The Archaeology of Care and Power

Part of: Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "The Archaeology of Care and Power" at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The care concept in archaeology is often used to identify life-sustaining practices and behaviors in the past. However, practices of care are not necessarily always benevolent and inclusionary. By introducing the analytical framework “Ecologies of Support,” anthropologists Vincent Duclos and Tomás Sánchez Criado provide a pathway to “trouble” the use of the care concept, and urge scholars to treat care “as is” without being burdened by the moral and ethical standards often associated with the concept. This seminar invites archaeologists to look at practitioners, structures, and sites of care as convoluted systems entrenched in power dynamics. Beyond just identifying care practices in the past, this session aims to ask: Who had access to care, and who did not? How did care include and exclude certain groups of people? And lastly, how was care entangled in economic processes, power structures, and both the natural and built environment? By mapping out the often-discontinuous distribution of care, archaeologists can get at how care was instituted across the landscape, and the material conditions that enabled care in the past.

Other Keywords
Political economy • Theory • Social and Political Organization • Worldwide

Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-9 of 9)

  • Documents (9)
Documents
  • Care and Power: Craftsmanship and Wari Elites Dynamics: A Case from Castillo de Huarmey, Peru (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Wieslaw Wieckowski.

    This is an abstract from the "The Archaeology of Care and Power" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The recent discovery of the tomb of the Master Basketmaker within the Gallery of Elite Craftsmen, located in the nearest vicinity of the imperial Wari tomb at the site of Castillo de Huarmey, Peru, presents an exceptional opportunity to analyze the interplay between different tiers of elites, particularly in the context of the presence of disabled...

  • Care in Crisis, Crisis as Care: A Comparative, Multi-scalar Archaeology of Care in Periods of Sociopolitical Disruption (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicola Sharratt.

    This is an abstract from the "The Archaeology of Care and Power" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. If sites, practitioners, and structures of care are embedded in power dynamics, how are those components of care systems transformed when established power dynamics are radically disrupted? Drawing on the substantial comparative archaeological literature that has been published in recent decades on processes and periods often glossed as...

  • Case Studies Reveal Material Complexities of Reconstructing Physical Impairment, Disability, and Health-related Caregiving in the Past (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Cassandra DeGaglia.

    This is an abstract from the "The Archaeology of Care and Power" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Bioarchaeological approaches to health-related caregiving fundamentally engage with the inequities, differential draws upon community and household resources, and agency and social identities of providers and recipients of care in past populations. Thus, conducting this research in a way that incorporates the cultural, community, spatial, and temporal...

  • Creatures of Care: Assembling Livestock Worlds within Archaeofaunal Datasets (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Theo Kassebaum.

    This is an abstract from the "The Archaeology of Care and Power" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper builds on the work of Duclos and Criado to dive into the speculative potential of a framework of care by considering how archaeological worlds are constructed through multispecies relationships in diverse and multiple ways. Speculating about care requires acknowledging relationalities across categories. This has significant implications for...

  • Eighteenth-Century Life After Apoplexy: A Case of a Eighteenth-Century Aristocrat from Pomerania/Poland (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Katarzyna Slusarska.

    This is an abstract from the "The Archaeology of Care and Power" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 2023, research and restoration work was carried out in the von Wedel family crypt in Bród, Poland. This crypt was built in the second half of the eighteenth century to serve as the final resting place for the aristocratic von Wedel family. Among the individuals identified, the remains of an elderly man stood out due to lesions observed in the...

  • Islamization and the Construction of Landscape of Care in Early Modern Period Java, Indonesia (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Aldo Foe.

    This is an abstract from the "The Archaeology of Care and Power" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper argues that the adoption of Islam, and specifically the practice of welfare economy generated by Islamic philanthropy (sadaqah), created a new landscape of care in Early Modern Period (15th -19th century) Java. As a nexus for the disbursement of social services, mosques represent the largest public investments made by Islamic polities. Being...

  • Landscapes of Care, Landscapes of Power?: The Built and Imagined Spaces of Missionization in Ngasobil (Senegal) (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Johanna Pacyga.

    This is an abstract from the "The Archaeology of Care and Power" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Mission of St. Joseph in Ngasobil (Senegal) was often framed by as a place of care—for the sick, for refugees, for children, etc. Care was deeply woven into the vocation of the religious personnel living and working in there, and as such is often easiest to consider as an element of a moral framework, in this case particularly rooted in Catholicism...

  • State ‘Care’ or Mere Oversight? Evaluating the Effectiveness of Top-Down Support for Pilgrims during the Angkorian Period. (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Danielle Silverman.

    This is an abstract from the "The Archaeology of Care and Power" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The ethically loaded conception of ‘care’ has been approached in myriad fields as a form of ‘duty’, the product of interdependency or close personal relationships, or even as a moral disposition to the needs of others. Introducing this concept into the field of archaeology, we can break ‘care’ down into its tripartite structure of 1.) the caregiver;...

  • Sweating in the Old Days: An Elite Maya Sweatbath’s Functions and Meanings (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Justine Shaw.

    This is an abstract from the "The Archaeology of Care and Power" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the Terminal Classic, a monumental sweatbath was constructed at the site of Yo’okop directly adjacent to the site’s primary water source, an aguada. Built of cut stones with multiple plaster floors, a stone vaulted ceiling, a U-shaped bench arrangement, a dedicatory cache, and a position in the core of the site, it is reasonable to hypothesize...