I Know as I Relate: Reimagining Relationships of the Deep Past

Summary

This is an abstract from the "*SE The State of Theory in Southeastern Archaeology" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Framed within Eurocentric materialism, economic theory of the deep past has largely formed a world of ‘natural resources’ ready for extraction, exploitation, and management. Conversely, Indigenous-based economies of North America-Turtle Island widely see an animate universe in which all creations have agency and tradition all their own. Such economies are place-based, relation-based, and future-based, with many added values that are neglected in neoclassical economic theory. In this paper, I begin the process of reimagining Indigenous Peoples’ relationships with beyond humans (i.e., Plant and Animal Persons) in the Deep Past of the Archaic period. I examine how various Indigenous groups observed their social brothers and sisters, like Tree- and Deer-Persons, and worked to maintain relationships with these beings for millennia.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)   •
• *SE The State of Theory in Southeastern Archaeology

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 41635.0