Establishing Cultural Affiliation under NAGPRA Using Geographic Origin: A Case Study of Minnesota

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Indigenous perspectives of cultural affiliation center on shared relationships with the land (Bruchac 2005); thus, establishing cultural affiliation under NAGPRA is more meaningful if it can reassociate an ancestor based on their region of origin. Biological relatedness has been used to establish cultural affiliation, but this approach prioritizes a western perspective of cultural belonging. It is also poorly suited to account for earlier histories of migration, intergroup mixing, and group fissions that are sometimes reported in oral traditions, and therefore cultural affiliation estimates based solely on biological relatedness may be inaccurate (Schillaci and Bustard 2010). My research aims to develop a resource for estimating an ancestor’s geographic origin using previously established geochemical methodologies and linear mixed effects modeling to estimate baseline strontium (87Sr/86Sr) and oxygen (δ18O) across Minnesota. Model efficacy will be evaluated based on its ability to accurately assign geographic origin to archaeological faunal remains of known provenance. If Indigenous stakeholders are interested in using this resource for reassociating an ancestor, 87Sr/86Sr and δ18O preserved within an ancestor’s skeletal remains can be compared with baseline 87Sr/86Sr and δ18O to estimate their provenance. This resource centers in Minnesota but can serve as a model for repatriation efforts in other locations.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 37214.0