The stories in this issue of TCA highlight the intimate relationship among archaeology, heritage, and art. Full disclosure: just one of the seven contributors – Ella Crenshaw – has formal archaeological training. Other contributors include photographer of Calli Ta’Nous, art historian Abigail Sempebwa, sociocultural anthropologist Claire Nicholas, biological anthropologist Jiwon Lee, Amherst College freshman Rafael Gomez, and Mississippi Choctaw artist Erica V. Eppler. Yet still, every piece offers crucial insights into the practice of archaeology in the 2020s for those who engage deeply with their messages. 

Calli’s photo-essay and Erica’s original painting, “Venus in Furs–No Ground to Stand On,” for example, make explicit the importance of “land” to the Indigenous people who occupied it long before European settlers arrived. Archaeologists, too, center land in their work, and the good ones considers how the people they study conceived of that land. Abigail’s “dyptich” piece evokes the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA, 1990) and the dramatic difference between institutions that have willingly returned ancestors and belongings and those that have resisted complying with the law. Finally, Claire and Ella, Jiwon, and Rafael each, in different ways and through different artists, showcase the link between artistic traditions of the past and communities in the present. Past artistic traditions have long interested archaeologists, whose work benefits when they too considers contemporary people.