ontology (Other Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erin Smith.

This is an abstract from the "Negotiating Watery Worlds: Impacts and Implications of the Use of Watercraft in Small-Scale Societies" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Canoes were central to watercraft cultures in subsistence activities, in hauling people and loads, in travel and recreation, and in warfare and ceremonies. However, to many people on the Pacific Northwest Coast, canoes were viewed, understood, and experienced as much more than just...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Peter Whitridge.

This is an abstract from the "Rethinking Persistent Places: Relationships, Atmospheres, and Affects" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Although simple tags are liable to appear anywhere, contemporary graffiti thrives in places that are marginal to everyday traffic, such as alleyways, rooftops, overpasses and vacant or abandoned structures. Even in these places graffiti is usually impermanent; other writers will eventually go over it or the wall will...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Timothy Pauketat. Thomas Emerson.

An early Mississippian world came about at and around Cahokia in the eleventh century CE owing to the convergences of people with other organisms, celestial objects, atmospheric conditions, landforms, and elements, each with their own distinctive temporalities and affects. Understanding those convergences historically entails grappling with timing and duration, and we offer a Bayesian reading of the latest radiocarbon datasets considered against the backdrop of the suspected periodicities of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ella Assaf Shpayer.

This is an abstract from the "Embodied Essence: Anthropological, Historical, and Archaeological Perspectives on the Use of Body Parts and Bodily Substances in Religious Beliefs and Practices" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The deep bond between humans and horses is well reflected in the Paleolithic record from its earliest stages. The significant role of horses (Equus) in Paleolithic diet is evident from the presence of horse skeletal remains, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Justin Burkett.

This is an abstract from the "Magic, Spirits, Shamanism, and Trance" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Anthropology and archaeology strive not only to reconstruct the physical characteristics of the past world but to understand how past people thought about the world around them. The way people think gets encoded in magical frameworks in both physical objects like monuments and dwellings, as well as in less permanent expressions, like music,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Betts.

This is an abstract from the "Past Human-Shark Interactions" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In a previous article, Betts et al. (2012) explored the spiritual relationship between sharks and humans in the Atlantic Northeast. For peoples with relational ontologies, using, wearing, and trading shark teeth not only signaled a sacred relationship with the shark but also an identity embodied by this conspecific; namely, a way of life connected to the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dr. Kathryn Arthur.

This paper focuses on the relationship between material culture and living peoples as constructed through an African perspective of what it means to be in existence- ontology. It is critical that we precedent descendant theories of the human and nonhuman world to produce meaningful narratives of the past, to avoid alienation and ethnocentrism. The Borada-Gamo of southern Ethiopia offers that their worldview enlightens their knowledge of technology. Material culture as spiritually animated has...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Johi D. Griffin. Kathryn E Sampeck.

A crucial challenge in the public interpretation of Cherokee archaeology and cultural heritage is for Native community members to be able to inform the interpretation and presentation in every step of the process, from formulating research design, carrying out investigations, and the dissemination of the results. The emphasis in both formulating and interpreting cultural heritage work conducted by the authors is to use frameworks and approaches that start from Cherokee perspectives and goals....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kathryn Arthur.

The Gamo, who live in the highlands on the edge of the southern Ethiopian rift valley, are known for their unique and beautiful household architecture. Tourists ogle their oval basket-like grass houses and peer inside for mere minutes hoping to observe some secret moment or practice previously unknown to them. Similarly many archaeologists long to feel beneath their trowels a widespread hard surface indicative of a house floor. We remove the tangible aspects of the home, bit by bit, hoping to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tomos Ll Evans.

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Africa’s Discovery of the World from Archaeological Perspectives: Revisiting Moments of First Contact, Colonialism, and Global Transformation", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Late 19th century British colonial authorities in Lagos sought to extend imperial hegemony over the Yorùbá kingdoms to the north as part of ongoing efforts to control trade in the interior of what is now Nigeria. The Ìjẹ̀bú Kingdom’s...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Witt. Catherine Landis. Neil Patterson, Jr..

This is an abstract from the "Living Landscapes: Disaster, Memory, and Change in Dynamic Environments " session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological landscapes embody shifting conceptualizations of the individuals who live, work, and play at those locations, both in the past and present. While other papers in this session address such changes in the context of the archaeological past, we bring the discussion to the present. We explore these...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Maffie.

