Cooperative Bodies: Bioarchaeology and Non-ranked Societies

Part of: Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Cooperative Bodies: Bioarchaeology and Non-ranked Societies," at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Modern archaeologists and bioarchaeologists have increasingly integrated broad theoretical approaches to social aspects of human societies, addressing topics such as identity, post-mortem agency, colonization, community, and social complexity. Woven throughout these investigations have been themes concerning gender, class, and power to reexamine social inequalities built into hierarchical systems. However, as prior anthropological research has shown, not all societies are predicated on hierarchy (e.g., Albarracín-Jordán 2003; Becker 2017; Bondarenko 2005; Crumley 1987, 2005, 2007, 2012; Demarrais 2016; Juengst 2018; Kunen and Hughbanks 2003; Levy 2006; O’Reilly 2003; Von Goldammer et al. 2003). While not necessarily apart from linearly oriented or organized social structures, people negotiate their worlds through collaborative, cooperative, and heterarchical relationships, such as kinship networks, ritual ties, reciprocal trade relationships, household and community divisions of labor, among others.

This session will examine how humans cooperated to create and thrive in their worlds, and contribute new methods of inquiry to this important conversation, especially in our modern and sometimes divisive world. These data driven, theoretical papers use methods in mortuary archaeology and bioarchaeology and cover topics such as political alliances, gendered complementarity, landscape use, and queered archaeology, presenting global case studies of collaboration and cooperation in the past.

Other Keywords
Bioarchaeology/Skeletal Analysis • Mortuary archaeology • heterarchy • Power Relations and Inequality • Resilience and Sustainability • Mortuary Analysis • Diet • Archaic • Mogollon • Historic

Geographic Keywords
North America (Continent) • United States of America (Country) • Kansas (State / Territory) • USA (Country) • New Mexico (State / Territory) • Oklahoma (State / Territory) • Arizona (State / Territory) • Texas (State / Territory) • Sonora (State / Territory) • Chihuahua (State / Territory)

Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-11 of 11)

  • Documents (11)
Documents
  • Analyzing Stress, Discovering Cooperation: A case study of a Late Archaic sample from the Green River region of Kentucky (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Anna-Marie Casserly. Briana Moore.

    This is an abstract from the "Cooperative Bodies: Bioarchaeology and Non-ranked Societies" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. While considerable portions of bioarchaeological work have been dedicated to examining evidence of violence and conflict, little research has been devoted to understanding collaboration in the past. Analysis of stress biomarkers, particularly that which utilizes an osteobiographical approach, provides one potential avenue for...

  • Bioarchaeological and Mortuary Indicators of Social Order in Mimbres Society: Seated Burials, Occupational Stress, Health, and Trauma (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Kathryn Baustian.

    This is an abstract from the "Cooperative Bodies: Bioarchaeology and Non-ranked Societies" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Mimbres culture of the American Southwest is most recognized for its beautiful black-on-white ceramics but recent research is revealing greater understanding of social organization, community interactions, and the response to social and cultural change. Bioarchaeological and mortuary data are contributing important evidence...

  • Bodies of Power: The Bioarchaeology of Cooperation (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Sara L. Juengst.

    This is an abstract from the "Cooperative Bodies: Bioarchaeology and Non-ranked Societies" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Power differences and status are most commonly associated with hierarchy; however, heterarchy, or horizontal power differentiation, is another common way of organizing complex communities. Rather than the vertical ranking commonly associated with hierarchy, heterarchy may include differential or shared access to power at...

  • Cooperation and Resilience at the ancient Maya site of Chan, Belize (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Anna Novotny.

    This is an abstract from the "Cooperative Bodies: Bioarchaeology and Non-ranked Societies" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In ancient complex societies, unique social strata had differential access to food resources and likely relied on different food procurement strategies to meet their needs. This paper explores the extent to which cooperation was part of that strategy for the ancient Maya farmers of the Chan site, located in the Belize River...

  • Exploring Cooperation and Hierarchy among Napoleonic Soldiers by Reconstructing Dietary Variation using Stable Isotope Analysis (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Sammantha Holder. Laurie Reitsema. Tosha Dupras. Rimantas Jankauskas.

    This is an abstract from the "Cooperative Bodies: Bioarchaeology and Non-ranked Societies" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Historical evidence indicates that two strategies characterized diet provisioning in Napoleon’s Grand Army: rationing and cooperative foraging. Drawing on practice theory, we examine which strategy dominated Napoleonic soldier diet during military service. Although the amounts distributed varied by rank and corps, rations...

  • The Labor of Building a Community: Collective Organization and Mortuary Practices in Copper Age Iberia (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Jess Beck.

    This is an abstract from the "Cooperative Bodies: Bioarchaeology and Non-ranked Societies" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Iberian Copper Age (c.3200-2250 BC) witnesses a suite of interrelated changes, including expansion of exchange networks, intensification of agriculture, increases in population density, and greater investment in site infrastructure. Accordingly, it is noteworthy that third millennium collective mortuary practices hark back...

  • Nomadic Identity: The Origins of a Multiethnic Empire in Mongolia. (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Christine Lee.

    This is an abstract from the "Cooperative Bodies: Bioarchaeology and Non-ranked Societies" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Little is known about the ethnic composition of early nomadic populations in Mongolia. Archaeological and historical research have concentrated on the Xiongnu (209 BC-93 AD) and Mongol (1206-1368) time periods. The period in between is known as the period of disunion, characterized by fragmented states and foreign dynasties....

  • Old Tomb, New Ancestors: Investigating the Role of a Preceramic Burial in Huarás Community Formation (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Emily Sharp.

    This is an abstract from the "Cooperative Bodies: Bioarchaeology and Non-ranked Societies" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The social and physical history of a place often plays a crucial role in people’s decisions regarding where to establish a community. In the ancient Andes, burial monuments offered powerful connections to landscape and shaped community identity by demonstrating claims to a shared ancestry and legitimizing access to ancestral...

  • Questioning Complexity: Amulet Usage and Relational Ontologies in Hunter-Gatherers from Japan and Alaska (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Daniel Temple.

    This is an abstract from the "Cooperative Bodies: Bioarchaeology and Non-ranked Societies" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Social complexity is a term that often refers to the evolution of inequality in human populations along socioeconomic scales. This concept is historically traceable to unilineal evolutionary paradigms where reduced complexity is often defined based on othering in comparison to Western industrialized capitalism. This study...

  • Why Heterarchy? A View from the Tiwanaku State’s (AD 500-1100) Labor Force. (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Sara Becker.

    This is an abstract from the "Cooperative Bodies: Bioarchaeology and Non-ranked Societies" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. When past peoples congregated to form complex societies, a question arises as to under what circumstances would heterarchical, reciprocal labor be emphasized over top-down hierarchical configurations? In the Central Andes of South America, modern indigenous people practice reciprocal labor with groupings organized around family...

  • Working, Living, and Dying Together: Rethinking Marginality, Sex, and Heterarchy in Kayenta Communities (AD 900-1150) (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Claira Ralston. Debra Martin. Maryann Calleja.

    This is an abstract from the "Cooperative Bodies: Bioarchaeology and Non-ranked Societies" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Pueblo groups living in the Kayenta region of northern Arizona differ remarkably from their contemporaries in adjacent regions. At Mesa Verde and Chaco to the northeast and southeast respectively, there is compelling evidence for rigid hierarchical and political systems of trade, governance, and decision-making that generated...