In my dissertation, I argue that Black women archaeologists in the United States use material culture as a tool to vindicate themselves as scientific knowers, as descendants of ancestors who were deprived justice, and to create a more just discipline for future practitioners. At the same time, this work occurs in the larger context of the historical and structural misogynoir of US academia and consequently shapes the experiences of my interlocutors. What the case of archeology helps us see is that these widely discussed adverse dynamics impact both individuals and the fields to which they hope to contribute. Specifically, the marginalization of Black women knowers inhibits archaeology to act as a robust science of inanimate objects as it loses Black women’s particular epistemological standpoint. In this interdisciplinary project, I utilize archival data, semi-structured interviews, and 12 months of participant observation amongst archaeologists at conferences and a university.