Obsession with an Icon: Sandals, Sandal Imagery, and Social Identity Across Thirteenth Century Cultural Landscapes in Southeastern Utah

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Transcending Modern Boundaries: Recent Investigations of Cultural Landscapes in Southeastern Utah" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Ancestral Pueblo people in southeastern Utah seem to have been obsessed with sandals and their depictions during the thirteenth century. Recent research has documented hundreds of sandal depictions on plaster and rock surfaces in the area dating to this period, but how should archaeologists interpret these data? This presentation investigates how people in the southeastern Utah used clothing and representations of clothing in other media, to signal important aspects of social identities in the thirteenth century. Recent field- and collections-based research of plaster building murals and rock art depicting sandals and other types of clothing, and actual twined sandals and other woven garments from southeastern Utah and the larger region are outlined. Next, cross-media approaches and clothing theories are applied to the study of identity expression, in an effort to understand some of the ways that Ancestral Pueblo people materialized concepts of personhood, group and community-level identities, and religious ideologies across diverse classes of decorated media during this era. Finally, the ways that changes in clothing styles, and their depictions, signaled major developments in the ways people expressed aspects of group affiliation and social position across the area, just prior to the depopulation of the region are addressed.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Transcending Modern Boundaries: Recent Investigations of Cultural Landscapes in Southeastern Utah   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 24561