Human-Shark Interactions in the Interior of North America: A Relational and Historical Perspective

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Past Human-Shark Interactions" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

In a previous article, Betts et al. (2012) explored the spiritual relationship between sharks and humans in the Atlantic Northeast. For peoples with relational ontologies, using, wearing, and trading shark teeth not only signaled a sacred relationship with the shark but also an identity embodied by this conspecific; namely, a way of life connected to the sea and its animals. However, for at least 2,500 years, extant and fossil shark teeth were traded from the Atlantic seaboard and Gulf of Maine into the interior of North America. The shark teeth occurred in Adena, Hopewell, and later Mississippian contexts from the Great Lakes to the Lower Mississippi and especially the Ohio Valley. Their trade and importance appear to have intensified over time, and they are especially prominent in Mississippian contexts, such as Cahokia, where effigies of the teeth may have also been created. What did these sharks and their teeth mean to people who had no direct relationship with the sea and its animals, and who had likely never seen a shark in their lives? This paper explores the meanings, social bonds, power, and histories embedded in shark teeth in interior North American contexts, from both relational and historical perspectives.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Past Human-Shark Interactions   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38926.0