary Archaeologies in Old Places provides a framework for understanding ongoing processes of dispossession, displacement, and disenfranchisement historically experienced by marginalized and economically vulnerable populations. At the same time, through community-engaged praxis, the authors also demonstrate the ways that contemporary archaeological research can contribute to issues of sustainability and social justice, particularly through the use of methodologies that are easily reproduceable by non-experts. The author tests this assertion by, in the context of recent protests against Anti-Black police violence, taking a contemporary archaeological perspective to the old place in which she lives, Bushrod, Oakland, where the Black Panther Self-Defense party was founded and engaged in its early social justice work.