Theme:
Theories and methods in archaeological sciences
Session format:
Session, made up of a combination of papers, max. 15 minutes each
Title:
Boundary bodies: Critically thinking the body in contemporary (osteo)archaeology
Content:
The archaeological study of human remains has long suffered from a divide between scientific and cultural/embodied discourses with only a few explicit attempts to bridge it. In this session we propose to position the human body at the centre of this divide, as 'boundary bodies', and explore how scientific and theoretical propositions intersect on the territory of the body. This effort is articulated with a critical reflection on some of the latest scientific, theoretical or technical advances in the field of human remains research in (osteo)archeology. From a ‘DNA revolution’, to the digitisation of the dead, from advances in archaeothanatology to the appearance of new sub-disciplines, such as biohistory, our field has been lately marked by new questions and ethical and methodological concerns. Following on from some recent scholarship focused on the conditions of knowledge production on past human bodies (Crossland and Joyce 2015; Nillson Stutz 2016; Stojanowski and Duncan 2017), we aim to dismantle the illusion that this knowledge is a straightforward matter, and instead link it to the fields of ethics, law, heritage, and cultural anthropology.
We welcome thought-provoking contributions that critically engage with the archaeological body and its deposition context, and the impact of latest theoretical or methodological strands (e.g. from the challenges of biohistorical investigation, posthumanism, to the dead in the digital realm, the implications of hard sciences investigations, or the divide death/burial archaeology). This session will run together with the more practically inclined ‘Manipulated bodies: Case studies of post-mortem interactions with human remains’ session.
Keywords:
body, osteoarchaeology, theory, interpretation, ethics
Session associated with MERC:
no
Session associated with CIfA:
no
Session associated with SAfA:
no
Main organiser:
Dr Alexandra Ion (United Kingdom) 1
Co-organisers:
Dr Liv Nilsson Stutz (Sweden) 2
Affiliations:
1. McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge
2. Linnaeus University
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