Mediating Spirit Worlds in Native North America

This session considers archaeological materialities from a variety of timescales in order to explore indigenous ontologies in North America. We are interested in how physical and spiritual worlds were embodied and constituted with material culture in particular historical moments and over longer periods of time. The focus is on the discursive relationship between lived and historicized ontologies. We seek to draw out the diversity of spiritual existences in the history of Native North America by interrogating how people, objects, and landscapes were inscribed with meaning, memory, and belief. We include studies from across the continent ranging in temporal focus from deeper eras of prehistory to colonial times. Some case studies explore how spiritual practices endured or transformed in the face of drastic historical ruptures such as cultural invasion and violent or otherwise forced religious proselytization. Others take a long-view perspective, asking how ontologies developed and transformed across wide expanses of time. The juxtaposition of timescales offers new insights on the nature of cultural continuity and change in Native North America, while the geographical breadth of the session allows comparison of diverse indigenous ontologies and the ways in which they framed, historicized, and related persons, spirits, animals, plants, and things.