Exploring Ontologies of the Precontact Americas

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 Paquim? 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.