Political Geologies in the Ancient and Recent Pasts: Ontology, Knowledge, and Affect
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 "Political Geologies in the Ancient and Recent Pasts: Ontology, Knowledge, and Affect" at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.
This session traces political geologies in the recent and ancient pasts to unsettle how archaeologists grapple with landscape, earthly materials, and politics. How is the practice of geology political? In what ways do earthly materials co-create politics? Recent scholarship has queried (1) Western knowledge production in the earth sciences as well as (2) the ontology, affect, and agency of geological materials. Political geology emphasizes that knowledge about and the categorization of earthly materials is always rooted in particular historic and ontological frameworks. Scientific practice frames, selects, and excludes certain materials, reflecting particular political projects. Simultaneously, anthropologists and geographers have documented the meaningful roles that geomaterials have in social life cross-culturally, while also revealing ontological equivocations between discrete communities. At issue are the multiple perspectives on what geomaterials are and who has the power to define, utilize, consult, and protect them. In what ways do archaeological ceramics, metals, stone objects and architecture, and agricultural landscapes—consisting of specific technologies and geological know-how—represent “partial connections” and political ontologies? What kinds of frameworks can help us better understand and describe ontological and political conflicts as gleaned through archaeology? Thinking through such questions may lead to a more representative and equitable archaeology.
Other Keywords
Geoarchaeology •
Landscape Archaeology •
Environment and Climate •
Ideology •
Craft Production •
ontology •
Materiality •
Ancestral Pueblo •
contact period •
Northwest Coast
Geographic Keywords
Republic of Peru (Country) •
Republic of Panama (Country) •
Republic of Colombia (Country) •
Netherlands Antilles (Country) •
Aruba (Country) •
Republic of Ecuador (Country) •
Republic of Chile (Country) •
South America (Continent) •
South America: Andes •
New Mexico (State / Territory)
Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-8 of 8)
- Documents (8)
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Affectual Ecosystems of Color: Pigments and the Co-creation of Power in the Chaco World (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Political Geologies in the Ancient and Recent Pasts: Ontology, Knowledge, and Affect" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Color is a deeply pervasive element of cosmology in the Pueblo World of the US Southwest. In these rich, affectual ecosystems of chromatic metaphor, cosmological balance is achieved through nuanced relationships between plants, animals, natural phenomena, and cardinal directions. Relationships are...
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The Anthropogenic and Geogenic Coproduction of Seismically Triggered Soft Sediment Deformation Structures (SSDS) in Helike, Greece (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Political Geologies in the Ancient and Recent Pasts: Ontology, Knowledge, and Affect" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Factors of earthquakes in archaeology are often relegated to disaster and collapse narratives. Causality runs from the “natural” extreme to its human impacts. Following political ecology and Science and Technology Studies literatures and using the case of Helike, Greece, from the third millennium BCE to...
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Binaries, Landforms, and Clam Gardens on the Northwest Coast of North America (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Political Geologies in the Ancient and Recent Pasts: Ontology, Knowledge, and Affect" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The imposition of colonial authority throughout the Indigenous Northwest Coast of North America brought with it two long-standing western binaries—agricultural/not and natural/anthropogenic. Within these, Northwest Coast peoples were viewed as not agricultural (useful for alienating them from land) and...
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High-Altitude Andean Wetlands: Classificatory Systems, Nomenclature, and Functional Implications (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Political Geologies in the Ancient and Recent Pasts: Ontology, Knowledge, and Affect" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. High-altitude wetlands, known as bofedales, are vital resources for Andean herding communities because of the high-quality, perennial vegetation they provide. These wetlands are often peat-accumulating, and are attracting renewed attention because of their roles in carbon sequestration and water...
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Kaolin as the Stuff of Politics among Recuay Communities? Applying Political Geology to Ancient Andean Ceramics (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Political Geologies in the Ancient and Recent Pasts: Ontology, Knowledge, and Affect" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent scholarship argues that the knowledge and use of earthly materials is a power-laden field that is relationally distributed across everyday activities. This paper draws on these theoretical discussions in “political geology” to grapple with three interpretations for prehispanic Recuay kaolin...
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The Past and Present Social Role of Viking Age Mounds (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Political Geologies in the Ancient and Recent Pasts: Ontology, Knowledge, and Affect" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Jellhaug, Norway, is Scandinavia’s second largest prehistoric mound. Dating from the (pre)Viking period, it has a long history of human interaction and interpretation. Built in phases with distinct, selected, and transformed earthly materials, the mound compares with contemporary mounds in that both the...
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Political Geologies Past and Present: An Introduction (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Political Geologies in the Ancient and Recent Pasts: Ontology, Knowledge, and Affect" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Researchers working across the humanities and social sciences have recently demonstrated how the study of earthy materials is rooted in historically and ontologically specific frameworks. Such frameworks are, as Bobbette and Donovan (2019) demonstrate, “political geologies.” Geological practices are...
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The Politics of Soils on the Medieval Deccan, Southern India (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Political Geologies in the Ancient and Recent Pasts: Ontology, Knowledge, and Affect" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper considers the politics of soils on the Medieval Deccan. Drawing on inscriptional stelae that record land donations and distinctions, multi-spectral remote sensing datasets, micromorphological analyses, and archaeological survey results, it evaluates how the classification, distribution, and...