Lewis is a neurodiverse author and academic. He is an assistant professor and the Horizon Chair of Native American History and Culture in the Department of Native American Studies at the University of Oklahoma. Methodologically, Lewis uses quantitative spatial and network approaches to analyze data from the material histories of past peoples. He then places these results within, and interprets them through, descendant histories and philosophies. His research examines both how rebellion, revolutions, and social movements are often missed or erased by archaeologists even as they transformed societies and how modern politics and ideologies shape how we write history. In addition to his peer reviewed works, he has written for periodicals like the Huffington Post, Yes! Magazine, Sapiens, Culturico, and The Conversation and regularly appears on public lecture series and podcasts.
Power from Below in Ancient Societies: The Dynamics of Political Complexity in the Archaeological Record, Nov 2021
One of the great tragedies of global archaeology is that the discipline was started by Europeans ... more One of the great tragedies of global archaeology is that the discipline was started by Europeans entrenched in the ideological detritus of attempts to author legitimacy for their expanding empires through their assumed cultural connections with the so-called Classical societies in and around the Mediterranean. Because of this, we continue to explain movements away from centralization and aggregation of power as anomalies, or collapses, or natural reactions to environmental change. Using social movement theories within a framework of contentious politics, we start to answer one of archaeology's big what-ifs: What if "collapses" were the result of widespread, intentional actions to create change? To do so, we investigate how local communities reacted to the spread of a new ideology that archaeologists call the Salado Phenomenon. We address how tensions stretching across political, social, and religious spheres created a pattern observed in the archaeological record that has previously been interpreted as a religious cult. We discuss how this pattern relates to acts of resistance and why these acts demonstrate that the Salado Phenomenon represents the remains of a spatially and culturally dispersed religious social movement that burst across the southern Southwest, aimed at contesting the centralization of power by regional elites and councils during the Hohokam Classic period (AD 1100/1200-1450). Using fissures in the ideo-political landscape of the Greater Southwest to contextualize this movement, we argue this religious social movement formed, and was successful, because it contested and eventually dispersed, in the mid 14th to mid 15th centuries, the centralization of power that happened during previous ideo-political developments in the southern Southwest. Collapses, we argue, should always be investigated first from a position that assumes that communities rejected power aggregation.
Journal of Computer Applications in Archaeology, 2020
A common problem when classifying archaeological objects is a potential cultural bias of the pers... more A common problem when classifying archaeological objects is a potential cultural bias of the person deciding on the classification system. These are existing concerns within archaeology and anthropology and have previously been discussed as an emic/etic divide, “folk” classifications, or objective versus subjective approaches. But who gets to decide what is objective is often a subjective endeavour. To examine if and how cultural perceptions bias classification systems, we use methods from the field of cultural domain analysis to quantify differences in perception of ceramic sherds between different groups of people, specifically archaeologists and Indigenous and non-Indigenous potters. For this study, we asked participants to arrange a set of 30 archaeological sherds on a canvas, then interviewed them following each sorting exercise. A geosocial analysis of the arrangements in this pilot study suggests that there are substantial differences in the criteria by which the sherds are sorted between the groups. In particular, the arrangements by the Indigenous potters showed a greater diversity in the selection of underlying attributes. Understanding our different perceptions towards the material we use to construct history is the first step towards approaching what feminists have called a strong objectivity and thus a less fraught and more culturally inclusive discipline.
Archaeology is a process for, at minimum, constructing history from the material record. The deci... more Archaeology is a process for, at minimum, constructing history from the material record. The decisions about what to use to create that history is unavoidably political. This political act primarily serves to construct and enforce the power of the state, although it can be used to contest it. Prefiguration, emerging from anarchist theory and parallel social movements, can be understood not simply as a radical practice, but also as an understanding of how history is created. Thus, it can be used to explain how history is constructed from past and contemporary archaeological decisions, as well as what sociopolitical organizations that future history will naturalize.
Life Beyond the Boundaries: Constructing Identity in Edge Regions of the North American Southwest, 2018
In a recent interview with the Chicago Tribune (Trice 2014), while discussing how modern Native A... more In a recent interview with the Chicago Tribune (Trice 2014), while discussing how modern Native Americans have become culturally invisible in the United States, indigenous rapper Frank Waln stated “we’re a people with a past, not of the past.” This is a process he calls “symbolic annihilation.” In many ways, the Gallina invert Waln’s sentence. They were a people of the past but without a past. By purposely removing objects that referenced their place-based past, they removed their recent history to focus more fully on the period of the distant past (Basketmaker II) that was their atavistic ideal. They simultaneously removed themselves from history while wrapping themselves in their own version of the past. For this chapter, then, to reverse the standard archaeological gaze and view the Gallina as active producers and not just recipients of history, I used geosocial networks and architectural patterning to explore potential patterns in the archaeological record through the lens of social movements. The case study was conducted at the community level. The community data were synthesized in a bottom-up, diachronic, and cross-regional inquiry into the use of space and use of markers of place within and between Gallina communities. Thus, the Gallina are viewed as part of a historical continuum instead of merely within a spatially restricted culture area. From this perspective, they become much more than a culturally impoverished group that was pushed into poor resource areas at the margins of more demographically dense, culturally rich groups. Instead, when the non-local ceramics found in some Gallina households are interpreted as remnants of largely forgotten inscribed memory, they become a people with varied histories who chose to reject the northern Southwest’s changing social landscape by systematically removing their place-based connections to that history and then reworking their political and ideological world.
