Culturing the Body: Prehistoric Perspectives on Identity and Sociality
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 "Culturing the Body: Prehistoric Perspectives on Identity and Sociality," at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.
The human body lives at the intersection between constructed identities and the construction of identities; it is both the site of lived experiences and a means of communicating those experiences to a diverse audience. In this session, we present archaeological evidence for practices of adornment of the body by late Pleistocene and early Holocene hominins, including personal ornaments, clothing, hairstyles, body painting, and tattoos. These practices have been variously interpreted as a means to reflect differences such as gender, status, and ethnicity, to attract or intimidate others, and as indices of a symbolically mediated self and personal identity. The papers in this session present recent archaeological evidence of culturing the body and address the possible evolutionary contexts and social ramifications for the selection of these behaviors at different points in the past.
Other Keywords
Paleolithic •
Identity/Ethnicity •
Neolithic •
Ritual and Symbolism •
Archaeometry & Materials Analysis •
Mortuary Analysis •
Zooarchaeology •
Cognition •
Human Evolution •
Historic
Geographic Keywords
Republic of Turkey (Country) •
Republic of Armenia (Country) •
Georgia (Country) •
French Republic (Country) •
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Nort (Country) •
Ireland (Country) •
Isle of Man (Country) •
Kingdom of Belgium (Country) •
Bailiwick of Guernsey (Country) •
Principality of Monaco (Country)
Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-10 of 10)
- Documents (10)
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Body Histories, Historical Bodies: Adornment, Culture and Identity through Time (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Culturing the Body: Prehistoric Perspectives on Identity and Sociality" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The body is so many things simultaneously. It is an historical object, a site of experience and violence, a set of behaviors, and is both material and metaphysical. We cannot conceive of history without bodies. Bodily adornments add further nuances that are personal, symbolic, political, situational, and...
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The Color of Personal Ornaments in Prehistoric Periods of the Levant (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Culturing the Body: Prehistoric Perspectives on Identity and Sociality" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Shell beads appear first in the Middle Palaeolithic of the Levant. Their use as personal ornaments is evidence for cognitive abilities and symbolic expressions, however, their colors are limited to white, red and black. Humans’ transition from a foraging economy to agriculture in the Neolithic of the Levant brought...
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Constructing Identity in the Swabian Aurignacian (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Culturing the Body: Prehistoric Perspectives on Identity and Sociality" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The human body plays a significant role in constructing identity. According to Bourdieu (1974, 1976), the habitus, displays the social status and the role of the individual within a society. Group membership manifests itself with symbols like personal ornaments, the choice of emblematic objects, and their...
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Does the Emergence of Paleolithic Body Ornamentation Signal an Unprecedented Aptitude for Symbolling Behavior or just a New Application? (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Culturing the Body: Prehistoric Perspectives on Identity and Sociality" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Given the collective evidence for the Paleolithic in Eurasia, it is peculiar that the emergence of durable art in archaeological records is taken to reflect a parallel emergence for the capacity of hominins to engage in symboling behavior of any sort. The ample record of burial practices of during the Middle...
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From Trinkets to Privileged Artifacts: The Transition in our Understanding of Paleolithic Personal Ornaments (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Culturing the Body: Prehistoric Perspectives on Identity and Sociality" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Among Paleolithic archaeologist, there is general consensus that body adornments are important for exploring the origins of cognitive, artistic and symbolic behavior from an evolutionary perspective. This view contrasts with how Palaeolithic ornaments were perceived during most of the twentieth century when they were...
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Hands Stenciling: Men & Women as Healing Process? (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Culturing the Body: Prehistoric Perspectives on Identity and Sociality" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The checking of thousands of hands stencils from Borneo's caves and rockshelters, followed by the application of Manning's formula measuring at least the 2D/4D ratio, inasmuch as other world data from Africa and South America, witnessing the men and women presence, have led to the hypothesis of an healing process...
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The Many Meanings of Red: Ochre Use through Time in Southern Africa (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Culturing the Body: Prehistoric Perspectives on Identity and Sociality" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. From c.100 000 years ago, ochre pieces were habitually collected and used at Middle Stone Age sites in southern Africa. This earthy iron-rich rock has been continually used since then and still has many applications today, such as pigment, sunscreen or body paint for ritual purposes. Although a range of colors were...
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Personal Ornaments and the Middle Paleolithic Revolution (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Culturing the Body: Prehistoric Perspectives on Identity and Sociality" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Middle-to-Upper Paleolithic transition is a watershed. By the later Upper Paleolithic, all continents were occupied, all the world’s ecosystems were exploited, and all aspects of ethnographically observed hunter-gatherer culture the archaeological record can preserve are indeed found. Prior to about 100,000 years...
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Shells at Death – The Use of Shells in Neolithic Mortuary Contexts (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Culturing the Body: Prehistoric Perspectives on Identity and Sociality" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Shells constituted a cultural resource for human groups throughout history. As such, they were used and incorporated in different aspects of life – and death. In this study we examine the use of shells in mortuary contexts, focusing on the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB) cultic/mortuary site of Kfar HaHoresh....
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Who Let the Beads Out? The Importance of Bead Manufacture and Exchange at Grassridge Rockshelter, South Africa, and Implications for Understanding Holocene Social Networks in Southern Africa (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Culturing the Body: Prehistoric Perspectives on Identity and Sociality" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ostrich eggshell and marine shell beads have been linked to the establishment and maintenance of hunter-gatherer social networks in southern Africa, but studies focusing on the methods of their manufacture and especially the social contexts surrounding their manufacture are often overlooked. This research presents a...