Silenced Rituals in Indigenous North American Archaeology

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 "Silenced Rituals in Indigenous North American Archaeology," at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

This session explores archaeological understandings of indigenous rituals practiced just prior to and after European colonialism in North America. Many of the papers in this session explore the ways that indigenous rituals evolved and/or persisted despite colonial pressures to silence them. Other papers in this session broaden archaeological explorations of ritual in North America through contributions from locations historically underexplored in typical treatments of this topic. Through these contributions, this session aims to illustrate the depth, endurance, change, and diversity of indigenous ritual across North American late prehistory and early history and provides tools for identifying and expanding understandings of ritual in archaeological contexts.

Other Keywords
Ritual and Symbolism • Ethnohistory/History • contact period • Historic • Ritual • Colonialism • Feasting • Ceramic Analysis • Woodland • Mississippian

Geographic Keywords
United States of America (Country) • North America (Continent) • USA (Country) • Kentucky (State / Territory) • Missouri (State / Territory) • Illinois (State / Territory) • Wisconsin (State / Territory) • Indiana (State / Territory) • Michigan (State / Territory) • Nebraska (State / Territory)

Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-9 of 9)

  • Documents (9)
Documents
  • Algonquian Landscapes and Multispecies Archaeology in the Chesapeake (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Martin Gallivan.

    This is an abstract from the "Silenced Rituals in Indigenous North American Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological and ethnohistorical studies have begun to trace the ritualized practices of Native groups as they returned to places with deep histories throughout the Southeast during the colonial era. In the seventeenth-century Chesapeake, Algonquian groups traveled across contested territories to bury ancestors, animals, and...

  • Archaeology of Ritual in Cherokee Towns of the Southern Appalachians (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Michelle Pigott. Christopher Rodning.

    This is an abstract from the "Silenced Rituals in Indigenous North American Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ritual and ceremonialism were important domains of practice through which Cherokee peoples of the southern Appalachians maintained cultural identities during the aftermath of European contact in the Americas, and through which Cherokee towns responded to the opportunities and challenges associated with European exploration,...

  • Great Lakes Enclosures and Un-silencing the Midewiwin Ceremonial Complex (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Meghan Howey.

    This is an abstract from the "Silenced Rituals in Indigenous North American Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Midewiwin is a ceremonial complex whose importance among the Algonquin-speaking peoples of the Great Lakes Region was noted frequently throughout the historical era. Various scholars have interpreted this ceremonial complex as an exclusively post-contact phenomenon, as a medicine society that evolved in relation to...

  • Native Voices: Contributions by John Low, Alysha Edwards, Denise Pouliot, Paul Pouliot, and Others (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Mark Schurr. Madeleine McLeester.

    This is an abstract from the "Silenced Rituals in Indigenous North American Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this session, we seek to reveal rituals that have been silenced and broaden our understandings of indigenous rituals in North American archaeology. The treatment of this topic requires a diverse set of perspectives due to its complexity as well as the ways that past rituals continue to reverberate in the present. Central to...

  • Purification Ritual and the Creation of Place in the Mississippian Southeast (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only John Scarry.

    This is an abstract from the "Silenced Rituals in Indigenous North American Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. While the indigenous societies of the Eastern Woodlands shared ways of life, they also differed in many important ways so that we cannot view them as a single culture. Even where material cultures and iconography appear to have been shared across great distances and over significant periods of time, the meanings and practices...

  • Ritual Traces and the Challenges of Detecting Late Precontact Rituals at Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie, IL (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Madeleine McLeester. Mark Schurr.

    This is an abstract from the "Silenced Rituals in Indigenous North American Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ethnographic accounts of indigenous communities throughout the United States illustrate the many ways that ritual activities were deeply embedded into everyday life. However, moving to the American Midwestern archaeological record, treatments of ritual are typically limited to large, ceremonial sites and these everyday rituals...

  • Scrambles, Potlatches, and Feasts: the Archaeology of Public Rituals amongst the St’át’imc People of Interior British Columbia (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Anna Prentiss. Alysha Edwards.

    This is an abstract from the "Silenced Rituals in Indigenous North American Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Public sharing of food and gifts remains important to St’át’imc communities of interior British Columbia today despite decades of prohibition by Canadian authorities. The archaeological record offers evidence that public events involving large scale food preparation and sharing were commonly practiced at least since ca. 1300...

  • Silenced Undertakers (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Sandra Hollimon.

    This is an abstract from the "Silenced Rituals in Indigenous North American Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Chumash undertakers were third gender persons and postmenopausal women. The Spanish Mission system significantly disrupted traditional practices, especially through sexual violence as a silencing tool. I examine the impacts of the Spanish colonial effort on Chumash mortuary rituals, with regard to the concept of gendercide.

  • What Is ‘Good Hair’? – Personhood, Ritual, and Resurgence of Bodily Adornment among the Equestrian Blackfoot (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Maria Zedeno.

    This is an abstract from the "Silenced Rituals in Indigenous North American Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Painting and writing from Fort Union Trading Post, North Dakota in the 1830s, George Catlin greatly admired Plains Indian coifs, body paint, and insignia, painstakingly describing each individual’s appearance. Contemporary descendants of Blackfoot warriors whom Catlin painted, joyfully display their portraits as evidence of the...