By taking a diachronic and network perspective, the Gallina become a people who chose their way in their world. Specifically, they decided to step out of a cultural and ideological trajectory diametrically opposed to their ideas on how life should be organized. Once socially and historically situated, the Gallina highlands look more like a place of refuge for people who were rebelling against political and religious changes in the northern Southwest than an area populated by simple folk unable to keep pace with their rapidly changing neighbors. The Gallina region suddenly becomes a much more complicated place—a diverse collection of people dedicated to creating a new community at the edges of their previous world, one with clear material connections to antecedent regional groups (see Simpson 2016) but with new architectural and artifactual forms (i.e., tri-notched axes and pointed-bottom vessels). However, they are not a hybrid group like the colonial resistors Homi K. Bhabha (1994) was describing when he redefined hybridity. Instead, as a product of their atavistic movement, they become hybrids through time. By appropriating the past for their own intentions, they become rebels in their present—pioneers of a future history.
Foreign Objects: Rethinking Indigenous Consumption in American Archaeology
"To play with a tired phrase, pots are not people, but they are choices." Borck and Mills 2017:30... more "To play with a tired phrase, pots are not people, but they are choices." Borck and Mills 2017:30 In Foreign Objects: Rethinking Indigenous Consumption in American Archaeology, edited by Craig N. Cipolla, pp. 29–43. University of Arizona Press, Tucson.
KIVA: Journal of Southwestern Anthropology and History , 2017
Archaeological research on the Gallina (AD 1100–1300) inhabitants of the region west of the Rio C... more Archaeological research on the Gallina (AD 1100–1300) inhabitants of the region west of the Rio Chama and centered on the Llaves valley has focused on constructing a culture history and examining functional characteristics of artifacts and architecture. Limited research has attempted to understand who the residents of the Gallina heartland were. In this article, using new findings and historical contexts, we argue that the Gallina people had a complicated identity forged around resistance and a deep connection to their past. To better understand them we need to move past previous binary categories used to describe them and perceive them not as isolated or connected, aggressors or victims, traditionalists or innovators, but as an intersectional mix of these axes of identity. Moreover, the process-oriented discussion of ethnogenesis can be problematic. Instead it might be best to think of Gallina social identity as one of being, instead of becoming, because for them identity was not a process, it was a position, although one variably shifting along intersecting axes of identity—it was not static. Just as critically, becoming is a category of hierarchical power in some Indigenous communities in the Southwest.
The theory of anarchism primarily concerns the
organization of society in a way that fosters egal... more The theory of anarchism primarily concerns the organization of society in a way that fosters egal- itarian or equitable forms of association and coop- eration and resists all forms of domination. An anarchist perspective involves an awareness of, and critique of, how power is implemented through social relations, whether positively as in collaborative acts of mutual aid to common goals or negatively as in assertions of authoritarian power contrary to the interests of the community as a whole. As a theory concerning power and social relations, archaeologists apply anarchism for analyses of past societies, to interpret and evaluate forms of egalitarian or hierarchical rela- tions, modes of domination or resistance, and expressions of control or autonomy. Moreover, it is not just for considering the past, but the theory can be applied to contemporary social arrange- ments concerning archaeology in multiple ways: how archaeologists organize themselves for research teams and field crews, involve local or descendant communities, or relate to the various publics concerning heritage. Anarchism has had an increasing influence upon archaeology in recent years, just as the theory has influenced other disciplines throughout the social sciences and humanities.
This dissertation uses a relational approach and a contentious politics framework to examine the ... more This dissertation uses a relational approach and a contentious politics framework to examine the archaeological record. Methodologically, it merges spatial and social network analyses to promote a geosocial archaeology. The articles create a counter-narrative to environmentally and economically focused investigations that can fail to explain how and why societies in the Southwest often reorganize horizontally. The first article uses geosocial networks, which I argue represent memory maps, to reveal that people in the Gallina region during A.D. 1100 ̶ 1300 employed the socially important, and sophisticated, act of forgetting. A community level, settlement pattern analysis demonstrates similarities between the arrangement of Gallina and Basketmaker-era settlements. These historically situated settlement structures, combined with acts of forgetting, were used by Gallina region residents to institute and maintain a horizontally organized social movement that was likely aimed at rejecting the hierarchical social changes in the Four Corners region. The second article proposes that as ideologically charged material goods are consumed, fissures within past ideological landscapes are exposed and that these fissures can reveal acts of resistance in the archaeological past. It also contends that social and environmental variables need to be combined for these acts of resistance to be correctly interpreted. The third article applies many of the ideas outlined in the second article to a case study in the Greater Southwest during A.D. 1200–1450. Fractures in the ideological landscape demonstrate that the Salado Phenomenon was a religious social movement formed around, and successful because of, its populist nature. Based on variations in how the Salado ideology interacted with contemporaneous hierarchical and non-hierarchical religious and political organizations it is probable that the Salado social movement formed around desires for the open access to religious knowledge.
Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, Mar 1, 2015
Archaeologists have regarded social networks as both the links through which people transmitted i... more Archaeologists have regarded social networks as both the links through which people transmitted information and goods as well as a form of social storage creating relationships that could be drawn upon in times of subsistence shortfalls or other deleterious environmental conditions. In this article, formal social network analytical (SNA) methods are applied to archaeological data from the late pre-Hispanic North American Southwest to look at what kinds of social networks characterized those regions that were the most enduring versus those that were depopulated over a 250-year period (A.D. 1200–1450). In that time, large areas of the Southwest were no longer used for residential purposes, some of which corresponds with well-documented region-wide drought. Past research has demonstrated that some population levels could have been maintained in these regions, yet regional scale depopulation occurred. We look at the degree to which the network level property of embeddedness, along with population size, can help to explain why some regions were depopulated and others were not. SNA can help archaeologists examine why emigration occurred in some areas following an environmental crisis while other areas continued to be inhabited and even received migrants. Moreover, we modify SNA techniques to take full advantage of the time depth and spatial and demographic variability of our archaeological data set. The results of this study should be of interest to those who seek to understand human responses to past, present, and future worldwide catastrophes since it is now widely recognized that responses to major human disasters, such as hurricanes, were “likely to be shaped by pre-existing or new social networks” (as reported by Suter et al. (Research and Policy Review 28:1–10, 2009)).
