Fluid Stone: Geological Materials in Process

Summary

This is an abstract from the "The Problem of the Monument: Widening Perspectives on Monumentality in the Archaeology of the Isthmo-Colombian Area" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Geological materials that constitute features in archaeological sites in Central America range from unfired clay and unmodified cobbles, to cut stone, and plasters produced by heating limestone. What these materials have in common is that from an archaeological perspective, they are often treated as inert, more stable than organic materials, less active, not agential. In this paper, drawing on theoretical frameworks from geoarchaeology, feminist new materialism, and the varieties of practice theory that have recently been advanced as "process archaeology", I seek to rethink mineral matter as active, agential, dynamic, and in process. This involves considering how people in the Central American past engaged with clay and stone, under conditions that exposed the energy inherent in these materials, including flooding, volcanic eruptions, and the emergence of stone from hot springs and cave formations. It also involves considering indigenous ontologies, for which I draw on ethnographic and historical documents from Lenca communities in Honduras. Building on observations by indigenous people who recognize sources of mineral matter such as mountains and volcanos as animate, and recognizing the ways people in the past intra-acted with durable formations of rock and clay allows us to define a new materialist geoarchaeology for this region.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• The Problem of the Monument: Widening Perspectives on Monumentality in the Archaeology of the Isthmo-Colombian Area   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 37996.0