Theorizing an Anti-Colonial Bioarchaeology

Summary

This is an abstract from the "The Future of Bioarchaeology in Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Since the 1970’s bioarchaeology has become both a valid specialization within archaeology as well as a standalone discipline with its own analytical and institutional traditions. Archaeology, though, enjoys a much more robust mosaic of competing theoretical frameworks than does bioarchaeology. From the processual to the postprocessual—to the feminist, radical and postcolonial—contemporary archaeologists have plenty of theoretical locales to inhabit. In bioarchaeology we have certainly weathered the "bioarchaeology of behavior" vs. "contextualized bioarchaeology" divide, tried hard to both become biocultural and understand "the body as material culture," and started to use social theory more frequently in our interpretations of past lives. Bioarchaeologists, though, typically need not articulate theoretical commitments in their work, although some certainly do. This paper contends that in order for bioarchaeology to innovate within archaeology in the next decades, our theory should be generative, not just interpretive; that is, we must ground ourselves in theory rather than simply use theory. I first explain why bioarchaeology, historically, has lagged behind archaeology theoretically. I then propose a decolonization of bioarchaeology, one situated within established anti-colonial theoretical traditions. Can bioarchaeology try to shed its settler-colonial past and perhaps even reach for a transformation of its intellectual project?

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• The Future of Bioarchaeology in Archaeology   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23870