KIVA: Journal of Southwestern Anthropology and History, 2017
Many of these frontier and borderland zones in the Greater American Southwest—these non-places—ar... more Many of these frontier and borderland zones in the Greater American Southwest—these non-places—are often non-hierarchical, or at least less hierarchical than many areas in the Chacoan World. Some of these non-places even prefer a more traditional style of architecture. Places like the crater houses around Chimney Rock (Chuipka 2011), the Gallina, the Valdez Phase near Taos (Boyer 1997; Fowles 2010), and Homol’ovi Pueblo III pithouse communities (Barker and Young 2017) often get labeled as “Out-of-Phase,” as though they failed to predict the eventual rise of the Pecos Classification System or the Northern Rio Grande Sequence. This highlights one of the major underlying processes for the construction of “sexy,” the construction of archaeological popularity, in archaeology. Things that look more like us, get more attention. And in the US Southwest at least, hierarchy is sexy (Borck under review).
In the Gallina district, it is still unclear whether the violence originated with domestic (i.e. ... more In the Gallina district, it is still unclear whether the violence originated with domestic (i.e. local) or foreign agents. This analysis will begin with a brief review of the relevant archaeology of the Gallina area. Following this, I set out to understand who the aggressors might be in this region by employing macroregional spatial analyses in two different case studies. Spatial analysis is ideal for understanding the source of violence in a region. For one, it is applicable at various scales. This is especially important in determining violence between local groups versus violence across a regional landscape. It is only by understanding the spatial patterns of violence that researchers can comprehensively demonstrate the difference between local versus regional, internal versus external patterns.
The Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology, 2020
The Caribbean Sea was a conduit for human mobility and the exchange of goods and ideas during the... more The Caribbean Sea was a conduit for human mobility and the exchange of goods and ideas during the whole of its pre-colonial history. The period cal. AD 1000-1800, covering the Late Ceramic Age and early colonial era, represents an archaeologically understudied time during which the Lesser Antilles came under increasing influence from the Greater Antilles and coastal South America and participated in the last phase of indigenous resistance to colonial powers. This article summarizes the results of the Island Network project, supported by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) in which a multi-disciplinary set of archaeological, archaeometric, geochemical, GIS, and network science methods and techniques have been employed to disentangle this turbulent era in regional and global history. These diverse approaches reveal and then explore multi-layered networks of objects and people and uncover how Lesser Antillean communities were created and transformed through teaching, trade, migration, movement, and exchange of goods and knowledge.
Based on areas where Salado religion flourished (areas in which nearly every household within a s... more Based on areas where Salado religion flourished (areas in which nearly every household within a settlement had Salado pottery) and areas where people rejected it, Salado appears to have been a political movement as well as a religious movement. This movement formed in the most intense areas of immigrant and local interaction. And its message, aimed at marginalized groups regardless of ethnic background, contested elites’ control of ideology associated with platform mounds. Salado was most successful in areas where social inequality was relatively high, because it replaced unequal access to religious and political power with a more equitable distribution, one that harkened back to earlier times in Hohokam history, such as the ballcourt era.
Archaeologists reconstruct the activities and
interactions of individuals using the accumulated
m... more Archaeologists reconstruct the activities and interactions of individuals using the accumulated material culture of the past, yet detecting these interactions can be difficult using traditional archaeological analytical tools. The development of a methodological framework emerging from graph theory, coupled with the growth of computational power and a growing multidisciplinary theoretical framework aimed at interpreting these analyses, have eased the difficulties of uncovering, analyzing, and interpreting networks in the past. From examining physical locations of sites and how they interact together (Peregrine 1991) to examining trade routes and migration pathways (Hofman et al. 2018), and the exchange of ideas across time and space (Mills et al. 2013), network approaches have infiltrated archaeology and grown exponentially in published studies (Brughmans 2013; Mills 2017).
Power from Below in Ancient Societies: The Dynamics of Political Complexity in the Archaeological Record, Nov 2021
One of the great tragedies of global archaeology is that the discipline was started by Europeans ... more One of the great tragedies of global archaeology is that the discipline was started by Europeans entrenched in the ideological detritus of attempts to author legitimacy for their expanding empires through their assumed cultural connections with the so-called Classical societies in and around the Mediterranean. Because of this, we continue to explain movements away from centralization and aggregation of power as anomalies, or collapses, or natural reactions to environmental change. Using social movement theories within a framework of contentious politics, we start to answer one of archaeology's big what-ifs: What if "collapses" were the result of widespread, intentional actions to create change? To do so, we investigate how local communities reacted to the spread of a new ideology that archaeologists call the Salado Phenomenon. We address how tensions stretching across political, social, and religious spheres created a pattern observed in the archaeological record that has previously been interpreted as a religious cult. We discuss how this pattern relates to acts of resistance and why these acts demonstrate that the Salado Phenomenon represents the remains of a spatially and culturally dispersed religious social movement that burst across the southern Southwest, aimed at contesting the centralization of power by regional elites and councils during the Hohokam Classic period (AD 1100/1200-1450). Using fissures in the ideo-political landscape of the Greater Southwest to contextualize this movement, we argue this religious social movement formed, and was successful, because it contested and eventually dispersed, in the mid 14th to mid 15th centuries, the centralization of power that happened during previous ideo-political developments in the southern Southwest. Collapses, we argue, should always be investigated first from a position that assumes that communities rejected power aggregation.
