This is a transcribed conversation between two of the four authors of a new article in Advances in Archaeological Practice on why and how to revise introductory archaeology courses to better shape the discipline. It has been lightly edited for clarity. AmySue Greiff and Drew Agnew were undergraduate teaching assistants who helped develop the introductory archaeology course described here.

AmySue Greiff (She/Her, Chinese American) and Drew Agnew (They/She, white) both transferred to Beloit College in January 2016 to study anthropology. They developed their interests for archaeology early in their undergraduate careers and expressed a passion for changing the way students learned about the past and how it applies to the present/future. After graduating from Beloit in 2018 and completing Honors Terms, Drew and AmySue strive to apply their experience in their everyday lives and plan to continue their formal education.

Drew: I think people would be interested to learn more about our experience working simultaneously as undergraduate students and teaching assistants for the project described in our article “Centering the margins: Knowledge production in the introductory anthropology course”. Can we talk about that?

AmySue: Yeah, of course! I know as students we were encouraged to be critical thinkers… identifying biases and shortcomings in what we read and what we ourselves produced. I think the next logical step was to ask the question, if the textbooks are consistently presenting only a white-eurocentric view of history and cultural “development”, why should we continue to use them??? Instead, I think we should be referencing the works and findings of women of color and other less acknowledged stakeholders in the field. Therefore, we can continue to challenge the racist norms that built the institutions we learn and work in, including archaeology.

Drew: Yeah, yeah. I think as we learned and unlearned more and more, it made sense that we intentionally… moved to sources that were not cishet (or cisgender/heterosexual) and chose sources that better reflected the many ways that people experience the world.

AmySue: So I know you were involved in Shannon [Fie]’s preliminary efforts to prepare for the redesign [of the introductory archaeology course] and helped identify and gather potential materials. I was wondering how that experience impacted the way you approached this work and your role as a TA in the redesigned course?

Drew: Okay, that was a very exciting and nerve-racking time because it was the first time that I really needed to be responsible about what my work would bring forward. It was cool to work with the fellow students mentioned in the article acknowledgments to identify what information really needed to be taught in an intro course. Beyond that we also needed to identify sources that would be accessible for first-year students, some of them taking a course because they needed to fill a requirement. I did also want to comment on the fact that the articles we chose needed to intentionally challenge the racist norms like linear, unidirectional development of societies.

AmySue: And the false idea that progress forward in human evolution is superior and cultures that are not air quotes “Western” or like “highly-developed” are inherently inferior and can be “fixed” by white-saviorism.

Drew: Exactly, there are so many sources that do this work… it just takes the time and energy to go through and identify these pieces and prioritize them as the voices you want to bring into the classroom. I think participating in this preliminary work made me realize how much you have to continually learn as an instructor and how much I wanted to see this project through. I know you came in to TA for this revised course… not with the same experience of identifying readings as I did, but you were doing a lot of work in other areas that were very applicable to the course. Can you talk a little about that?

AmySue: Yeah, I was a little nervous coming into the project not having the same background as you. I think my campus job at LEADS [Learning Enrichment and Disability Services] really helped me focus, or prioritize, that all changes made to the course were accessible to first-year students and students who had no background in anthropology or archaeology.

Drew: Yes! Since our TA meetings for both sections of the course were combined, I can say without a doubt that your experiences and ways of thinking were so important for prioritizing the accessibility of the course. I was also very thankful that we were comfortable enough that you could call out our whiteness whenever it showed [laughs]. Well, I think we should wrap up our conversation by talking about the support we received from our mentors and instructors.

AmySue: Sure, I don’t think we would’ve been as involved or successful without the encouragement from Shannon [Fie], Kylie [Quave], and our other mentors. They pushed us to challenge norms and respected our input as students and as colleagues. This experience kind of shifted my whole approach to learning and education and made me realize how much I enjoyed teaching. I was grateful for the trust I received from the students and really felt the weight of being directly responsible for part of their college experience or education.

Drew: I’m so thankful for our time as students and TAs… learning about how we could best teach, or really serve students and the field through knowledge production. It was really empowering to move beyond just identifying what is wrong or problematic within a field to working intentionally to make archaeology more relevant and inclusive.

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The article ‘Centering the Margins‘ is currently free to access.

Image caption: AmySue [left] and Drew [right] sit in a large excavation during a UW-Milwaukee field school in summer 2017.

Image description: Two people (AmySue wears an orange baseball cap, eyeglasses, yellow t-shirt, khaki pants, and work boots; Drew wears an orange baseball cap, eyeglasses, grey t-shirt with unbuttoned denim shirt on top, and green pants) smiling and sitting in a large excavation pit surrounded by yellow and red flags indicating the border of a feature. The area is partially shaded by a shelter over top.

Photo credit: Andrew Thompson.