"Filled with Faith and the True Spirit of Mormonism": Ritual and Belief at Iosepa, Utah

Summary

In this paper, I investigate the intersections between ritual, belief, and practice at Iosepa, Utah, a historic townsite built by diasporic Polynesian members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS). In 1889, the LDS Church assisted approximately 50 Polynesian LDS to establish and relocate to Iosepa for 28 years before disbanding the settlement in 1917. I explore how the Church leadership and the Polynesian LDS created and actively negotiated the landscape of Iosepa into a community and home according to often fluid social and religious ideals and practices. I argue that this case can lead to interesting questions on the archaeology of belief and ritual as well as how both can play into the archaeology of colonial entanglement and mission contexts. Focusing on an existing collection of materials from one LDS family’s household along with spatial organization and historical documentation from the broader community, I first consider the implications of ritual, belief, and practice between the individuals and the community and second, I show how this understudied context expands the discussion on belief and ritual in mission studies and recent historical archaeology.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

Keywords

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 22103