Silenced Rituals in Indigenous North American Archaeology

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.