Journal of Computer Applications in Archaeology, 2020
A common problem when classifying archaeological objects is a potential cultural bias of the pers... more A common problem when classifying archaeological objects is a potential cultural bias of the person deciding on the classification system. These are existing concerns within archaeology and anthropology and have previously been discussed as an emic/etic divide, “folk” classifications, or objective versus subjective approaches. But who gets to decide what is objective is often a subjective endeavour. To examine if and how cultural perceptions bias classification systems, we use methods from the field of cultural domain analysis to quantify differences in perception of ceramic sherds between different groups of people, specifically archaeologists and Indigenous and non-Indigenous potters. For this study, we asked participants to arrange a set of 30 archaeological sherds on a canvas, then interviewed them following each sorting exercise. A geosocial analysis of the arrangements in this pilot study suggests that there are substantial differences in the criteria by which the sherds are sorted between the groups. In particular, the arrangements by the Indigenous potters showed a greater diversity in the selection of underlying attributes. Understanding our different perceptions towards the material we use to construct history is the first step towards approaching what feminists have called a strong objectivity and thus a less fraught and more culturally inclusive discipline.
Archaeology is a process for, at minimum, constructing history from the material record. The deci... more Archaeology is a process for, at minimum, constructing history from the material record. The decisions about what to use to create that history is unavoidably political. This political act primarily serves to construct and enforce the power of the state, although it can be used to contest it. Prefiguration, emerging from anarchist theory and parallel social movements, can be understood not simply as a radical practice, but also as an understanding of how history is created. Thus, it can be used to explain how history is constructed from past and contemporary archaeological decisions, as well as what sociopolitical organizations that future history will naturalize.
Life Beyond the Boundaries: Constructing Identity in Edge Regions of the North American Southwest, 2018
In a recent interview with the Chicago Tribune (Trice 2014), while discussing how modern Native A... more In a recent interview with the Chicago Tribune (Trice 2014), while discussing how modern Native Americans have become culturally invisible in the United States, indigenous rapper Frank Waln stated “we’re a people with a past, not of the past.” This is a process he calls “symbolic annihilation.” In many ways, the Gallina invert Waln’s sentence. They were a people of the past but without a past. By purposely removing objects that referenced their place-based past, they removed their recent history to focus more fully on the period of the distant past (Basketmaker II) that was their atavistic ideal. They simultaneously removed themselves from history while wrapping themselves in their own version of the past. For this chapter, then, to reverse the standard archaeological gaze and view the Gallina as active producers and not just recipients of history, I used geosocial networks and architectural patterning to explore potential patterns in the archaeological record through the lens of social movements. The case study was conducted at the community level. The community data were synthesized in a bottom-up, diachronic, and cross-regional inquiry into the use of space and use of markers of place within and between Gallina communities. Thus, the Gallina are viewed as part of a historical continuum instead of merely within a spatially restricted culture area. From this perspective, they become much more than a culturally impoverished group that was pushed into poor resource areas at the margins of more demographically dense, culturally rich groups. Instead, when the non-local ceramics found in some Gallina households are interpreted as remnants of largely forgotten inscribed memory, they become a people with varied histories who chose to reject the northern Southwest’s changing social landscape by systematically removing their place-based connections to that history and then reworking their political and ideological world.
By taking a diachronic and network perspective, the Gallina become a people who chose their way in their world. Specifically, they decided to step out of a cultural and ideological trajectory diametrically opposed to their ideas on how life should be organized. Once socially and historically situated, the Gallina highlands look more like a place of refuge for people who were rebelling against political and religious changes in the northern Southwest than an area populated by simple folk unable to keep pace with their rapidly changing neighbors. The Gallina region suddenly becomes a much more complicated place—a diverse collection of people dedicated to creating a new community at the edges of their previous world, one with clear material connections to antecedent regional groups (see Simpson 2016) but with new architectural and artifactual forms (i.e., tri-notched axes and pointed-bottom vessels). However, they are not a hybrid group like the colonial resistors Homi K. Bhabha (1994) was describing when he redefined hybridity. Instead, as a product of their atavistic movement, they become hybrids through time. By appropriating the past for their own intentions, they become rebels in their present—pioneers of a future history.
Foreign Objects: Rethinking Indigenous Consumption in American Archaeology
"To play with a tired phrase, pots are not people, but they are choices." Borck and Mills 2017:30... more "To play with a tired phrase, pots are not people, but they are choices." Borck and Mills 2017:30 In Foreign Objects: Rethinking Indigenous Consumption in American Archaeology, edited by Craig N. Cipolla, pp. 29–43. University of Arizona Press, Tucson.
KIVA: Journal of Southwestern Anthropology and History , 2017
Archaeological research on the Gallina (AD 1100–1300) inhabitants of the region west of the Rio C... more Archaeological research on the Gallina (AD 1100–1300) inhabitants of the region west of the Rio Chama and centered on the Llaves valley has focused on constructing a culture history and examining functional characteristics of artifacts and architecture. Limited research has attempted to understand who the residents of the Gallina heartland were. In this article, using new findings and historical contexts, we argue that the Gallina people had a complicated identity forged around resistance and a deep connection to their past. To better understand them we need to move past previous binary categories used to describe them and perceive them not as isolated or connected, aggressors or victims, traditionalists or innovators, but as an intersectional mix of these axes of identity. Moreover, the process-oriented discussion of ethnogenesis can be problematic. Instead it might be best to think of Gallina social identity as one of being, instead of becoming, because for them identity was not a process, it was a position, although one variably shifting along intersecting axes of identity—it was not static. Just as critically, becoming is a category of hierarchical power in some Indigenous communities in the Southwest.
The theory of anarchism primarily concerns the
organization of society in a way that fosters egal... more The theory of anarchism primarily concerns the organization of society in a way that fosters egal- itarian or equitable forms of association and coop- eration and resists all forms of domination. An anarchist perspective involves an awareness of, and critique of, how power is implemented through social relations, whether positively as in collaborative acts of mutual aid to common goals or negatively as in assertions of authoritarian power contrary to the interests of the community as a whole. As a theory concerning power and social relations, archaeologists apply anarchism for analyses of past societies, to interpret and evaluate forms of egalitarian or hierarchical rela- tions, modes of domination or resistance, and expressions of control or autonomy. Moreover, it is not just for considering the past, but the theory can be applied to contemporary social arrange- ments concerning archaeology in multiple ways: how archaeologists organize themselves for research teams and field crews, involve local or descendant communities, or relate to the various publics concerning heritage. Anarchism has had an increasing influence upon archaeology in recent years, just as the theory has influenced other disciplines throughout the social sciences and humanities.
This dissertation uses a relational approach and a contentious politics framework to examine the ... more This dissertation uses a relational approach and a contentious politics framework to examine the archaeological record. Methodologically, it merges spatial and social network analyses to promote a geosocial archaeology. The articles create a counter-narrative to environmentally and economically focused investigations that can fail to explain how and why societies in the Southwest often reorganize horizontally. The first article uses geosocial networks, which I argue represent memory maps, to reveal that people in the Gallina region during A.D. 1100 ̶ 1300 employed the socially important, and sophisticated, act of forgetting. A community level, settlement pattern analysis demonstrates similarities between the arrangement of Gallina and Basketmaker-era settlements. These historically situated settlement structures, combined with acts of forgetting, were used by Gallina region residents to institute and maintain a horizontally organized social movement that was likely aimed at rejecting the hierarchical social changes in the Four Corners region. The second article proposes that as ideologically charged material goods are consumed, fissures within past ideological landscapes are exposed and that these fissures can reveal acts of resistance in the archaeological past. It also contends that social and environmental variables need to be combined for these acts of resistance to be correctly interpreted. The third article applies many of the ideas outlined in the second article to a case study in the Greater Southwest during A.D. 1200–1450. Fractures in the ideological landscape demonstrate that the Salado Phenomenon was a religious social movement formed around, and successful because of, its populist nature. Based on variations in how the Salado ideology interacted with contemporaneous hierarchical and non-hierarchical religious and political organizations it is probable that the Salado social movement formed around desires for the open access to religious knowledge.
Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, Mar 1, 2015
Archaeologists have regarded social networks as both the links through which people transmitted i... more Archaeologists have regarded social networks as both the links through which people transmitted information and goods as well as a form of social storage creating relationships that could be drawn upon in times of subsistence shortfalls or other deleterious environmental conditions. In this article, formal social network analytical (SNA) methods are applied to archaeological data from the late pre-Hispanic North American Southwest to look at what kinds of social networks characterized those regions that were the most enduring versus those that were depopulated over a 250-year period (A.D. 1200–1450). In that time, large areas of the Southwest were no longer used for residential purposes, some of which corresponds with well-documented region-wide drought. Past research has demonstrated that some population levels could have been maintained in these regions, yet regional scale depopulation occurred. We look at the degree to which the network level property of embeddedness, along with population size, can help to explain why some regions were depopulated and others were not. SNA can help archaeologists examine why emigration occurred in some areas following an environmental crisis while other areas continued to be inhabited and even received migrants. Moreover, we modify SNA techniques to take full advantage of the time depth and spatial and demographic variability of our archaeological data set. The results of this study should be of interest to those who seek to understand human responses to past, present, and future worldwide catastrophes since it is now widely recognized that responses to major human disasters, such as hurricanes, were “likely to be shaped by pre-existing or new social networks” (as reported by Suter et al. (Research and Policy Review 28:1–10, 2009)).
KIVA: Journal of Southwestern Anthropology and History, 2017
Many of these frontier and borderland zones in the Greater American Southwest—these non-places—ar... more Many of these frontier and borderland zones in the Greater American Southwest—these non-places—are often non-hierarchical, or at least less hierarchical than many areas in the Chacoan World. Some of these non-places even prefer a more traditional style of architecture. Places like the crater houses around Chimney Rock (Chuipka 2011), the Gallina, the Valdez Phase near Taos (Boyer 1997; Fowles 2010), and Homol’ovi Pueblo III pithouse communities (Barker and Young 2017) often get labeled as “Out-of-Phase,” as though they failed to predict the eventual rise of the Pecos Classification System or the Northern Rio Grande Sequence. This highlights one of the major underlying processes for the construction of “sexy,” the construction of archaeological popularity, in archaeology. Things that look more like us, get more attention. And in the US Southwest at least, hierarchy is sexy (Borck under review).
In the Gallina district, it is still unclear whether the violence originated with domestic (i.e. ... more In the Gallina district, it is still unclear whether the violence originated with domestic (i.e. local) or foreign agents. This analysis will begin with a brief review of the relevant archaeology of the Gallina area. Following this, I set out to understand who the aggressors might be in this region by employing macroregional spatial analyses in two different case studies. Spatial analysis is ideal for understanding the source of violence in a region. For one, it is applicable at various scales. This is especially important in determining violence between local groups versus violence across a regional landscape. It is only by understanding the spatial patterns of violence that researchers can comprehensively demonstrate the difference between local versus regional, internal versus external patterns.
The Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology, 2020
The Caribbean Sea was a conduit for human mobility and the exchange of goods and ideas during the... more The Caribbean Sea was a conduit for human mobility and the exchange of goods and ideas during the whole of its pre-colonial history. The period cal. AD 1000-1800, covering the Late Ceramic Age and early colonial era, represents an archaeologically understudied time during which the Lesser Antilles came under increasing influence from the Greater Antilles and coastal South America and participated in the last phase of indigenous resistance to colonial powers. This article summarizes the results of the Island Network project, supported by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) in which a multi-disciplinary set of archaeological, archaeometric, geochemical, GIS, and network science methods and techniques have been employed to disentangle this turbulent era in regional and global history. These diverse approaches reveal and then explore multi-layered networks of objects and people and uncover how Lesser Antillean communities were created and transformed through teaching, trade, migration, movement, and exchange of goods and knowledge.
Based on areas where Salado religion flourished (areas in which nearly every household within a s... more Based on areas where Salado religion flourished (areas in which nearly every household within a settlement had Salado pottery) and areas where people rejected it, Salado appears to have been a political movement as well as a religious movement. This movement formed in the most intense areas of immigrant and local interaction. And its message, aimed at marginalized groups regardless of ethnic background, contested elites’ control of ideology associated with platform mounds. Salado was most successful in areas where social inequality was relatively high, because it replaced unequal access to religious and political power with a more equitable distribution, one that harkened back to earlier times in Hohokam history, such as the ballcourt era.
Archaeologists reconstruct the activities and
interactions of individuals using the accumulated
m... more Archaeologists reconstruct the activities and interactions of individuals using the accumulated material culture of the past, yet detecting these interactions can be difficult using traditional archaeological analytical tools. The development of a methodological framework emerging from graph theory, coupled with the growth of computational power and a growing multidisciplinary theoretical framework aimed at interpreting these analyses, have eased the difficulties of uncovering, analyzing, and interpreting networks in the past. From examining physical locations of sites and how they interact together (Peregrine 1991) to examining trade routes and migration pathways (Hofman et al. 2018), and the exchange of ideas across time and space (Mills et al. 2013), network approaches have infiltrated archaeology and grown exponentially in published studies (Brughmans 2013; Mills 2017).
The headline is the market. If you are going to use a misleading title to purposely draw in reade... more The headline is the market. If you are going to use a misleading title to purposely draw in readers and educate them, the reality is that you are actually misinforming 60 percent of the people interacting with your story. So right from the start, you’re already doing more miseducation than education. It’s also probably a larger miseducation impact than this as well since the study only accounted for “shares” and not people who saw the post on social media and didn’t share it.
This damage doesn’t stop with miseducation. For example, take headlines relating to archaeology in the Americas. There is a culturally constructed emotional value attached to most words that forms a cognitive shortcut for how we think. For some words, this emotional value is pretty minimal. For others, it draws on powerful cultural constructs to create a strong response. As noted above, mystery is one such word that has this strong emotional response. Others, in the U.S. at least, include travel and exploration and discovery. These myths of discovery and exploration are particularly damaging because they paint a picture where Indigenous groups are not able caretakers of their own histories and landscapes. Headlines that promote this contribute to the erasure of modern Indigenous connections to landscapes by denying what descendant communities and researchers know, as well as what they are capable of knowing. This has huge implications for Indigenous management of their traditional lands. most U.S. citizens learn about modern Indigenous groups through the media and pop culture. So these sensational headlines disconnect Indigenous communities from their history in the public arena. This historical disconnection erases the presence of Indigenous groups from the public consciousness. According to a recent study by Reclaiming Native Truth, potentially 40 percent of the American population think that Native Americans no longer exist. This invisibility means that support for Indigenous struggles faces a steep uphill battle.
El Colectivo Cucharín Negro: Llegamos al anarquismo y la arqueología desde muchos lugares, y por ... more El Colectivo Cucharín Negro: Llegamos al anarquismo y la arqueología desde muchos lugares, y por variadas razones. La mayor parte de este documento se origina en una conversación iniciada en la Amerind Foundation en Abril de 2016 (hecho posible gracias a una colaboración de la Wenner-Gren Foundation), donde comenzamos a poner los ‘tiestos’ de una arqueología anarquista en un marco coherente. Desde allí, muchos de nosotros continuamos trabajando juntos en éste y otros proyectos relacionados a la arqueología anarquista, mientras nuestro círculo se fue ampliando tanto como los proyectos involucrados. Te invitamos a unirte, o seguir el trabajo que estamos haciendo en http://www.anarchaeology.org/site-forum/.
Many people feel that taking artifacts from archaeological sites, whether public or private, is f... more Many people feel that taking artifacts from archaeological sites, whether public or private, is fine. These views are intertwined with the overwhelming invisibility contemporary Native Americans have within popular and political American conversations.The editorial is built around a possible instance of cultural theft that occurred on an archaeological site located on private property in New Mexico. The supposed perpetrators were the cast and crew of the 2nd Maze Runner movie as reported during a televised interview with the movie's star, Dylan O'Brien.
"[Creepyting’s] paintings produced an entirely different message than what many of her supporters... more "[Creepyting’s] paintings produced an entirely different message than what many of her supporters claimed when they linked her with urban street art. Nocket’s work, and the art of all vandals of national parks and other public spaces who come from privilege, is art with a message of entitlement—of mine, not yours, of me, not you. If street art is a form of activism against oppression, inverting those messages makes art that is a form of repression. It signals that control of social spaces—that power—belongs only to a select few."
