relational ontology (Other Keyword)

DOCUMENT Full-Text Peter Whitridge.

Part of the attraction of relational ontology is its encouragement to discard conventional epistemological hierarchies. We needn’t frame our investigations with the usual weighty themes – economy, social relations, ideology – but can begin anywhere, with any sort of question, and tug on the thread until the archaeological fabric unravels. Here I begin with dogs, and their relations with humans and other animals in the Inuit past. Inuit had an exceptionally complex relationship with the dogs that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Vibeke Viestad.

This is an abstract from the "Body Modification: Examples and Explanations" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Body modifications are a well-known aspect of various cultural practices among the historically and ethnographically known San hunter-gatherers of Southern Africa, but not until recently have such practices been analyzed within an interpretative framework that gives reason to suggest that they were mostly performed to ensure harmonious...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Baires.

The goal of archaeology, rigorous in its method and theory, is to reconstruct past practices and events. Our pre-conceptions, knowledge, and training channel our analyses through varying theoretical lenses. These perspectives provide context within which to hypothesize about the past, creating narratives about human relationships with the environment, materials, places, and practices. While these theoretical perspectives add nuance and structure to archaeological analyses they sometimes miss,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Colvin. Victor Thompson.

Recent materiality scholarship seeks to understand the entangled world of belief and practice. The experience of the world is both cognitive and material and scholars are beginning to embrace the idea that there is no separation between the two. Understanding the intertwined nature of the cognitive and material world is at the center for evaluating the nature of groups that embrace a relational view of the world. In this paper, we consider the essential role that material culture plays in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Benjamin Skousen.

In this paper I discuss three tenets of what I call a relational view of pilgrimage. Overall, this perspective sees pilgrimage as a means through which people, things, places, and more move and converge in ways that instigate what Eliade (1959) called "hierophanies." The first tenet is that movement is crucial – indeed, the nature of a pilgrimage depends on what, where, and how entities (human and non-human) move and assemble. The second is that objects and landscapes (e.g., relics, offerings,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Melissa Baltus.

By replacing representational thinking with a relational perspective, archaeologists hope to better understand the past-as-lived and experienced. Here I seek to locate the relational in the “mundane”, with a consideration of pottery production, use, and deposition as part of the many changing relationships associated with the urbanization and abandonment of the pre-Columbian city of Cahokia. These relationships include pastes as well as potters, engaging humans and non-humans, in the shifting...