Kisha Supernant - Archaeologies of the Heart

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The volume you are about to experience was a labour of love. Emerging from a deep desire to change our disciplinary practices, both in how we engage with the archaeological record and in how we engage with one another, the chapters in this volume demonstrate the widespread and relevant nature of heart-centred archaeology. The seeds of the approach we define in this volume have long been germinating in both professional and personal contexts and were planted in several ways: through the interpersonal relationships between the editors and our colleagues and through our intellectual engagement with feminist and Indigenous archaeologies.

This volume originated from two different conference sessions: one at the World Archaeological Congress in Kyoto, Japan, in 2016, on the archaeology of emotion, and one at the Society for American Archaeology (SAA) Annual Meeting in Vancouver, British Columbia, in 2017, on heart-centred archaeology. We wish to thank everyone who participated in both sessions. We are grateful to Teresa Krauss at Springer for her enthusiastic support of this project from the beginning and to those who have attended our conference sessions. In the SAA session, Jami Macarty led a group of archaeologists in a heart-centred meditation, an event which was very powerful and memorable for all who attended. We thank Jami for her contribution to our session and her willingness to create a text that we could include in this volume to allow others to participate in her meditation. The SAA also hosted an online webinar on the topic, and we are grateful to the organization and the attendees for their engagement. Finally, we want to thank everyone who has taken the time to reach out in support and to reinforce the importance of changing our approaches to archaeological practice. The response to our conference session, our webinar, and a short piece published in the SAA Record has been beyond our expectations.

One of the greatest joys of working on this volume has been the relationships we have created with each other as editors, with our volume contributors, and with the reviewers. We are grateful for the careful and heart-centred ways our reviewers engaged with the materials and provided generous, thoughtful, and impactful feedback for us and for the contributing authors. All of the authors in the volume have shown great courage to share both their work and, in many cases, their hearts with us and with you, the readers. We appreciate how the authors embraced this project and put such care into their contributions. We are also grateful to the Killam Research Fund at the University of Alberta for providing financial support for the project.

The result of these heart-centred collaborations and relations is the volume you see before you. It explores the possibilities of an archaeology that originates from the heart by centring care, relationality, rigor, and emotion. The chapters range from deeply personal narratives about our relations with archaeology as a discipline and the living beings with whom we collaborate to rich engagements with the evocative power of the material past. Drawing on case studies from all around the globe, the chapters here ask us to feel as well as think, to imagine as well as to prove, and, fundamentally, to engage in good relations with each other, past and present. We invite you to enter this volume with an open heart and leave transformed.

Kisha:More than anything else, I am grateful for the strong bonds of love that have been forged with my coeditors through our co-creation of this volume. Our visits and heartfelt collaborations have been a touchstone for me, reinforcing my belief that we can change archaeological practice to celebrate that we are all whole people. The Heart-Centered and Emotional Archaeologies for Research and Teaching (HEART) collective represents, for me, a new way of doing archaeology, and I am excited to see where we will go next. All of my work would not be possible without the strong foundation of love and support provided by my husband, Casey, and my family. I am grateful to my wonderful mentors who have encouraged me to follow my heart throughout my career and to my relatives and ancestors of my homelands in and around Amiskwacwskahikan. Finally, this volume is an academic representation of the love, kindness, and empathy taught to me by my mother, Shanti, which I endeavour to pass on to my own heart, my daughter, Leia. May you always bring love and kindness to the world. Hiy hiy.

Jane:My heart is full of gratitude as we complete this volume project. I am most grateful to my coeditors who created a space for me to explore and expand my writing and thinking and who through our collaboration and friendship reinforced the importance of bringing ones whole self to an intellectual project while also maintaining a rich, full, and balanced life. The loving, supportive friendships we have forged in this process are lifelong and life-changing. Thanks also to my partner, Jim; my step-kids, Samantha and James; and my friends for making a balanced life one filled with love and happiness.