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Decolonising archaeology in South Africa: two decades after the National Heritage Resources Act of 1999 Journal of Social Archaeology (IF 1.257) Pub Date : 2024-02-24 Kerry-Leigh P Reddy, Thembi Russell
Twenty-four years ago, the National Heritage Resources Act, No. 25 of 1999 (NHRA) was enacted in South Africa. This was a moment of change, when the heritage of those marginalised during the colonial and Apartheid eras would finally be given its rightful place on the national heritage list. There was a sense of optimism amongst politicians that the African past was finally to be recognised in an inclusive
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Time to decolonise: ‘If not now’, then when? Journal of Social Archaeology (IF 1.257) Pub Date : 2024-01-06 Nour Allah Munawar
The introduction of this special issue not only underscores the significance of engaging local communities in the reconstruction of their heritage in post-conflict contexts; it also emphasises the necessity and importance of including local researchers from the affected area, in this case the Arab region, in producing knowledge about its rich past. This special issue contributes towards a comparative
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(Re)calibrating heritage: Al-Jdeideh (post-)conflict transformations in Aleppo, Syria Journal of Social Archaeology (IF 1.257) Pub Date : 2024-01-04 Diana Salahieh, Saeed Asaaed, Layla Zibar
This paper examines how armed conflict impacts the recalibration of Aleppo’s historic urban and cultural fabric, using the Al-Jdeideh quarter as a case study. This article critically reflects on the ongoing (post-)conflict, top-down (post-)reconstruction activities in Aleppo’s historic core, drawing on ethnographic research of visual mapping and semi-structured interviews with current Aleppo dwellers
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Reactivating voices of the youth in safeguarding cultural heritage in Iraq: the challenges and tools Journal of Social Archaeology (IF 1.257) Pub Date : 2024-01-04 Gehan Selim, Sabeeh Lafta Farhan
This article contributes to a growing academic debate about the role of young people in safeguarding the memory of the past to support post-war rebuilding through physical urban reform and national rebranding. It also provides new opportunities for young people to amplify their voices after years of struggle. We pose the following question: How can the youth better leverage heritage to emphasise commonalities
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Assembling a household in the Middle Nile Valley (Old Dongola, Sudan) in the 16th–17th centuries Journal of Social Archaeology (IF 1.257) Pub Date : 2023-05-04 Maciej Wyżgoł, Agata Deptuła
Old Dongola, with a history reaching back to the 5th century AD, was originally the capital of Makuria, one of the three medieval Nubian kingdoms. After the collapse of Makuria, its capital city sa...
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Assembling Islamic practice in a Swahili urban landscape, 11th–16th centuries Journal of Social Archaeology (IF 1.257) Pub Date : 2023-02-15 Adria LaViolette, Jeffrey B Fleisher, Mark C Horton
Spanning c. 1050–1500 CE, a burgeoning Swahili community called Chwaka built a sequence of four mortared coral mosques in their town of wattle-and-daub houses on Pemba Island, Tanzania. The mosques...
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Events, narrative and data: Why new chronologies or ethically Bayesian approaches should change how we write archaeology Journal of Social Archaeology (IF 1.257) Pub Date : 2023-02-13 Seren Griffiths, Neil Carlin, Ben Edwards, Nicholas Overton, Penny Johnston, Julian Thomas
In this paper, we discuss how the history of our discipline continues to shape how we think with material culture to produce narratives. We argue that recent developments in scientific dating—in co...
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Qualia in late precolonial Pueblo rock art: An exploration of conventionalized sensorial experience in Rio Grande Style petroglyphs Journal of Social Archaeology (IF 1.257) Pub Date : 2023-02-13 Hannah Mattson
Although the application of semiotics to the archaeological study of rock art is not new, Peircean perspectives are still uncommon, and those implementing the concepts of qualisigns and qualia are ...
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Knowing Palmyra: Mandatory production of archaeological knowledge Journal of Social Archaeology (IF 1.257) Pub Date : 2023-02-02 J. A. Baird, Zena Kamash, Rubina Raja
During the Syrian conflict, ongoing since 2011, Palmyra became notorious for the destruction and looting of its Roman-period remains, giving rise to many narratives of what Palmyra’s future should ...