Abstract: Since the early 20th century when the anarchist geographer Kropotkin used mutual aid an... more Abstract: Since the early 20th century when the anarchist geographer Kropotkin used mutual aid and cooperation to challenge the social Darwinist view of community as a staging ground for fierce interpersonal competition, social scientists have approached community as a way to organize groups outside of the restrictions and inequalities that can emerge with the inception of formal laws. This precedes later arguments by researchers such as Tonnies who argued that communities “rest in the consciousness of belonging together and the affirmation of the condition of mutual dependence” (Tonnies 1925:69). Yet while formal community studies have fallen out of favor, the last 20 years have seen a resurgence in research on how social, political, and environmental climates weave individuals together into communities of almost infinite variety. These new studies emphasize the constructed and longitudinal nature of the physical and social worlds within and between communities and push for an improved understanding of how these worlds, and the researchers themselves, create and impact the communities we study. Too often researchers fail to explore the ways in which power is negotiated within this dynamic framework. This failure can reify the divide between egalitarian and hierarchical modes of social organization, while neglecting alternative power structures, the possibility for modes in between, or the flexibility of choices on a continuum between these two extremes. This less dynamic framework is present in the often criticized, but still prominent and persistent evolutionary framework that positions simple communities against more complex social forms. The participants in this roundtable explore how power and relationships are negotiated within communities through anarchist, Indigenous, egalitarian, heterarchical, feminist, and/or queer (among many others) perspectives. These foci do not center inequality or hierarchy as a driving component of community but rather highlight the ways in which community-making can provide creative alternatives to this long-standing dichotomy. Organized by Sarah Rowe and Lewis Borck
Nearly 20 years ago, Bender, Winner and their collaborators rattled landscape studies with their ... more Nearly 20 years ago, Bender, Winner and their collaborators rattled landscape studies with their book on Contested Landscapes. This formative volume emphasized the non-static, dialogic nature of landscape within a community and acknowledged that the ways that different communities construct, view, and use the landscape can lead to tensions, and even violence. It highlighted the relevance of considering movement, borders, exile, and conflict to understand how people create and reshape their own landscapes. During political conflicts, like colonization and war, people are forced to respond to new politics and hierarchies (sometimes even anarchies) as their personal and communal understanding of the world is deeply transformed through struggle; something visible even today as political tensions constantly reshape local and global landscapes. Perhaps more importantly, understanding the creation and contestation of landscapes in the past is essential for understanding political, economic and cultural manifestations in the present to better organize ourselves for a truly just future. This session brings together researchers whose clear political and theoretical perspectives have led them to explore how conflict laden contexts shape and reshape landscapes during different historical eras around the world.
If you are interested, we’re having a digital “unconference” component to the Anarchy and Archaeo... more If you are interested, we’re having a digital “unconference” component to the Anarchy and Archaeology workshop later this week. This draft is the flyer for that workshop. You’ll be able to follow along and participate on twitter with #anarchaeology2016. There are activists, geographers, and material culture studies people involved as well, so it should be of interest to more than just archaeologists.
When faced with uncertain climates, reduction of resources, or natural disasters how do people re... more When faced with uncertain climates, reduction of resources, or natural disasters how do people react? In this session we highlight research from across the anthropological spectrum to explore how humanity has used, and continues to use, social networks to respond to environmental crises of varying proportions. The papers in this session either explicitly or implicitly focus on network based ideas that range from formal social network analysis and theory to ideas on community, resilience, and survivance. More importantly, they help bridge the gap between the present, the recent past, and the deep pretextual past. They demonstrate how an interdisciplinary approach to human persistence and resilience can help shed light on the human condition and can simultaneously make the strangeness of the past into a familiar entity that can inform on the here and now. This is especially relevant during times when environmental disasters transform the familiar present into a strange place, an immediate post-apocalyptic landscape set adrift from neighboring communities still grounded in the familiar and modern now. The studies presented here can help provide a guiding light for modern policy as we work to confront global disasters that may have far-reaching effects for our species. Moreover these papers show how the four fields in anthropology can be guided by similar principles, and how each of the fields can learn from research completed in the other sub-disciplines.
Archaeological conceptions of power, authority, and inequality have been undergoing significant c... more Archaeological conceptions of power, authority, and inequality have been undergoing significant changes in the last few decades, both in terms of how the discipline conducts itself as well as in how archaeologists interpret their study matter. To the level that researchers strive to create more balanced relationships with collaborators, develop openness to alternative ontologies, and investigate the active nature of egalitarian social systems, many in the discipline are turning towards policies, methods, and interpretations that emphasize decentralized leadership and more balanced social relations. This session questions whether the application of Anarchist Theory, a growing field of inquiry with deep historical roots, can be beneficially applied to both the interpretation of past cultures and how archaeologists apply our research within a wider political world. In the past, archaeologists rarely engaged with Anarchist Theory, although aspects of anarchism, such as the concern over alienation from decision-making and the need to constantly combat incipient power centralization, permeate the archaeological literature. Papers within this session will explore the ways in which a more explicit engagement with Anarchist Theory can open new avenues of research, inform novel interpretations, or affect relations with collaborators and other invested parties.
Presentation given at the 2013 Society for American Archaeology Meetings in Honolulu
I examine the Gallina culture (A.D. 1100 – 1300) of northern New Mexico and, using them as a type... more I examine the Gallina culture (A.D. 1100 – 1300) of northern New Mexico and, using them as a type study, argue that our inability to fit them nicely into modern archaeological taxonomies is the result of their intentional refusal to conform to the characteristics of much more densely inhabited neighboring regions. Using the Gallina, I define a cultural form, which when present is frequently the product of cultural resistance, called atavism. Atavistic cultures are often less populous than their neighbors and use purposeful isolation, traditional technologies and rituals, and invented traditions to produce a society whose connection with the past, both real and constructed, functionally opposes the trending cultural currents of the day. Modern cultures which display traits of atavism will be discussed and comparisons to the Gallina will be drawn.
Domesticates are uniquely both biological organisms but also cultural artifacts. As organisms, do... more Domesticates are uniquely both biological organisms but also cultural artifacts. As organisms, domesticates are shaped by the natural history of the progenitor and adaptation to diverse environments. As artifacts, domesticates record the cultivation practices, migration histories, cultural interactions and values of associated human groups. Using a population of maize landrace hybrids from the Greater Southwest (US and Mexico) that have been phenotyped, we begin to explore the relationship between genetic difference, social distance, and spatial distance using relationship matrices developed from genomic sequence data, spatial and environmental parameters, and strength of social interaction between associated cultural groups.
