SANNA v2.2: Case Studies in the Social Archaeology of the North and North Atlantic

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "SANNA v2.2: Case Studies in the Social Archaeology of the North and North Atlantic," at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Over the past 40 years, archaeology in the North and the North Atlantic has seen increasingly productive inter-disciplinary work crosscutting local, national, and regional boundaries. Significant advances in methodology, collaboration, and zooarchaeological, paleoecological, and human-ecodynamic interpretations have come from research grounded in environmental archaeology. However, approaches to the study of material culture in the North have been comparatively neglected. Relegated often to the field of "small finds" or examined solely for functional, chronological, or typological analyses, Northern material culture participates only infrequently in global theoretical discussions on materiality, the social lives of objects, symbolism, etc. – despite often amazing preservation – and have rarely been used to generate innovative methodologies or collaborations. SANNA (from Old Norse, "to prove, make good, affirm") brings together northern archaeologists interested in seeing beyond the immediate or visible characteristics of material culture on multiple scales – from artifacts and architecture to constructed landscapes. SANNA v2.2 builds on last year's successful Forum to encourage data-rich presentations on ways that material culture can be used to develop new ideas about the social contexts within which humans exploited their environments, made the North in their images and imaginations, and continue to use its material remains for contemporary needs.