Dr. Albert Gonzalez of California State University, East Bay will be giving a talk titled: Archaeology in the Service of Ethnic Coalition: Latinidad and North American Archaeological Practice.

Latinx is a story the size of five continents, binding countless ethnic threads, for better and for worse, in service of cultural legibility. I am working to produce a book that explores the historical trajectories and tensions associated with the ethnonym in the United States. I will present an outline of the work at this talk, revealing the results of years of archaeological research connected to populations conceptually folded into the idea of North American Latinidad. I work to reveal meaningful connections between those disparate networks of people and objects, evaluating the prospects for a new archaeological field of study, one that places emphasis on comparative analyses of the archaeologies and material cultures of Latinxs in the United States. I propose a methodological re-conceptualization of North American Latinidad in the process, arguing for the co-option of the term “Latinx” as a vehicle for analytical coalition and social justice over inorganic efforts to fuse its disparate threads into genuine social memory.