Decolonising Archaeology in New Caledonia (Island Melanesia)? A Retrospective Analysis of an Unachievable Process

Until the 1970s, archaeological data from New Caledonia in southern, insular Melanesia were interpreted in accordance with a colonial scheme that generally denied any major relationship between the current Indigenous Kanak inhabitants and the early part of pre-Contact chronology. The rise of anti-colonial claims from the 1970s onwards led to a process of political decolonisation of the archipelago throughout the past three decades. This further resulted in experimenting with new ways of doing archaeology in order to question old scientific certainties and integrate Indigenous approaches to researching the past in the discipline. This article proposes to analyse the main points of change with which a team of local professionals experimented, as well as new dilemmas that arose in their project, with the aim of contributing to the creation of a more inclusive future for the archaeological discipline in Oceania.

anti-colonialism · colonial archaeology · Indigenous archaeology · indigenous knowledge · Kanak people · New Caledonia · Oceania · Historical and Cultural Archaeology Studies · New Caledonia Indigenous Studies · Pacific and Southeast Asian Studies