Mitigating the Sacred? Examining the Role of Native American Associative Values in Resolving Adverse Effect

Summary

Under federal historic preservation legislation, mitigating adverse effects to archaeological sites commonly involves treating the site as a materialistic entity from which scientific information about the past is retrieved through systematic data recovery. Native American associative values associated with archaeological sites that view these places as sacred because they are home of ancestors that exhibit physical affirmations of oral histories and collective cultural identities are rarely given suitable consideration in a Section 106 process. Utilizing the Amity Pueblo disturbance as a case example, this presentation considers the following issues: Are there ways to measure damage/harm to sacred places? What does that look like for an indigenous community? Are there traditional forms of repairing damage/harm to a sacred place? If so, who are the actors in that reparation? Is the restoration a post-Section 106 process that happens on its own?

SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the Society for American Archaeology and Center for Digital Antiquity Collaborative Program to improve digital data in archaeology. If you are the author of this presentation you may upload your paper, poster, presentation, or associated data (up to 3 files/30MB) for free. Please visit http://www.tdar.org/SAA2015 for instructions and more information.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• Research Designs and Damage Assessments: Appropriate Response to Treat Irrevocably Effected Places

Keywords

Spatial Coverage