An Alter(ed)native Perspective on Historical Bioarchaeology

This article analyzes intellectual and political work based in Howard University's Cobb Research Laboratory relative to "new" and "emerging" ideas in bioarchaeology. Research conducted on remains from the Cobb Skeletal Collection and New York African Burial Ground is highlighted for this purpose. The analysis includes the period during which both collections were housed in the laboratory at the same time (1992-2003). I argue that the extent to which this work is considered relevant to scholarly developments in bioarchaeology is informed by the ways scholarship produced by people of color is regarded in general. It is often deemed "too specific" in focus to be generally relevant to disciplinary discussions. However, examination of the ways the discipline and researchers are socially embedded reveals this to be a product of racialized thinking that deems White scholarship universally applicable to intellectual inquiry-whereas the scholarship of non-Whites is not. Black-feminist theory and critiques of science are used to demonstrate that analyses of inequality centering on race are necessary for identifying and deconstructing the structural inequalities inherent in the discipline. Gina Athena Ulysse's concept of an alter(ed)native perspective is used to illustrate how this literature provides language to name the complex subjectivities of researchers who both study and experience structural inequality.