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The politics and historicity of megalithic places in early South India Journal of Social Archaeology (IF 1.257) Pub Date : 2022-12-13 Andrew M. Bauer, Peter G. Johansen
This paper considers the intersections of memorialization practices and politics throughout a period of emergent social differentiation during the Neolithic and Iron Age periods in the Deccan regio...
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Materiality in transit: an ethnographic-archaeological approach to objects carried, lost, and gained during contemporary migration journeys Journal of Social Archaeology (IF 1.257) Pub Date : 2022-12-11 Stephanie C Martin
The critical role of material objects for migrants in resettlement contexts is well established, but less work has been done to investigate the role of materiality in shaping migrants’ experiences ...
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Symbolic kraals: Subterranean food stores, hidden wealth and ethnographic errors Journal of Social Archaeology (IF 1.257) Pub Date : 2022-08-09 Thembi Russell
Iron Age studies in South Africa are dominated by Huffman’s (1982, 1986, 1993, 2001) ethnographically derived Central Cattle Pattern model, which identifies the cattle-based bridewealth institution...
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Staying local: Community formation and resilience in Archaic Southern Sicily Journal of Social Archaeology (IF 1.257) Pub Date : 2022-07-20 Matthias Hoernes
In the 7th and 6th centuries BCE, Sicily saw migratory movements to and on the island, new power relations, and intercultural interconnections. In this environment, new communities emerged, existin...
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Archaeology, land tenure, and Indigenous dispossession in Mexico Journal of Social Archaeology (IF 1.257) Pub Date : 2022-07-07 Sam Holley-Kline
In this paper, I examine a case of dispossession that made land belonging to Indigenous Totonac residents of San Antonio Ojital part of the archaeological site of El Tajín. To do so, I examine the ...
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Roman provincial sexualities: Constructing the body, sexuality, and gender through erotic lamp art Journal of Social Archaeology (IF 1.257) Pub Date : 2022-06-27 Sanja Vucetic
This paper explores how replicated erotic art decorating terracotta lamps constructed sexual ideology in Roman provinces. Lamp imagery, through semantic combination of elements, generated sexual di...
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Minding the gap: Attempts at community archaeology and local counter-narratives at an archaeological site in Turkey Journal of Social Archaeology (IF 1.257) Pub Date : 2022-06-01 Sevil Baltalı Tırpan
Community archaeologies should emerge from an awareness of the ways in which archaeological praxis is embedded with multiple pasts, subjectivities, materialities, and national and transnational his...
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Sketchbook archaeology: Bodies multiple and the archives they create Journal of Social Archaeology (IF 1.257) Pub Date : 2022-05-17 Shannon A Novak
Archaeological bodies and their afflictions have multiplied in recent years, along with the specialists who study them. The result is a cascade of data, much of it difficult to reconcile. I argue t...
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Narrating from landscape in Andean archaeology: The problem with the suni natural region Journal of Social Archaeology (IF 1.257) Pub Date : 2022-05-04 Gabriel Ramón, Martha G Bell
Archaeologists use the landscape to explain the past, often referring to traditional or indigenous knowledge to better understand that landscape. But how is this analogical process performed, and h...
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Reconstructing narratives: The politics of heritage in contemporary Syria Journal of Social Archaeology (IF 1.257) Pub Date : 2022-01-27 Nour A Munawar
It is predominantly known that history is written by winners. However, this statement is true when a conflict has a symmetric tendency. In the case of Syria, where the conflict has been widely cons...
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Archaeology, Indigenous erasure, and the creation of white public space at the California missions Journal of Social Archaeology (IF 1.257) Pub Date : 2022-01-08 Lee M Panich
This paper explores how the materiality of the past has been mobilized to simultaneously erase Indigenous presence and create white public space at Spanish mission sites in California. As the site ...
