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Introduction

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Bodies, Ontology, and Bioarchaeology

Part of the book series: Bioarchaeology and Social Theory ((BST))

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Abstract

This book explores an ontological approach to bioarchaeology. In adopting Karen Barad’s diffractive onto-epistemological approach, I consider how concepts shape the way we characterize lived experiences as relational situated encounters. I also draw on Deleuze’s notion of multiplicities to reimage an individual’s worldly encounters as immersed experiences. Rather than describing what a body is, immersed experiences portray how a body’s multiple on-going relationships characterize what it does. Viewed as configurations of processes and events, this diffractive approach identifies how crucial moments emerge as tipping points. To illustrate this approach, I draw on my earlier work at Arroyo Hondo Pueblo, a fourteenth century Ancestral Puebloan village. I explore how individuals were constituted as different kinds of persons, and how life at Arroyo Hondo was entangled with and experienced through the lens of Tewa cosmology.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Hooton’s, the Indians of Pecos published in 1930 that focused on racialized notions of craniometry is one of the few exceptions.

  2. 2.

    During the Arroyo Hondo excavations, Schwartz was aware of the numerous decorated kivas that had been unearth by Ellis at Sapawe. He expected to find a comparable number of decorated kivas at Arroyo Hondo and was surprised that relatively few kivas were built at this village, and that none had interior wall murals.

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  1. George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA

    Ann M. Palkovich

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Palkovich, A.M. (2024). Introduction. In: Bodies, Ontology, and Bioarchaeology. Bioarchaeology and Social Theory. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-56023-1_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-56023-1_1

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