Absences and Abandonments in the Mississippian Midwest

Summary

Archaeological studies of hypothesized regional abandonments often perform what Tim Ingold (2008) refers to as "a logic of inversion;" by drawing lines around sites, regions, and spaces we create boundaries in which life is lived, and by extension, create spaces where life is not lived. In examples of abandonments, the absence of evidence related to human living spaces is taken as the absence of (human) life. In other words, when we demarcate "abandoned" or "unoccupied spaces" (noted as such by a lack of material culture), do we unnecessarily exclude spaces where life was lived? Drawing on Mississippian Period archaeological data (and lack of data) from portions of the Mississippi River valley, I discuss how identifying certain spaces as abandoned/vacant and others as occupied have an impact on our interpretations of regional interactions and the big histories of the midcontinental US.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Mind the Gap: Archaeological Approaches to Null Data Spaces   •
• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage