Exploring Ontologies of the Precontact Americas
From Individual Bodies to Bodies of Social Theory
- 319 pages
- English
- PDF
- Available on iOS & Android
Exploring Ontologies of the Precontact Americas
From Individual Bodies to Bodies of Social Theory
About this book
Applying social theory and incorporating non-Western perspectives in the interpretation of bioarchaeological research
This
volume demonstrates how researchers in bioarchaeology and mortuary archaeology can
work to better understand concepts of life and death in past societies of the
Indigenous Americas. Through case studies that apply the “ontological turn” to
human funerary and skeletal remains, contributors set aside Western views of
reality, nature, and personhood to explore how people of various cultures understood
existence and the human body.
Contributors examine mortuary records from Inuit groups in Labrador and Greenland, Hopewell culture in the Lower Illinois River Valley, and Weeden Island and Puebloan traditions in the United States Southeast and Southwest. They look at the Paquimé community in Mexico, iconography of the Maya civilization, the demographics of Inka populations, and an ancient village on the Amazon River in Brazil. With attention to the viewpoints of these cultures, these essays deconstruct the boundaries between human remains and other interred artifacts, the living and the dead, and other binaries rooted deeply in Western science.
Exploring
Ontologies of the Precontact Americas reminds readers that their own
ontological perspectives affect how they interpret the past. By considering
diverse, non-Western worldviews and engaging with novel social theories of the
body, this volume inspires new understandings of precontact societies.
Contributors: Gordon F. M. Rakita | Pamela Geller |
Jason L. King | Sarah Jackson | Jane Buikstra | Robert Pickering | Peter
Whitridge | John Krigbaum | Neill J. Wallis | Adrianne Offenbecker |
Avelino Gambim Júnior | Bethany L. Turner | Mari Kleist | María Cecilia
Lozada | Debra L. Martin | Kyle Waller | James L. Fitzsimmons | J.
Cristina Freiberger
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Information
Table of contents
- Cover
- Half Title
- Title
- Copyright
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- 1. Bodies of Evidence: An Introduction
- 2. Necrontology: Housing the Dead in Precontact Labrador and Greenland
- 3. Ontology, Time Travel, and Transformation in the Lower Illinois Valley
- 4. Body Ontologies and Social Complexities in Precontact Florida
- 5. Ontological Insecurity and Social Transformation: Ritualized Violence and Corporeality—Pueblo Case Study
- 6. Body Parts and Partible Bodies: Indications of Non-Western Ontologies at Paquimé, Chihuahua
- 7. Eating Death: Maya Rationales for Mortality during the Classic Period
- 8. Bodies, Bones, and the Dead: Representations and Cross-Category Connections in Classic Maya Iconography
- 9. Isotopes and the Body Politic: Residential Origins and Relocations in the Inka Imperial Heartland
- 10. The Materiality of Bodies in the Mouth of the Amazon: Life and Death in the Indigenous Site of Curiaú Mirim I
- Epilogue
- List of Contributors
- Index