New Perspectives on Altered States: Bioarchaeology, Altered States of Knowing, and Social Memory

Summary

This is an abstract from the "(De)Pathologizing the Past: New Perspectives on Intervention and Modification as Care in the Americas" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Altered States of Consciousness (ASCs) have been used by individuals in a variety of contexts for diverse purposes, as far back as Antiquity. Archaeological investigations of these practices typically focus on indirect evidence of the use of altered states, such as residue analysis of associated artifacts, iconographic analysis of motifs present on various media, and ethnobotanical remains. The use of ASCs has been primarily associated with ritual specialists including shamans, medicine people, and healers, interpreted as a practice of taking a “soul flight” to other realms to diagnose and treat maladies within the community. This presentation builds on the concept of Altered States of Knowing (Hanegraaff 2022) by offering a complementary view that different peoples, including, but not limited to ritual specialists, have engaged with ASCs to access knowledge that is otherwise unavailable in a “sober” state, with case studies focused on Indigenous use of Datura/Toloache. The role of ASCs in the creation and maintenance of social memory within communities will also be discussed as part of my preliminary thesis research. Finally, this presentation offers directions for future research focused on examining direct evidence of the use of psychoactive plants such as Datura through the analysis of dental calculus.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• (De)Pathologizing the Past: New Perspectives on Intervention and Modification as Care in the Americas

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 50904