Less Heroic, More Human: Archeology Of Nineteenth-century Whalers And Sealers In The South Shetland Islands, Antarctica.

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Pre-Recorded Video Presentation Things and the Global Antarctica", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Multiple documents demonstrate the strong impact of human activities since at least the first decades of the 19th century in waters near the South Shetland Islands. These activities generated a specific material culture directly linked to fishing, hunting, and survival strategies that are still preserved. In this presentation, a strategy will be proposed for constructing new narratives, alternatives to the official heroic story, and interpreting the micro-processes of human exploration and colonization in the South Shetland Islands, since the 19th century, based on archaeological evidence. Taking as a reference the archaeological and historical background of sealing and whaling camps in other islands of the archipelago, and incorporating new methodologies and techniques, we will seek to understand the human-environment relations and the social and spatial dynamics in this particular territory, contributing toward the characterization of the Antarctic landscape.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Pre-Recorded Video Presentation Things and the Global Antarctica   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2023

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow