Temporalities of Disaster Taphonomy: A Contemporary Archaeological Case Study in Southern Puerto Rico

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Taphonomy in Focus: Current Approaches to Site Formation and Social Stratigraphy" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Disaster landscapes dominate Puerto Rico’s Anthropocene, past and present. Yet, since the devastating 2017 hurricane season, climate change and coloniality have materialized unprecedentedly as roofless homes, shifting coastlines, and abandoned lots. As recovery practices become a part of everyday life in Puerto Rico, a contemporary archaeological approach helps address the complexities of how and where disaster material exists at the intersection of ecological and social forces. In this paper, I outline the depositional layering of an archaeological disaster-scape in the southern coastal town of Playa Ponce. Several case studies address the non-linear temporalities of taphonomy and the futurity of site formation, as archaeological sites are generated, transformed, and removed cyclically. I understand the current infrastructural landscape of Playa Ponce as the layered materializations of unfulfilled promises of repair, yet also as the accumulation of individual and community practices that emerge from living with dangerous infrastructure. Through embodied memories and stories of local residents, a material ethnography of disaster emerges from my archaeological observations. I use this to expand the temporal and causal framework of taphonomy, and to rethink mundane materials and infrastructures as possessing a sociality of disaster.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Taphonomy in Focus: Current Approaches to Site Formation and Social Stratigraphy   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38485.0