Approaches to Archaeological Footwear
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 "Approaches to Archaeological Footwear" at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.
Evidence deriving from changes in the architecture of the human foot suggests that footwear has been an important component of human technology for at least that last 50,000 years. Beyond becoming a signature feature of dress and adornment in many cultures, footwear has also played an underappreciated role in human mobility and the colonization of diverse biomes. Footwear, including diverse forms such as sandals, slippers, moccasins, and shoes, has historically been neglected in archaeological research, however, in favor of other classes of material culture. This is largely due to footwear’s perishability and the challenges to classification posed by their formal and structural variability. Despite these limitations, prior research demonstrates the potential of ancient foot dressing practices to contribute to archaeological questions relating to ancient economies, long-term technological change and innovation, social boundaries and identities, individual- and population-level health and demography, and population movement, among other things. The primary goal of this session is to integrate often disparate threads of research involving different types of ancient footwear, as well as different methodological and theoretical approaches, to highlight the potential of such items for addressing a wide range of anthropological questions and articulate pathways for future research on archaeological footwear.
Other Keywords
Textile Analysis •
Archaic •
Ancestral Pueblo •
Material Culture and Technology •
Geoarchaeology •
Dating •
Migration •
Iconography •
Collections •
Dress
Geographic Keywords
United States of America (Country) •
North America (Continent) •
Arizona (State / Territory) •
Utah (State / Territory) •
Nevada (State / Territory) •
California (State / Territory) •
USA (Country) •
New Mexico (State / Territory) •
Oklahoma (State / Territory) •
Texas (State / Territory)
Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-7 of 7)
- Documents (7)
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The Absence (or Presence) of Footwear during the Eastern Great Basin Archaic (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Approaches to Archaeological Footwear" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Excluding much younger examples of distinctive Fremont-era and Promontory Phase moccasins, footwear of any sort seems to be largely, if not entirely, absent from the archaeological record of the Eastern Great Basin during the preceding millennia. This apparent pattern stands in sharp contrast to the well attested and venerable woven sandal...
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Anatomical Characteristics of the Pedal Skeleton Provide Insights into the History of Human Footwear (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Approaches to Archaeological Footwear" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. There is no footwear in nature—only hooves and soles. Protecting feet through artificial means is a human invention of relatively recent origin. The oldest direct evidence for footwear includes woven sandals and moccasins dating to the early Holocene. Inferences from footprints, decorative beads, and morphological analysis of phalanges suggest an...
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Fashions and Fabrications of the Fanciest Footwear: Two Millennia of Stability and Change in Twined Sandal Use in the US Southwest (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Approaches to Archaeological Footwear" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Twined sandals were the most long-lived yucca-cordage sandals used by Ancestral Pueblo people in the US Southwest, bridging the Basketmaker II (100 BC–AD 550) through Pueblo III (AD 1150–1300) periods. They were among the most technologically complex, ornate, and resource-intensive textiles ever produced in the region and also a key feature of...
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The Ichnological Record of Footwear: Some Thoughts and Experiments (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Approaches to Archaeological Footwear" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Human footprints have been found throughout the world. At White Sands (New Mexico) they hint at early human presence in the Americas, and during the summer of 2022 a new footprint site was reported from Utah. These sites are linked by their geological setting, dried lake beds and ancient playas, a common feature of the Americas. One question often...
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Pathways to the Archaeology of Footwear (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Approaches to Archaeological Footwear" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper introduces the symposium “Approaches to Archaeological Footwear.” Evidence suggests that footwear has been an important component of human technology for at least the last 50,000 years. In addition to becoming a signature feature of dress and adornment in many cultures, footwear has also played an underappreciated role in human mobility...
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Reintroduction of Ancient Archaeological Footwear Back into the Modern Pueblo World (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Approaches to Archaeological Footwear" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Until recently, the memory of ancient footwear traditions was only retained in the oral histories and stone-hewn writings of Pueblo scholars. Previous interpretations have suggested that footwear was as an everyday item used only to increase mobility and ensure survival in diverse surroundings. For Pueblo people, ancestral footwear was and is a...
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Walking the Footwear Landscape on the Western Plains Margin: The Implications of 3,500 Years of Footwear from Franktown Cave, Colorado (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Approaches to Archaeological Footwear" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Franktown Cave (5DA272) on the Palmer Divide south of Denver contains an assemblage of perishable artifacts unrivaled on the western Great Plains, and among these perishables is footwear from occupations dated 3300 BC–AD 1280. The footwear has proven to be the most useful for determining regional and cultural associations. Most of the analysis of...