This is an abstract from the "Embodied Essence: Anthropological, Historical, and Archaeological Perspectives on the Use of Body Parts and Bodily Substances in Religious Beliefs and Practices" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Mexica tzompantli (“skull rack”) consisted of multiple, agricultural-style ordered rows of human skull-seeds. As such it constituted an enormous “battery pack,” or milpa, that contained, stored, and radiated the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nomaan Hasan.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. As material forms become central to the ongoing formulation of history and national identity in contemporary India, archaeology is acquiring an increasingly prominent place in the popular imagination. Initially motivated by the current regime’s interest in ascertaining the provenance of and recovering buildings allegedly usurped by Muslims, numerous...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Madeleine Fyles.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The ancient Moche site of Huaca Colorada (AD 650-850) on the north coast of Peru was the center for elaborate feasting events and rituals of human sacrifice. This ceremonial center has been the focus of intensive archaeological study, yet the spatial distribution of wooden posts within the Moche architectural platforms remains under-analyzed, despite the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Madeleine Yakal. Iman Nagy.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeology as a discipline emerged as an extension of colonialism, and although recent efforts over the last several decades have worked to "decolonize" the field, non-local perspectives continue to be prioritized by Western institutions. This paper seeks to address perpetual inequality within the field of archeology by highlighting normalized practices...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer Rogerson Jennings.

This is an abstract from the "Reflections, Practice, and Ethics in Historical Archaeology" session, at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. The design, integration, and accessibility of digitized collections allows one to determine a "things" meaning for themselves, instead of having to accept or deny the preexisting representation applied to said "thing." This will create possibilities of expanded representation for objects, cultures, and meaning itself. The...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bruce Mannheim.

The “ontological turn” ties several core anthropological questions about cultural variability in human interaction with the world, all of which can best be summarized by Sapir’s dictum—from the 1920s— that “the worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached.” Drawing on evidence—ethnographic, grammatical, cognitive, material, and visual—from the central Andes (principally from Southern Quechua and their Inka ancestors), I...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Whitley.

This is an abstract from the "Painting the Past: Interpretive Approaches in Global Rock Art Research" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Landscapes are cultural constructs, shaped by cognition and actualized in behavior. Hunter-gatherer landscapes are traditionally viewed in two terms: settlement patterns and systems, and related adaptive/subsistence niches and patches. While useful, these approaches embody the epistemological imperialism of Western...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rebecca Cannell. Lars Gustavsen.

This is an abstract from the "Political Geologies in the Ancient and Recent Pasts: Ontology, Knowledge, and Affect" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Jellhaug, Norway, is Scandinavia’s second largest prehistoric mound. Dating from the (pre)Viking period, it has a long history of human interaction and interpretation. Built in phases with distinct, selected, and transformed earthly materials, the mound compares with contemporary mounds in that both the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeffrey Blomster. Cuauhtémoc Vidal Guzmán.

This is an abstract from the "The Vibrancy of Ruins: Ruination Studies in Ancient Mesoamerica" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Rather than static vestiges of the past, we view ruins and material objects from the past as important generative components of communities and human projects. Informed by a relational ontology that views some objects and matter as charged and animate, we situate our research at Etlatongo in broader Mixtec and Mesoamerican...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stan Declercq.

This is an abstract from the "Sacrificial and Autosacrifice Instruments in Mesoamerica: Symbolism and Technology" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the present discussion, I will focus on mutually constitutive relationships between people and the material world, specifically on gestational dynamics, suggesting that by stone flaking and stone chipping, children (of stone) were fabricated. From the womb of the earth, which is very much a stony...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Peter Whitridge.

This is an abstract from the "Negotiating Watery Worlds: Impacts and Implications of the Use of Watercraft in Small-Scale Societies" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Maritime harvesting from watercraft and sea ice was the foundation of precontact Inuit economy throughout the Eastern Arctic, and small watercraft also figured in locally important terrestrial caribou hunts. Boats were everywhere essential to work, travel, and trade during the open...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ángel González López. Nelda Marengo Camacho.

This is an abstract from the "Sacrificial and Autosacrifice Instruments in Mesoamerica: Symbolism and Technology" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In Chichen Itza and Tenochtitlan’s religious thought, sacrifice was a creative act closely related to cosmic genesis and world sense. This behavior is evident not only in the archaeological record but also in the iconography. Two of the most common artifacts associated with this ancient practice in both...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tristram Kidder. Seth Grooms. Maggie Spivey.

This is an abstract from the "*SE Not Your Father’s Poverty Point: Rewriting Old Narratives through New Research" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Poverty Point site in northeast Louisiana is unique—in size, monumental architecture, artifact content, and history—and the site defies standard functional explanations for hunter-gatherer settlements. In contrast to existing concepts arguing that the site’s monumental constructions were built over...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jessica Christie.

This is an abstract from the "Rethinking Persistent Places: Relationships, Atmospheres, and Affects" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Western-trained scholars like to take for granted that the discipline of archaeology plays a foundational role in providing data from ancient sites from which scientists reconstruct histories, social organization, and what drew people to such places. Government institutions use such information to assign values to...