Queer Imaginatives, Normative Narratives: Examining Archaeological Theory and Conceptions of Hunter-Gatherer-Fisher Labor and Social Identity

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Thinking with, through, and against Archaeology’s Politics of Knowledge" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Archaeology’s role and capacity to present multiple narratives about the past situates the discipline as a locus for competing power dynamics: What stories about the past are prioritized? How are stories constructed? Which stories are utilized for crafting a generalizable theory about “human nature”? At the same time, contemporary archaeology has recognized the need for multivocality in cultural heritage narratives and material interpretation. In this paper, I broach these matters by examining ways queer theory has been integrated within hunter-gatherer-fisher studies and the effectiveness of new knowledge production in changing archaeological perspectives. I do so by analyzing major journal publications, introductory archaeological textbooks, and public history projects as archival evidence for the discipline’s production of knowledge and assess how normative frameworks are created and perpetuated in conceptualizations of past labor and social identity. In so doing, this paper assesses the manners in which contemporary archaeological theory is interrupting narratives that circulate in wider public domains—and the limits of this interruption. I conclude with making room for lively queer imaginatives to stretch and bend these limits.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)   •
• Thinking with, through, and against Archaeology’s Politics of Knowledge

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 39312.0