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