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Rwandan solutions to Rwandan problems: Heritage decolonization and community engagement in Nyanza District, Rwanda Journal of Social Archaeology (IF 1.257) Pub Date : 2021-12-28 Annalisa Bolin, David Nkusi
Highlighting the rural district of Nyanza in Rwanda, this article examines community relations to heritage resources. It investigates the possibilities for more ethical, engaged models of heritage ...
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Excavating Europe’s last fascist monument: The Valley of the Fallen (Spain) Journal of Social Archaeology (IF 1.257) Pub Date : 2021-12-23 Alfredo González-Ruibal
Since 1945, most fascist monuments have disappeared or been deactivated in Western Europe. There is one in Spain, however, that remains fully operative: the Valley of the Fallen. The complex, devised by the dictator Francisco Franco, celebrates the Nationalist victory in the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), keeps the bodies of thousands of victims of the conflict, as well as the leading fascist ideologue
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Domestication is not an ancient moment of selection for prosociality: Insights from dogs and modern humans Journal of Social Archaeology (IF 1.257) Pub Date : 2021-12-06 Robert J. Losey
Domestication is often portrayed as a long-past event, at times even in archaeological literature. The term domestication is also now applied to other processes, including human evolution. In such contexts, domestication means selection for friendliness or prosociality and the bodily results of such selective choices. Both such perspectives are misleading. Using dogs and modern humans as entry points
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A contemporary archaeology of pandemic Journal of Social Archaeology (IF 1.257) Pub Date : 2021-10-19 Matthew Magnani, Natalia Magnani, Anatolijs Venovcevs, Stein Farstadvoll
Global crises drastically alter human behavior, rapidly impacting patterns of movement and consumption. A rapid-response analysis of material culture brings new perspective to disasters as they unfold. We present a case study of the coronavirus pandemic in Tromsø, Norway, based on fieldwork from March 2020 to April 2021. Using a methodology rooted in social distancing and through systematic, diachronic
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Fear of a cannibal island: Colonial fear, everyday life, and event landscapes in the Erromango missions of Vanuatu Journal of Social Archaeology (IF 1.257) Pub Date : 2021-08-26 James L Flexner, Jerry Taki
Archaeological landscapes of colonial encounter were shaped to varying degrees by mutual mistrust, misunderstanding, anxiety, and the inherent terror of frontier violence. In the mission encounters of Island Melanesia, the colonial trope of “cannibalism” added a particular tinge to these fears of the colonized other. Mythologies of cannibalism both repulsed and motivated Christian missionaries who
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Images of transformation in the Lower Amazon and the performativity of Santarém and Konduri pottery Journal of Social Archaeology (IF 1.257) Pub Date : 2021-07-08 Denise Maria Cavalcante Gomes
This article analyses Amazonian objects of the Santarém and Konduri styles (1100–1600 AD), many of them with images of beings in transformation, adopting a framework that goes beyond an emphasis on the visual to recuperate pragmatic aspects of the rituals in which the objects were involved, apprehended through the formal properties and affordances of the artifacts themselves. Different rules are identified
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Working with huacos: Archaeological ceramics and relationships among worlds in the Peruvian North Coast Journal of Social Archaeology (IF 1.257) Pub Date : 2021-07-05 Débora L Soares
This article proposes a multitemporal approach to the study of archaeological ceramics in the Peruvian North Coast through archaeological ethnography. It allows us to create a new perspective of a past that seems to be continuously brought back in the ritual practices of curanderos (shamans), and in the daily life of other subjects that interact with what archaeologists call archaeological artifacts
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Esparto crafting under empire: Local technology and imperial industry in Roman Iberia Journal of Social Archaeology (IF 1.257) Pub Date : 2021-06-29 Linda R Gosner
Drawing on scholarship in postcolonial archaeology that emphasizes the place of indigenous technology in colonial and imperial contexts, this article explores the role of local communities in esparto grass weaving and basketry in the southeast Iberian Peninsula in antiquity. Esparto crafting became essential to Phoenician and Carthaginian colonial economies of the 1st millennium BCE and, later, to
