Paper Bodies: Excavating Archival Tissues and Traces

Part of: Society for Historical Archaeology 2023

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Paper Bodies: Excavating Archival Tissues and Traces," at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

There has been a proliferation of scholarship “in the archives,” though the meaning of

“archive” itself is quite malleable. Traditionally, it is an accumulation of records of everyday life, fragments that require close reading. As traces, however, there remain troubling gaps, silences that speak to erasure, making archives sites power. Archives are also places that people are drawn to. They put bodies in motion as researchers work with vast assemblages of tissues and traces within institutional regimes and structures.

This session explores what can be learned about “the body,” past and present, in the archives, broadly defined. How does working in and with archives destabilize types of sources (bones/artifact/archives/oral histories)? How can various traces be brought into relation with one another to generate new questions, data, and insights related to embodiment and the body? Does such work redefine or challenge the definition or boundaries of “the body” or “the archive”?

Other Keywords
bioarchaeology • Archives • Identity • Migration • Ritual • Ethics • Trauma • Archaeological Ethics • Community • Mormon

Geographic Keywords
Northeastern United States • North Atlantic • Scandinavia • Northern Europe • Yorkshire, UK • Central Europe • British Guiana and North America • New York City--North America • Utah, USA

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

  • Documents (8)
Documents
  • Archival Fractals: Bodies, Records, Perspectives and Memories (2023)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Rebecca Gowland. Anwen Caffell. Malin Holst. Michelle Alexander. Sally Robinson.

    This is an abstract from the session entitled "Paper Bodies: Excavating Archival Tissues and Traces", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. The skeletal remains of 154 individuals, including 22 of known identity, were excavated from a rural churchyard in Yorkshire, England. A community-led investigation into the lives of these people was undertaken by the Washburn Heritage Centre Team, some of whom were descendants of the named individuals, and...

  • Archival Shapeshifting: On the Muddy Paths of Transcendence between Nation-States (2023)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Shannon A. Novak.

    This is an abstract from the session entitled "Paper Bodies: Excavating Archival Tissues and Traces", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. In 1923, on a sugar plantation in British Guiana, 23-year-old overseer Leslie H.C. Phillips witnessed an elaborate ritual performed by hundreds of indentured laborers from southern India. The event propitiated the goddess Kali in variable shapes and forms. If the “Kali-Mai Puja” was mysterious and in need of interpretation,...

  • Boxed Bodies:Lessons from a Medical School Bone Box (2023)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Tessa Somogyi. Kelly Gardner. Elizabeth A. DiGangi.

    This is an abstract from the session entitled "Paper Bodies: Excavating Archival Tissues and Traces", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. This presentation will focus on a medical school bone box that was recently discovered in the basement of the Milton J. Rubenstein Museum of Science and Technology in Syracuse, New York. We view the isolated bone box as an archive in and of itself and reflective of the consequences of structural violence on living people....

  • Consent, Curiosity, and Compassion: Bioethics and the Excavation of Archival Bodies (2023)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Madeleine L Mant.

    This is an abstract from the session entitled "Paper Bodies: Excavating Archival Tissues and Traces", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Bioarchaeological researchers have increasingly looked to the archives to contextualize skeletal studies, opening exciting avenues of collaborative research. Biocultural anthropological research may not always prioritize skeletons as the primary source of body data, but instead draw upon bodies in archival materials such as...

  • Meandering Paths of Archival Memory: Placing the Mountain Meadows Massacre on Disturbed Landscapes (2023)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Everett J Bassett.

    This is an abstract from the session entitled "Paper Bodies: Excavating Archival Tissues and Traces", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Although the 1857 Mountain Meadows Massacre site, where approximately 120 emigrants were murdered by Mormon militia in Utah, is considered a seminal event in American history, the accurate location of the event was not well understood. This, along with a highly conflicted and suspect historic record, allowed interpretation...

  • Miraculous Bodies: Archives of Medieval Impairment (2023)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Lauren R. Hosek.

    This is an abstract from the session entitled "Paper Bodies: Excavating Archival Tissues and Traces", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Among the “cacophony” of medieval bodies (Walker Bynum 1995) were those affected by physical impairments. The embodied social and physical realities of those living with impairment might be glimpsed through different material traces. Hagiographies and chronicles provide textual descriptions of impaired bodies, most often in...

  • "Unclaimed": The Making of (Un)grievable Lives in the Huntington Archive (2023)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Alanna Warner-Smith.

    This is an abstract from the session entitled "Paper Bodies: Excavating Archival Tissues and Traces", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. The Huntington Anatomical Collection (1893-1921) is comprised of immigrants and U.S.-born persons who died in New York City. Like many anatomical collections, the common narrative is that decedents were dissected and curated because they lacked next-of-kin to bury them, a social impoverishment used to justify their...

  • Who was Maria Grann? Balancing Archives of Narratives and Facts of a Contested Sámi(?) Skull (2023)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Jonny Geber. Jenny Bergman.

    This is an abstract from the session entitled "Paper Bodies: Excavating Archival Tissues and Traces", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. One of the late nineteenth-century skulls in the anatomical collection at Lund University (Sweden) belongs to a middle adult woman (28-45 years of age); according to the archival documentation (including writing on the skull) she was a 28-year-old Sámi woman named Maria Grann. Media reports in Sweden have generally...