Connecting the Past and the Present: The Kaviyangagn Ancestral Pottery Project

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The story begins on September 13, 2015, with a unique and unconventional wedding. This wedding was initiated by an object, the ancestral post, that had been preserved in the National Taiwan University Anthropology Museum for over eighty years. The protagonists of this wedding were the National Taiwan University and the source community of the ancestral post, the Kaviyangan community of the Paiwan tribe.

Through this unique wedding, National Taiwan University and the Kaviyangan community established a new relationship. It is their hope that through the establishment of this relationship, they can transform the conundrum created by the colonial history.

This marital relationship has now approached its sixth year. Both the Kaviyangan community and National Taiwan University have maintained, strengthened, and transformed this relationship through various activities. This article introduces how archaeology is used to organize and understand the ancestral pottery collected from the chief’s house of the old Kaviyangan community. It also delves into how the tribe contemplates the placement of these ancestral "objects" within contemporary contexts, seeking possibilities for their organic continuity in the present. This process further stimulates our deeper research into the "objects" themselves, laying the foundation for sharing more stories about the ancestors.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38563.0