Living Things in the Landscape: Gendered Perspectives from Amazonia

Summary

Santos-Graneros writes about persistent places in Amazonia, places that have been used by generation after generation of people, because of their special qualities—waterfalls, mountains, caves. The current interest in the ontology of objects, inspired by the work of Ingold, Latour, Gell, and others has opened the door for archaeologists to consider how we can investigate the meanings of places and objects in these ways, as living things. Like objects, places are alive. The headwaters of the Tigre River in the Ecuadorian Amazon provides a dynamic context for understanding the meanings of ancestral places in terms of Native ontologies and the complex relationships underlying memory, materiality, landscape, history at multiple scales, cultural transformation, and identities. Reflecting on long-term ethnoarchaeological research in the Ecuadorian Amazon, I consider how gendered perspectives on living things in the landscape contribute to a greater understanding of the material record and these complex phenomena, including ancestral claims to places of the past.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

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

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 22227