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Oral tradition as emplacement: Ancestral Blackfoot memories of the Rocky Mountain Front Journal of Social Archaeology (IF 1.257) Pub Date : 2021-06-07 María Nieves Zedeño, Evelyn Pickering, François Lanoë
We highlight the significance of process, event, and context of human practice in Indigenous Creation traditions to integrate Blackfoot “Napi” origin stories with environmental, geological, and archaeological information pertaining to the peopling of the Northwestern Plains, where the northern Rocky Mountain Front may have played a prominent role. First, we discuss the potential and limitations of
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Haplotypes and textual types: Interdisciplinary approaches to Viking Age migration and mobility Journal of Social Archaeology (IF 1.257) Pub Date : 2021-03-28 Judith Jesch
When geneticists became interested in Viking Age migration and mobility, about 20 years ago, their evidence was drawn from the DNA of modern populations. More recently, ancient DNA (aDNA) techniques have been refined to the extent that evidence from archaeological skeletons is now being brought into the discussions. While modern DNA can provide large datasets, it remains a question how well these represent
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Nation branding in Zimbabwe: Archaeological heritage, national cohesion, and corporate identities Journal of Social Archaeology (IF 1.257) Pub Date : 2021-03-15 Thomas Panganayi Thondhlana, Simbarashe Shadreck Chitima, Shadreck Chirikure
This article critically assesses how heritage has been appropriated in various contexts to create national, partisan, and corporate identities in Zimbabwe. Using iconography, we attempt to establish how various players have created visual identities based on iconic archaeological artefacts and places. We discern that archaeological evidence has played a vital role in the invention and re-invention
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Liberating genealogies in Amman: Urban histories between a colonizing legacy and a decolonizing illusion Journal of Social Archaeology (IF 1.257) Pub Date : 2021-03-08 Rama Al Rabady, Shatha Abu-Khafajah
Colonialism operated in Amman through a matrix of power generated from a Western emphasis on its biblical and classical pasts. The cultural dominance of this matrix persisted in the postcolonial period. It perpetuated the coloniality of knowledge and the coloniality of being as it accentuated Western imperial pasts and marked the local – whether heritage or something else – as marginal. Coloniality
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Metal burial: Understanding caching behaviour and contact material culture in Australia's NE Kimberley Journal of Social Archaeology (IF 1.257) Pub Date : 2021-03-04 Sam Harper, Ian Waina, Ambrose Chalarimeri, Sven Ouzman, Martin Porr, Pauline Heaney, Peter Veth, Kim Akerman, Balanggarra Aboriginal Corporation
This paper explores identity and the recursive impacts of cross-cultural colonial encounters on individuals, cultural materials, and cultural practices in 20th-century northern Australia. We focus on an assemblage of cached metal objects and associated cultural materials that embody both Aboriginal tradition and innovation. These cultural materials were wrapped in paperbark and placed within a ring
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An ethical crisis in ancient DNA research: Insights from the Chaco Canyon controversy as a case study Journal of Social Archaeology (IF 1.257) Pub Date : 2021-03-03 Amanda Daniela Cortez, Deborah A Bolnick, George Nicholas, Jessica Bardill, Chip Colwell
In recent years, the field of paleogenomics has grown into an exciting and rapidly advancing area of scientific inquiry. However, scientific work in this field has far outpaced the discipline’s dialogue about research ethics. In particular, Indigenous peoples have argued that the paleogenomics revolution has produced a “vampire science” that perpetuates biocolonialist traditions of extracting Indigenous
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Conceptualizing histories of multispecies entanglements: Ancient pathogen genomics and the case of Borrelia recurrentis Journal of Social Archaeology (IF 1.257) Pub Date : 2021-02-24 Venla Oikkonen
This article explores the conceptual and cultural implications of using pathogen ancient DNA (aDNA) collected in archaeological contexts to understand the past. More specifically, it examines ancient pathogen genomics as a way of conceptualizing multispecies entanglements. The analysis focuses on the 2018 sequencing of Borrelia recurrentis bacteria retrieved from a medieval graveyard in Oslo, Norway
