Session: #355

Content:

Since the beginnings of agriculture, societies based on their relation to the land have expanded and created a wide range of responses to the specific historical, geographical and cultural contexts. The aggressive expansion of modernity has led these societies towards a process of change that may result in their disappearance. Since the 1990s different social and political entities have increasingly sought to understand the effects that this process will have upon peasant societies worldwide. Although archaeology has functioned as a major tool for understanding (and colonizing) peasant societies, it has paid little attention to them as active agents in the transformation of social and political landscapes. On the contrary, they are commonly seen as passive subjects in a top-down perspective determined by the agency of the dominant classes or ecological phenomena. However, archaeology may function as an adequate framework to point out not only the inner dynamics of peasant societies, but also their capacity to actively interrelate with the landscape. How peasant societies materially express their agency? How does equality or inequality affect their social dynamics? How they interrelate with other social groups? This session will reflect on the possibilities and limits of an archaeology of peasant agency in the long duration, trying to connect case studies through time and space. This session welcomes papers dealing with: Critical theoretical approaches to peasant societies and agency; Social inequality within peasant societies and their relation with different social groups.

Session: #355

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