Worlds of Many People: Following Amazonian Indigenous People towards Archaeologies Beyond Humanity

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Many New Worlds: Alternative global histories through material stories" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Amazonian archaeology has produced narratives about the past of Indigenous peoples for over a century, and it has recently attained to Indigenous knowledge systems. Archaeologists working with and for Indigenous communities, as much as the first generation of Indigenous archaeologists in the region, have been challenging some of our basic concepts and practices. I will draw from the work of colleagues, as much as my experience working with the Wajãpi Indigenous people (Amapá, Brazil), to show how archaeological imagination can be challenged into different configurations, and engage with Indigenous knowledge as a political force, committed to Indigenous claims, rights and resistance. I aim to highlight Indigenous perspectives on material engagements and history making which blurs Western divisions between social and natural sciences, life and not-life. This paper will depart from examples set by Amazonian Indigenous researchers and/or collaborators, to explore how archaeology can engage with Indigenous people and their knowledge, aiming at modes of knowledge production that strengthen Indigenous resistances in the present, and challenge universalizing conceptions of humanity and temporality. I will focus on how such examples have the potential to transform archaeology and un-silence a multitude of different historical narratives about the forest and their beings.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• Many New Worlds: Alternative global histories through material stories

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 52777