Multispecies Frameworks in Archaeological Interpretation: Human-Nonhuman Interactions in the Past, Part I

Part of: Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Multispecies Frameworks in Archaeological Interpretation: Human-Nonhuman Interactions in the Past, Part I" at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Archaeologists have long espoused interpretive approaches that illuminate the agency of human actors in the past. This session aims to deconstruct the centrality of humans within our narratives by considering the ways that other-than-human beings were integral in shaping practice and ideology across the world. Multispecies archaeology has recently become an important way of reorienting approaches to subsistence practices, herding lifeways, landscape transformations, settlement histories, and interregional interaction. By examining the interactions and entanglements of different, possibly multiple, species that form parts of foodways, modes of transportation, and ways of being on a landscape, we will explore how diverse species that may have held distinct value for past societies impacted and transformed daily and long-term activities. Multispecies frameworks contend that the primacy of human agency obscures heterarchical relationships within ecologies and the world at large. Participants in this session are encouraged to consider plants, animals, and other beings including the broader environment as agentive forces that constrained, afforded, and shaped human lifeways and beliefs. Theoretical and methodological perspectives may include posthumanism, osteobiography, kincentric ecologies, ethnography, paleoethnobotany, zooarchaeology, landscapes, and biomolecular approaches, among many others.

Other Keywords
Zooarchaeology • Pastoralism • Paleoethnobotany • Indigenous • Ethnography/Ethnoarchaeology • Ideology • Theory • Archaic • Woodland • Historic

Geographic Keywords
North America (Continent) • United States of America (Country) • United Mexican States (Country) • Belize (Country) • Republic of El Salvador (Country) • Republic of Guatemala (Country) • Republic of Panama (Country) • Netherlands Antilles (Country) • Aruba (Country) • USA (Country)

Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-8 of 8)

  • Documents (8)
Documents
  • Early Navajo Social Organization and the Diné-Dibé-Tł’oh Relationship circa AD 1750 (2023)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Wade Campbell.

    This is an abstract from the "Multispecies Frameworks in Archaeological Interpretation: Human-Nonhuman Interactions in the Past, Part I" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Early Navajo Pastoral Landscape Project is an ongoing study that explores the potential ways that incipient Indigenous pastoralism influenced early Navajo community life circa AD 1750. The recent dung-based identification of potential livestock enclosure features at four...

  • Entangled Human and Nonhuman Life Histories: A Glance into the Perceived Value of Camelid Identity from the Central Andes (2023)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Aleksa Alaica.

    This is an abstract from the "Multispecies Frameworks in Archaeological Interpretation: Human-Nonhuman Interactions in the Past, Part I" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A multispecies approach to archaeology creates the potential for inclusive debate on the value of identity among both human and nonhuman beings. This paper explores the way that camelid life histories where shaped by and influenced sociopolitical relationships among the Late Moche...

  • Exploring (In)Visible Impacts of Multispecies Living among Hunter-Fisher-Herders in Boreal North Asia (2023)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Morgan Windle.

    This is an abstract from the "Multispecies Frameworks in Archaeological Interpretation: Human-Nonhuman Interactions in the Past, Part I" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Rangifer tarandus (reindeer and caribou) are a keystone species that have shaped the complex fabric of mobile hunter-fisher societies in North Asia, not only as herded animals and wild game but as animate persons. In western Siberia and northern Mongolia, descendant...

  • Following Human-Cattle Assemblage Itineraries: A Non-anthropocentric Perspective on Past Human-Animal Interactions (2023)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicolas Delsol.

    This is an abstract from the "Multispecies Frameworks in Archaeological Interpretation: Human-Nonhuman Interactions in the Past, Part I" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Conventional zooarchaeological approaches to the human-animal relationship often offer an anthropocentric perspective where animals mainly serve to fulfill human needs, whether material or symbolic. To address this issue, I propose a decentered model that I applied to the study of...

  • Shellscapes and Kinscapes: A Social Network Analysis of the Southern Northwest Coast (2023)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Elliot Helmer.

    This is an abstract from the "Multispecies Frameworks in Archaeological Interpretation: Human-Nonhuman Interactions in the Past, Part I" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Social network analyses in archaeology have been successfully used to examine the connections between diverse social actors in the past. These studies have largely focused on the relationships between humans and other humans, typically using cultural materials as proxies for people....

  • There Are Holes in Our Argument: Karst Landforms and Multispecies Flourishing in Northeastern Yucatan, Mexico (2023)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Maia Dedrick. Luke Auld-Thomas.

    This is an abstract from the "Multispecies Frameworks in Archaeological Interpretation: Human-Nonhuman Interactions in the Past, Part I" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper considers the development of agriculture and society in northeastern Yucatán, Mexico, drawing on evidence from lidar imaging, paleoethnobotany, and isotopic studies. We focus on geological features known as dolines, sinkholes, or rejolladas—round, low areas that dot the...

  • Weaving Kin Studies and Multispecies Frameworks into Collaborative Paleoethnobotanical Research (2023)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Molly Carney.

    This is an abstract from the "Multispecies Frameworks in Archaeological Interpretation: Human-Nonhuman Interactions in the Past, Part I" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Over the last 20 years practitioners, activists, and scholars across disciplines have repeatedly pointed out the importance of incorporating other-than-human kin, relationality and reciprocity, and Traditional Ecological Knowledge into scientific practice when working with...

  • Wild Fruits and Connective Linkages in Precolumbian South Florida (2023)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Traci Ardren.

    This is an abstract from the "Multispecies Frameworks in Archaeological Interpretation: Human-Nonhuman Interactions in the Past, Part I" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Academic reconstructions of south Florida Indigenous lifeways prior to European contact have focused primarily on the deliberate choice of these highly complex societies to rely exclusively on wild foods, even while corn agriculture was practiced in nearby parts of the peninsula....