Placemaking Within (the) Diaspora: Creating and Living Novel Landscapes and Places

This session will look at how distinctive cultural landscapes and places are created by diaspora peoples. All people, through their daily lives and ordinary/common practices, create places. This session will examine how archaeology can get at the creation of place and the relationships between people and locales. More specifically, we will discuss what those relationships look like for people who have experienced displacement, kidnapping, or other forces that caused them to leave their homeland; and how the creation of new places in turn shapes meaning, practice, and people themselves. The session offers a common ground for people at various stages of research, a forum for for cross-cultural comparison, and an opportunity to reflect on how we interpret the making and living of place. Some themes may include placemaking within borderlands, power and resistance in placemaking, and creation of places that reinforce ancestral or traditional ties.