The Ocarina of Time, Space, and Colonialism: Object Biography as a Tool for Contextualizing Colonial Ideologies in the American West and Beyond

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Paper / Report Submission (General Sessions)", at the 2024 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

During the summer of 2021, I reanalyzed the privy assemblage associated with the Teager/Weimer site located in Arlington, Washington. Within the assemblage, there is a Heinrich Fiehn Ocarina from the late 19th century, which represents a unique artifact well suited to the biographical method of analysis. The biographic approach allows us to explore the dialogue of meaning between material culture and the behaviors and beliefs surrounding them. Using this Ocarina as a narrative vehicle, I will discuss conceptualizations of capitalism, consumption, and globalization in the burgeoning town of Arlington, Washington in the early 1890s. I will also situate this object and these ideologies in the larger framework of colonialism throughout the world. This presentation represents just a small portion of my larger master’s thesis research on this assemblage and exemplifies the ongoing utility of legacy collections and value of public engagement in conducting meaningful archaeological research.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2024   •
• Paper / Report Submission (General Sessions)

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow