{"title":"Active environments: Relational ontologies of landscape at the ancient Maya city of Aventura, Belize","authors":"Kacey C. Grauer","doi":"10.1177/1469605319871362","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/1469605319871362","url":null,"abstract":"A holistic and relational approach to landscape amplifies understandings of the complexities of human–environment relationships. This article examines ecological and social aspects of landscape at the ancient Maya city of Aventura, Belize, in the context of relational ontologies. The city of Aventura is enmeshed with microenvironments known as pocket bajos, and I argue that pocket bajos defy categorization as natural or cultural. By exploring their spatial context, material content, and associated activities that create cosmological connections, I demonstrate that the pocket bajos were active social agents in the construction of the city and the maintenance of community. The relations that people living at Aventura established with pocket bajos highlight the interconnectedness of humans with the environment, and this approach avoids projecting current-day Western categories of nature and culture onto the past.","PeriodicalId":46391,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Social Archaeology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2020-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/1469605319871362","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42522759","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Understanding the significance of migrants’ material culture","authors":"Sarah Trabert","doi":"10.1177/1469605319879253","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/1469605319879253","url":null,"abstract":"Archaeologists are increasingly moving past discussions of whether migration events occurred in the past to more nuanced discussions of the meaning surrounding the migrants’ belongings. Migrants used material culture as powerful memory objects, to create meaning and adapt to living in a new place and often with new people. There are relatively few archaeological examples of large-scale migration into the Great Plains in the wake of European invasion of North America. One exception to this is the migration of Puebloan peoples from northern New Mexico to the Central Great Plains during the Puebloan diaspora after 1600 CE. Sites attributed to this migration are discussed in context with recent work on meaning and materiality to reconsider the critical role that objects play in identity expression and cultural survival in new homelands.","PeriodicalId":46391,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Social Archaeology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2020-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/1469605319879253","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44806808","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Exploring attitudes towards the archaeological past: Two case studies from majority Muslim communities in the Nile valley","authors":"C. Näser","doi":"10.1177/1469605319867194","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/1469605319867194","url":null,"abstract":"There is a dearth of studies on intercultural dynamics in Southwest Asian and North African archaeology, not least since conventional narratives assert that present-day majority Muslim communities in these regions are not interested in the pre-Islamic past. In this paper I argue that, despite seemingly overcoming such positions, collaborative projects may actually exacerbate them through perceiving local communities as deficient, in need of being taught and re-united with “their” heritage. Using data from two current projects in Sudan, I explore actual motivations of local publics to engage with the archaeologically approachable past and the interests they voice vis-à-vis archaeological heritage. I suggest that emphasizing these dimensions effects a shift in how nonarchaeological partners in collaborative projects are conceptualized. This opens new ground for engagement, as changing perceptions impact on interactions and, in consequence, power relations between protagonists.","PeriodicalId":46391,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Social Archaeology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2019-08-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/1469605319867194","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41386675","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Kristina G. Douglass, E. Morales, George Manahira, Felicia Fenomanana, Roger Samba, François Lahiniriko, Zafy Maharesy Chrisostome, Voahirana Vavisoa, Patricia Soafiavy, Ricky Justome, Harson Léonce, Laurence Hubertine, B. Pierre, Carnah Tahirisoa, Christoph Sakisy Colomb, Fleurita Soamampionona Lovanirina, Vanillah Andriankaja, R. Robison
{"title":"Toward a just and inclusive environmental archaeology of southwest Madagascar","authors":"Kristina G. Douglass, E. Morales, George Manahira, Felicia Fenomanana, Roger Samba, François Lahiniriko, Zafy Maharesy Chrisostome, Voahirana Vavisoa, Patricia Soafiavy, Ricky Justome, Harson Léonce, Laurence Hubertine, B. Pierre, Carnah Tahirisoa, Christoph Sakisy Colomb, Fleurita Soamampionona Lovanirina, Vanillah Andriankaja, R. Robison","doi":"10.1177/1469605319862072","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/1469605319862072","url":null,"abstract":"In this paper, we advocate a collaborative approach to investigating past human–environment interactions in southwest Madagascar. We do so by critically reflecting as a team on the development of the Morombe Archaeological Project, initiated in 2011 as a collaboration between an American archaeologist and the Vezo communities of the Velondriake Marine Protected Area. Our objectives are to assess our trajectory in building collaborative partnerships with diverse local, indigenous, and descendent communities and to provide concrete suggestions for the development of new collaborative projects in environmental archaeology. Through our Madagascar case study, we argue that contemporary environmental and economic challenges create an urgency to articulate and practice an inclusive environmental archaeology, and we propose that environmental archaeologists must make particular efforts to include local, indigenous, and descendent communities. Finally, we assert that full collaboration involves equal power sharing and mutual knowledge exchange and suggest an approach for critical self-evaluation of collaborative projects.","PeriodicalId":46391,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Social Archaeology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2019-07-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/1469605319862072","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42261933","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Nomadic economics: The logic and logistics of Comanche imperialism in New Mexico","authors":"L. Montgomery","doi":"10.1177/1469605319859667","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/1469605319859667","url":null,"abstract":"Over the past 20 years, scholars have expanded upon subsistence-driven models of indigenous labor and exchange by tracing out the dynamic social, economic, and political systems created by Native people. While current research has highlighted indigenous agency, especially in response to Western colonialism, these approaches have largely ignored the cultural and linguistic meanings behind key economic concepts. Through a case study of the Comanche, this article develops a culturally grounded approach to nomadic economics. The Comanche offer a compelling case for indigenous empire building, a case which points to the need to develop a revised understanding of imperialism. Drawing on documentary and archaeological evidence, this article traces the logic and logistics of Comanche imperialism in New Mexico. Specifically, I argue that during the 18th and early 19th centuries, Comanche people created a nomadic empire rooted in decentralized political power, kinship, and inter- and intra-ethnic exchange. This case study provides a glimpse into the priorities and practices of Comanche entrepreneurs and points to the important role of internal social dynamics in structuring indigenous forms of imperialism.","PeriodicalId":46391,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Social Archaeology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2019-07-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/1469605319859667","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41806319","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"REMOVAL NOTICE: The Iron Age past in the archaeological present of southeastern Turkey","authors":"Christoph Bachhuber","doi":"10.1177/1469605319858449","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/1469605319858449","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46391,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Social Archaeology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2019-07-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/1469605319858449","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41795728","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"An archaeology of decolonization: Imperial intimacies in contemporary Lisbon","authors":"R. Coelho","doi":"10.1177/1469605319845971","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/1469605319845971","url":null,"abstract":"The fall of the European empires over the course of the 20th century forced massive migratory flows from the former colonies to the old metropolis and between colonized regions. The experiences that came with the loss of colonies were traumatic for the erstwhile colonials, who carried their imperial nostalgia to the old metropolises. The social and political consequences of these longings are still unfolding in former colonizing societies. This article critically engages the materialization of lusotropical sensibilities, focusing on contemporary Portuguese decolonization as it is experienced in Lisbon’s urban landscape. I argue that cafés, restaurants, and pastry shops frequented by retornados are not only places of memory but spaces where imperial longings are ingested and internalized.","PeriodicalId":46391,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Social Archaeology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2019-05-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/1469605319845971","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46641319","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Oral traditions and mounds, owls and movement at Poverty Point: An archaeological ethnography of multispecies embodiments and everyday life","authors":"Lee J. Bloch","doi":"10.1177/1469605319846985","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/1469605319846985","url":null,"abstract":"Collaborative and Indigenous archaeologies call on researchers to recenter theory and practice on descendant peoples' lives and ways of knowing. Extending this project, this article takes story and dance as a site of theory, foregrounding Indigenous modes of embodiment in which bodily and sensory perspectives are cultivated through participation in more-than-human beings. Drawing on research with members of a small, Muskogee-identified community in the US South, it frames the large-scale earthworks at the Poverty Point site in Louisiana as representing a horned owl. This evokes stories about a people who lived in an owl-shaped village and who could move in particularly owlish ways. Critiquing ontological frameworks in which the sensory is universal and mind is removed from body and land, I argue that ancient peoples may have cultivated perspectival embodiments through the everyday activity of living together in the collective form of an owl. Moreover, as contemporary descendants return to Poverty Point, the land animates shared, multispecies sensory fields that enroll descendants into a longue durée of owlish encounters and entanglements, or what my hosts simply call “Owl's teachings.” Here, I call for an archaeology reimagined in the context of Native American and Indigenous studies, asking how mounds might animate resurgent possibilities rooted in (and routed through) deep Indigenous histories of return.","PeriodicalId":46391,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Social Archaeology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2019-05-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/1469605319846985","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45182511","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Who was Polynesian? Who was Melanesian? Hybridity and ethnogenesis in the South Vanuatu Outliers","authors":"J. Flexner, S. Bedford, F. Valentin","doi":"10.1177/1469605319846719","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/1469605319846719","url":null,"abstract":"Archaeological constructions of past identities often rely more or less explicitly on contemporary notions of culture and community in ways that can sometimes oversimplify the past and present. The archaeology of European colonialism has shown the proliferation of ‘hybrid’ identities that emerged from relatively recent cross-cultural encounters (though this concept is not without its critics). We argue that this perspective can also inform interpretations of the deeper past, with specific reference to ongoing research in the Polynesian Outliers of Futuna and Aniwa, south Vanuatu. Polynesian Outliers represent precisely the kinds of cross-cultural spaces where hybrid identities likely emerged during the pre-European era. A theoretical approach drawing on archaeological approaches to hybridity and ethnogenetic theories applied to the south Vanuatu Outliers allows for a clearer understanding of the roles difference and familiarity played in identity formation in the past.","PeriodicalId":46391,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Social Archaeology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2019-05-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/1469605319846719","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42134312","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Excavating and interpreting ancestral action: Stories from the subsurface of Orokolo Bay, Papua New Guinea","authors":"Chris Urwin","doi":"10.1177/1469605319845441","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/1469605319845441","url":null,"abstract":"The Gulf of Papua, Papua New Guinea, is a rapidly changing geomorphic and cultural landscape in which the ancestral past is constantly being (re)interpreted and negotiated. This paper examines the importance of subsurface archaeological and geomorphological features for the various communities of Orokolo Bay in the Gulf of Papua as they maintain and re-construct cosmological and migration narratives. The everyday practices of digging and clearing for agriculture and house construction at antecedent village locations bring Orokolo Bay locals into regular engagement with buried pottery sherds (deposited during the ancestral hiri trade) and thin strata of ‘black sand’ (iron sand). Local interpretations and imaginings of the subsurface enable spatio-temporal interpretations of the ancestors' actions and the structure of ancestral settlements. These interpretations point to the profound entanglement of orality and material culture and suggest new directions in the comparative study of alternative archaeologies.","PeriodicalId":46391,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Social Archaeology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2019-05-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/1469605319845441","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47600827","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}