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Accurate depiction of uncertainty in ancient DNA research: The case of Neandertal ancestry in Africa Journal of Social Archaeology (IF 1.257) Pub Date : 2021-02-24 John Hawks
All approaches to understanding the past must work with limited data. Like many other kinds of evidence of past peoples, the relation between ancient DNA and past events is intermediated by complex models that bear many assumptions, some untested or untestable. Statements about the past from this evidence are thus accompanied by uncertainty, some quantified and some unquantifiable. Accurate communication
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The phantom Mausoleum: Contemporary local heritages of a wonder of the ancient world in Bodrum, Turkey Journal of Social Archaeology (IF 1.257) Pub Date : 2021-02-20 Troels Myrup Kristensen, Vinnie Nørskov, Gönül Bozoğlu
The Mausoleum of Halikarnassos (modern Bodrum, Turkey) is one of the wonders of the ancient world, although little remains above ground to give visitors a sense of its original grandeur. While previous scholarship has studied the Mausoleum’s place within the canon of classical Greek art, this paper identifies specifically local perceptions of the monument through interviews with residents of Bodrum
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Egypt’s dispersed heritage: Multi-directional storytelling through comic art Journal of Social Archaeology (IF 1.257) Pub Date : 2021-02-20 Heba Abd el-Gawad, Alice Stevenson
This paper responds to a need to address the colonial history of collections of Egyptian archaeology and to find new ways in which Egyptian audiences can assume greater agency in such a process. The ‘Egypt’s Dispersed Heritage’ project presents a model of engagement whereby foreign museum collections become the inspiration for Egyptians to express their own feelings about the removal of their heritage
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Introduction: Transcending the aDNA revolution Journal of Social Archaeology (IF 1.257) Pub Date : 2021-02-20 Anna Källén, Charlotte Mulcare, Andreas Nyblom, Daniel Strand
Rather than disempowering archaeologists, the contribution of ancient DNA has in fact been a liberating experience. Controversies that could never have been resolved solely using archaeological methods (or by DNA studies of present-day populations) have now been settled. (Spriggs and Reich, 2019: 634)
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Ancient human DNA: A history of hype (then and now) Journal of Social Archaeology (IF 1.257) Pub Date : 2021-02-18 Elizabeth D Jones, Elsbeth Bösl
In this article on the history of ancient DNA research, we argue that the innovation of next-generation sequencing (NGS) of the early 2000s has ushered in a second hype cycle much like the first hype cycle the field experienced in the 1990s with the advent of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR). While the first hype cycle centered around the search for the oldest DNA, the field’s current optimism today
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Itineraries, iconoclasm, and the pragmatics of heritage Journal of Social Archaeology (IF 1.257) Pub Date : 2020-11-01 Alexander A Bauer
Recent calls across the world for removing monuments to White supremacy have brought widespread attention to the power of images and the role of heritage in society. A more careful examination of heritage’s itineraries and pragmatics—its practical effects—is thus warranted. This paper interrogates the pragmatics of heritage in two ways. First, what are the discourses and rhetorics of heritage—how is
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Propinquity through dwelling: Living in evacuee properties after the Partition of India and Pakistan Journal of Social Archaeology (IF 1.257) Pub Date : 2020-09-02 Zahida Rehman Jatt, Erin P Riggs
How quickly can displaced peoples develop meaningful ties to new locations and what material forms facilitate such connections? In this paper, we provide a discussion of post-displacement topophilia (attachment to place). As a case study, we focus on the migration of the Sharif family who fled from India to Pakistan during the 1947 Partition. The Sharif family fundamentally lost their home and faced
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Changing how archaeology is done in Native American contexts: An Ndee (Apache) case study Journal of Social Archaeology (IF 1.257) Pub Date : 2020-07-27 Nicholas C Laluk
The White Mountain Apache Tribe Cultural Heritage Resource Best Management Practices (WMATCHRBMPs) present and delineate in guideline form cultural heritage resource definitions, management, and necessary steps before, during, and after project implementation for any ground-disturbing projects potentially adversely affecting cultural heritage resources on Ndee (Apache) trust lands. However, since the
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Metal detecting as a social formation: A longitudinal survey study from Finland Journal of Social Archaeology (IF 1.257) Pub Date : 2020-07-26 Visa Immonen, Joonas Kinnunen
The hobby of metal detecting has mostly been examined from the perspectives of archaeology and heritage administration. Although fulfilling archaeological needs, such an approach neglects the social analysis of this pastime. In 2019, we conducted a survey of metal detector enthusiasts and heritage professionals in Finland, the results of which are compared with those of a corresponding survey carried
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The time of the past: Exploring the rhythms of a pre-Hispanic urban settlement in the coastal Andes (AD 550–850) Journal of Social Archaeology (IF 1.257) Pub Date : 2020-07-22 Francesca Fernandini Parodi
As archaeologists we experience past time in the present, challenging linear time as we deal with the remains of different moments, events and people. This multi-scalar approach to time stimulates a flexible discussion of the past, understanding it not only in the absolute way provided by calendric dates, but also enmeshed within events and anchored by layers that were lived thousands of years ago
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Towards a Prosthetic Archaeology Journal of Social Archaeology (IF 1.257) Pub Date : 2020-07-06 Monika Stobiecka
Prosthetic archaeology is a theoretical proposal for a materially oriented digital practice. It is based on a critical approach to implementing the latest technologies in archaeology. Drawing from the philosophy of technology and prosthetic studies, this project offers a more critical and meaningful understanding of digital methods in archaeology. The main interpretative figure is the verb “to prostheticize
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Landscapes of movement on lowcountry rice plantations Journal of Social Archaeology (IF 1.257) Pub Date : 2020-06-29 Emily A Schwalbe
Navigable waterways were essential to European colonization of the South Carolina Lowcountry beginning in the late 17th century. Despite early attempts by colonial leaders to keep land grants within close proximity to Charleston, colonists quickly began to establish plantations where the land was amenable for commodity production and scattered throughout the region. Consequently, colonists and enslaved
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Producing legibility through ritual: The Inka expansion in Huarochirí (Lima, Peru) Journal of Social Archaeology (IF 1.257) Pub Date : 2020-04-22 Carla Hernández Garavito
This article builds a framework for the analysis of the Inka Empire’s (1400–1532 CE) expansion in the Peruvian highlands. Drawing from recent archaeological excavations at the site of Canchaje (Huarochirí), I propose that the Inka built upon cultural familiarities between them and their subjects by using ritual emplacements (rock outcrops and plazas) as arenas of mediation. At the same time, the construction
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Maya cartographies: Two maps of Punta Laguna, Yucatan, Mexico Journal of Social Archaeology (IF 1.257) Pub Date : 2020-04-06 Sarah Kurnick, David Rogoff
It is common to view maps as simple reflections of the world. Maps, however, are more complex and dynamic. They are a potent form of spatial imagination and a powerful means of producing space. This article encourages archaeologists to experiment with, and to produce a multiplicity of, maps and other spatial images. As an example, this article juxtaposes two previously unpublished maps of Punta Laguna
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Aboriginal rights and title for archaeologists: A history of archaeological evidence in Canadian litigation Journal of Social Archaeology (IF 1.257) Pub Date : 2020-03-31 Erin A Hogg, John R Welch
Archaeological evidence has been used to assess pre-contact occupation and use of land since the first modern Aboriginal title claim in Canada. Archaeology’s ability to alternately challenge, support, and add substantive spatial and temporal dimensions to oral histories and documentary histories makes it a crucial tool in the resolution of Aboriginal rights and title. This article assesses how archaeological
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Disassembling cattle and enskilling subjectivities: Butchering techniques and the emergence of new colonial subjects in Santiago de Guatemala Journal of Social Archaeology (IF 1.257) Pub Date : 2020-02-18 Nicolas Delsol
When they introduced cattle into Guatemala in the 16th century, Europeans also brought a whole new industry involving ranches, slaughterhouses, and new forms of labor. On the one hand, cattle producers had to treat the animals as intact living organisms requiring care and nurture to maintain and increase the herds. Those animals were grown by the ranchers for specific purposes. In the first place,
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Secret and safe: The underlife of concealed objects from the Royal Derwent Hospital, New Norfolk, Tasmania Journal of Social Archaeology (IF 1.257) Pub Date : 2020-02-11 Lauren Bryant, Heather Burke, Tracy Ireland, Lynley A Wallis, Chantal Wight
This paper focuses on a collection of objects deliberately concealed beneath the verandah of a ward for middle-class, female, paying patients at Australia’s longest continuously operating mental health institution, the Royal Derwent Hospital in Tasmania. Cached in small discrete mounds across an area of some 50 square metres, the collection was probably concealed in the mid-20th century and contains
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A bureaucracy of care in managing Hampi World Heritage Site Journal of Social Archaeology (IF 1.257) Pub Date : 2019-12-22 Krupa Rajangam
In this paper I examine the ‘heritage regime’ instituted at Hampi, Karnataka, India, consequent to its inscription as World Heritage, by analysing everyday material practices of conservation-management at the site through the lens of ‘care’. I argue that the regime is undoubtedly a bureaucracy as popularly imagined – but of care premised on knowledge and not of apathy. I suggest that various ongoing
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In the shadow of the Citadel: Haitian national patrimony and vernacular concerns Journal of Social Archaeology (IF 1.257) Pub Date : 2019-11-07 Pamela L Geller, Louis Herns Marcelin
A growing number of heritage studies scholars critique top-down approaches to cultural sites of global significance. International and state organizations, they explain, eschew locals’ concerns. We consider the Parc National Historique, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Haiti, Milot. Writers have produced a history that is hierarchical and nationalistic in ideological tone, which policy makers circulate
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The Islamic State’s destruction of Yezidi heritage: Responses, resilience and reconstruction after genocide Journal of Social Archaeology (IF 1.257) Pub Date : 2019-11-05 Benjamin Isakhan, Sofya Shahab
After conquering large swathes of northern Iraq, the Islamic State undertook an aggressive genocidal campaign against the Yezidi people in which they not only executed and enslaved thousands of innocent civilians, but also damaged or destroyed several key Yezidi temples and shrines. Drawing on a small sample of in-depth semi-structured interviews with Yezidi men and women from two regions conquered
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Understanding the significance of migrants’ material culture Journal of Social Archaeology (IF 1.257) Pub Date : 2019-10-10 Sarah Trabert
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
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Re-thinking communities: Collective identity and social experience in Iron-Age western Anatolia Journal of Social Archaeology (IF 1.257) Pub Date : 2019-09-16 Catherine Steidl
Reference to identity is ubiquitous in archaeology. Even when identity is not part of the questions driving research, assumptions about it affect interpretations of data; the terms used to designate individuals or collective groups carry implicit ideas about their identities. Default categories used to describe people, however, are often rooted in binary oppositions instead of the interactions that
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Active environments: Relational ontologies of landscape at the ancient Maya city of Aventura, Belize Journal of Social Archaeology (IF 1.257) Pub Date : 2019-09-05 Kacey C Grauer
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
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Exploring attitudes towards the archaeological past: Two case studies from majority Muslim communities in the Nile valley Journal of Social Archaeology (IF 1.257) Pub Date : 2019-08-13 Claudia Näser
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
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Toward a just and inclusive environmental archaeology of southwest Madagascar Journal of Social Archaeology (IF 1.257) Pub Date : 2019-07-18 Kristina Douglass, Eréndira Quintana Morales, George Manahira, Felicia Fenomanana, Roger Samba, Francois Lahiniriko, Zafy Maharesy Chrisostome, Voahirana Vavisoa, Patricia Soafiavy, Ricky Justome, Harson Leonce, Laurence Hubertine, Briand Venance Pierre, Carnah Tahirisoa, Christoph Sakisy Colomb, Fleurita Soamampionona Lovanirina, Vanillah Andriankaja, Rivo Robison
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