Beyond the Brutality: Ritualized Violence in the Archaic Period Southeast

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Fryxell Award Symposium: Papers in Honor of Debra L. Martin" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The Archaic period of the southeastern United States is characterized by major environmental and ecological changes that likely stimulated ideological changes visible in the archaeological record. This period also demonstrates widespread direct violence that transcends ecologically based explanations. In particular, the contradictory lack of defensive architecture in tandem with compounding evidence for widespread trophy taking and killings suggest a deeper meaning behind these violent actions. Focusing on shell burial mound sites within the Middle Tennessee River Valley of Alabama, this research investigates how violence emerged and was ritualized during the Archaic period and how this contributed to transformations in broader cultural processes within these groups. As Dr. Martin's student, I am constantly encouraged to employ a well-rounded multidisciplinary approach, using a fine-grained biocultural analysis to interrogate ritual violence in a more nuanced way focusing on lived experience, performance, and culturally specific patterns. This approach to research that Dr. Martin embodies and trains her students in allows my work to make significant contributions both to our understanding of how ritual violence was enacted within these southeastern groups and to a growing anthropological literature on the complex ways that ritual violence is embedded in ideology and daily practices through time and space.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Fryxell Award Symposium: Papers in Honor of Debra L. Martin   •
• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 32142