Archaeologies of Health, Wellness, and Ability

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 "Archaeologies of Health, Wellness, and Ability," at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Thanks to black feminist and queer theory, there is a growing awareness of the diversity and

intersectional nature of identity. In archaeology, such perspectives are allowing the voices of

underprivileged groups to become better represented in discourses of the past and encouraged

our discipline to confront racism, sexism, homophobia, and colonialism. However, one category

of identity that is perhaps less developed in archaeology is that of health and ability. Perhaps

because archaeology itself is a discipline that often demands a certain degree of physical

prowess, archaeologists rarely consider health, beyond simple demographic measures. This

session seeks to explore how communities and individuals manage health and ability. We wish

to initiate conversations into how healthiness/wellness are defined, experienced, and embodied

by people within a society. How have those in the past and archaeologists in the present

experience limitations due to neuro-divergence & learning disabilities, mental illness, physical

disability, or chronic illness? How can we observe health, wellness, and ability archaeologically

and use this to better represent the ill and differently-abled? How do archaeologists with different

physical or health constraints overcome biases in a physically demanding discipline? We

encourage session participants to share both archaeological and contemporary examples.

Other Keywords
Historic • Historical Archaeology • disability • Ethnohistory/History • Ethnography/Ethnoarchaeology • Incarceration • Bioarchaeology/Skeletal Analysis • Material Culture and Technology • Ritual and Symbolism • Gender and Childhood

Geographic Keywords
United States of America (Country) • North America (Continent) • North America • United Mexican States (Country) • Department of Martinique (Country) • Republic of El Salvador (Country) • Department of Guadeloupe (Country) • Cayman Islands (Country) • Antigua and Barbuda (Country) • Turks and Caicos Islands (Country)

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

  • Documents (9)
Documents
  • The Archaeology of the Color Pink (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Kimberly Wooten.

    This is an abstract from the "Archaeologies of Health, Wellness, and Ability" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Journey with me to the year 2167, where our intrepid archaeologist has made a fascinating discovery... a FOOB! Carefully cradled in its pale pink packaging, this breast prosthetic is thought to have had ritual purposes, and while the prosthetics do not deteriorate over time, intact packaging has never been found in situ before! This...

  • Archeology, Disability, Healthcare, and the Weimar Joint Sanatorium for Tuberculosis (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Alyssa Scott.

    This is an abstract from the "Archaeologies of Health, Wellness, and Ability" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Social expectations regarding normative abilities, behavior, and bodies have changed through time. Archaeology lends itself well to the study of disability because social expectations about normative ability and behavior are embedded into the built environment, landscape, artifacts, material culture and daily practices. Archaeologists are...

  • The Case for Radical Inclusivity in Museums (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Abigail Diaz.

    This is an abstract from the "Archaeologies of Health, Wellness, and Ability" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Museums were created for educated, wealthy, able-bodied white men. This legacy of exclusion is one that museums find difficult to accept and then rectify. As museum goers begin to expect more and incoming museum professionals demand change, these institutions have gradually begun to shift elitist paradigms into one of accessibility and...

  • Commingled Stories, Embodied Inequalities: An Historical Bioarchaeology of the Huntington Irish (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Alanna Warner-Smith.

    This is an abstract from the "Archaeologies of Health, Wellness, and Ability" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The George S. Huntington anatomical collection is comprised of the skeletal remains of some 3600 immigrants and U.S.-born individuals. These persons—who are now collectively named for the doctor who collected them—were gathered from institutions, hospitals, and almshouses around New York City between 1893 and 1921. They were dissected as...

  • The Entanglement of Health, Race, and Resistance at the Mount Pleasant Indian Industrial Boarding School (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Surface-Evans.

    This is an abstract from the "Archaeologies of Health, Wellness, and Ability" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Childhood illness and death at Federal Indian Boarding Schools are one of the most tragic aspects of these failed institutions. Preventable communicable diseases spread like wildfires in the close-quarters and overcrowded conditions of dormitories. Racist policies maintained poor nutrition and hard physical labor also contributed to illness...

  • "Flowers [and] Open-Air Exercises": An Archaeology of Patient, Cure, and the Natural World at the American Lunatic Asylum (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Linnea Kuglitsch.

    This is an abstract from the "Archaeologies of Health, Wellness, and Ability" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. As the nineteenth century dawned in the United States of America, a new approach to the treatment and care of the mentally ill took hold. This movement, known as moral management, championed the delivery of kind treatment to patients within the orderly environment of the asylum, and structured regime designed to draw the insane from...

  • Healthcare and Citizenship in the Context of World War II Japanese American Internment (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Stacey Camp.

    This is an abstract from the "Archaeologies of Health, Wellness, and Ability" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During World War II, approximately 120,000 individuals of Japanese heritage were incarcerated by the United States government. One-third of those unjustly incarcerated were legal American citizens. This talk examines the types of medicine and healthcare made available to imprisoned Japanese Americans based on their citizenship status....

  • Intellectual Disability, Employment, and the Public Record (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Katie Roquemore. Nikki Waters. David Gilliam. Robert Belden.

    This is an abstract from the "Archaeologies of Health, Wellness, and Ability" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Disability is a natural part of the human experience and our work as archaeologists should reflect this. The key to recognising and minimizing bias in our work is to include marginalized groups as much as possible. But in a field that by its traditional definition demands a high level of intellectual and physical rigor how can we best do...

  • The Invisibly Disabled Archaeologist (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Laura Heath-Stout.

    This is an abstract from the "Archaeologies of Health, Wellness, and Ability" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. At an SAA conference, one is not likely to see wheelchair users, American Sign Language interpreters, copies of the program rendered in Braille, or attendees accompanied by personal care assistants. One might think that all archaeologists are nondisabled; after all, we prize fieldwork and physical exertion. Yet, archaeologists with...