Ambiguous Iconography: Queering the Shell Game

Summary

This paper queers archaeological interpretation by unpacking and destabilizing underlying assumptions in Southeastern iconography. While not focusing expressly on sexuality or gender in these representations, this research discusses the ways ambiguities in engraved shell iconography, more broadly, have been dismissed, glossed, and deemphasized. In part, this exclusion is unintentional and results from the amount of research that remains to be conducted on the vast body of images, but we need to more fully consider the implications of these monolithic interpretations. Using iconography from Spiro Mounds, Oklahoma, this paper begins to bridge the gap through feminist and queer readings of these images, providing alternative possibilities for their interpretation and a better understanding of their use in Spiro society.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• Queering the Field: Archaeologies of Sexuality, Gender, and Beyond

Keywords

Spatial Coverage