Rethinking Our Concepts to Rethink Our Data: Interpreting the Material Culture of Northwest Mexico in Light of Indigenous Theory

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Multispecies Frameworks in Archaeological Interpretation: Human-Nonhuman Interactions in the Past, Part II" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

It has been a while since anthropology experienced an ontological turn that calls to question the universal application of Western concepts, such as nature, culture, and humanity. That questioning, however, has not permeated enough into anthropology, but even much less into archaeology. So, although archaeology includes a plethora of methods, techniques, and interpretative theories, in this respect we are falling behind. In this presentation I discuss some of the implications of this ontological turn in archaeology taking examples from Northwest Mexico and my fieldwork experience in the Sierra Madre Occidental among the Wixaritari (Huicholes). For example, I analyze how to rethink how our concepts impact our comprehension of masks, figurines, ceramic vessels, sculptures, osteological remains, or their archaeological contexts. This exercise forces us to analyze and recognize that our Western conceptual frameworks are not universal, but, instead, many times they are inadequate for interpreting prehispanic material culture. As researchers, we need to recognize that it is not just valid and ethical but necessary to analyze and to apply Indigenous knowledge, their theories, and their concepts to aid in our interpretations because that is equal to or more legitimate than ours.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Multispecies Frameworks in Archaeological Interpretation: Human-Nonhuman Interactions in the Past, Part II   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 37035.0