Canaries in the Coal Mine: How Children Reveal the Embodied Realities of Colonialism

Summary

This is an abstract from the "The Marking and Making of Social Persons: Embodied Understandings in the Archaeologies of Childhood and Adolescence" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Childhood is paradoxically the most precarious yet vital period of a person’s life. It is when children form their biological and social self, embodying everything around them. However, what surrounds them may not be safe, stable, or congruent with a healthy, long life. Children are the first to embody and succumb to the effects of sociopolitical change, economic insecurity, or environmental disruption and this is particularly apparent in societies undergoing forced ideological or political transformation. Colonialism and imperialism have been shown to increase the morbidity and mortality of the communities being subjugated. This paper examines the embodiment of colonialism as seen in the remains of children recovered from the 16th century colonial church cemetery in Xaltocan, Mexico. A contextualized bioarchaeological analysis reveals the stories of Xaltocameca children who were the canaries of the new society wrought by the long arms and nails of Spanish colonialism. Adolescents and adults who survived childhood still carry the scars of their lived, embodied experiences in youth. Social practices and cultural transmission were remade during colonial incursions into indigenous communities and the skeletal remains of the Xaltocameca reveal the realities of living in a colonized space. Images of human remains may appear in this presentation.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• The Marking and Making of Social Persons: Embodied Understandings in the Archaeologies of Childhood and Adolescence   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 40349.0