In this paper, we present a model that cross-cuts the “great divide” between precolonial and colo... more In this paper, we present a model that cross-cuts the “great divide” between precolonial and colonial inquiries. Our study uses data about the prehispanic depopulation of northeastern Arizona and subsequent movement of those groups into populated areas in southern Arizona. An emergent socioreligious movement, termed “Salado”, resulted from this culture contact. It incorporated new consumptive practices, including specialized production of polychrome ceramics and large-scale feasting.
The adoption of new consumption practices is an agentive process where simple knowledge of “foreign” objects is not sufficient to explain their adoption. We present a model in which knowledge and attitude interact to determine the integration of these social practices. A negative attitude may result in active resistance to those “foreign” objects and practices.
To recognize resistance without colonial period documents, we integrate inferential tools developed by postcolonial researchers examining historically neglected groups with a formal social network model in which knowledge and adoption of “foreign” objects are considered separate historical events. Attitude, pivotal to the model, is multivocal and governs future interactions. This model demonstrates how and why consumptive practices are affected by culture contact, and demonstrates how archaeological/historical data can be operationalized to approach the adoption of “foreign” objects and practices.
Archaeologists know that migration happened, but rarely do we know why. When explanations are off... more Archaeologists know that migration happened, but rarely do we know why. When explanations are offered, they are often environmentally deterministic. Social network analysis can facilitate an understanding of causation that reaches beyond the environment. We analyze diachronic network changes in the Kayenta region, and in relation to neighboring regions, by applying modularity and External-Internal (E-I) indices at regular temporal intervals. These two analyses quantify community structure and the relational structure between communities within social networks. These analyses will help us understand the social changes, if any, that led up to the Kayenta migration.
This paper will examine least-cost paths from multiple locations in the Ancestral Puebloan world ... more This paper will examine least-cost paths from multiple locations in the Ancestral Puebloan world to multiple locations on the Lower Rio Chama and Northern Rio Grande. The least-cost paths will model probable migration routes . Conflict areas in the Gallina region , as evidenced by informal burials with signs of violent skeletal trauma, will be examined. The location of these sites will then be analyzed to determine whether their location is statistically significant in relation to the probable migration routes.
Ceramics from the mounds directly south of Pueblo Bonito were submitted for Gas Chromatography/Ma... more Ceramics from the mounds directly south of Pueblo Bonito were submitted for Gas Chromatography/Mass Spectrometry analysis of the fatty acids absorbed within the ceramic matrix. Visible organic residues, removed from the interior face of some sherds, were also submitted for analysis. Grayware and whiteware jar sherds revealed a varying presence of fatty acids. Experimental work with plants and animals from the American Southwest was conducted in order to provide a reference collection of fatty acid signatures for interpreting the prehispanic sherds.
This is a crowdsourced document listing approximately 300 online educational archaeological resou... more This is a crowdsourced document listing approximately 300 online educational archaeological resources that I am curating and am archiving here to increase its visibility. Content and topics often missed in standard curriculum are needed, particularly research by Black, Indigenous, and other researchers from historically excluded communities.
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Articles and Book Chapters by Lewis Borck
By taking a diachronic and network perspective, the Gallina become a people who chose their way in their world. Specifically, they decided to step out of a cultural and ideological trajectory diametrically opposed to their ideas on how life should be organized. Once socially and historically situated, the Gallina highlands look more like a place of refuge for people who were rebelling against political and religious changes in the northern Southwest than an area populated by simple folk unable to keep pace with their rapidly changing neighbors. The Gallina region suddenly becomes a much more complicated place—a diverse collection of people dedicated to creating a new community at the edges of their previous world, one with clear material connections to antecedent regional groups (see Simpson 2016) but with new architectural and artifactual forms (i.e., tri-notched axes and pointed-bottom vessels). However, they are not a hybrid group like the colonial resistors Homi K. Bhabha (1994) was describing when he redefined hybridity. Instead, as a product of their atavistic movement, they become hybrids through time. By appropriating the past for their own intentions, they become rebels in their present—pioneers of a future history.
In Foreign Objects: Rethinking Indigenous Consumption in American Archaeology, edited by Craig N. Cipolla, pp. 29–43. University of Arizona Press, Tucson.
organization of society in a way that fosters egal-
itarian or equitable forms of association and coop-
eration and resists all forms of domination. An
anarchist perspective involves an awareness of,
and critique of, how power is implemented
through social relations, whether positively as in
collaborative acts of mutual aid to common goals
or negatively as in assertions of authoritarian
power contrary to the interests of the community
as a whole. As a theory concerning power and
social relations, archaeologists apply anarchism
for analyses of past societies, to interpret and
evaluate forms of egalitarian or hierarchical rela-
tions, modes of domination or resistance, and
expressions of control or autonomy. Moreover, it
is not just for considering the past, but the theory
can be applied to contemporary social arrange-
ments concerning archaeology in multiple ways:
how archaeologists organize themselves for
research teams and field crews, involve local or
descendant communities, or relate to the various
publics concerning heritage. Anarchism has had
an increasing influence upon archaeology in
recent years, just as the theory has influenced
other disciplines throughout the social sciences
and humanities.
techniques have been employed to disentangle this turbulent era in regional and global history. These diverse approaches reveal and then explore multi-layered networks of objects and people and uncover how Lesser Antillean communities were created and transformed
through teaching, trade, migration, movement, and exchange of goods and knowledge.
interactions of individuals using the accumulated
material culture of the past, yet detecting these
interactions can be difficult using traditional
archaeological analytical tools. The development
of a methodological framework emerging from
graph theory, coupled with the growth of computational
power and a growing multidisciplinary
theoretical framework aimed at interpreting these
analyses, have eased the difficulties of uncovering,
analyzing, and interpreting networks in the
past. From examining physical locations of sites
and how they interact together (Peregrine 1991) to
examining trade routes and migration pathways
(Hofman et al. 2018), and the exchange of
ideas across time and space (Mills et al. 2013),
network approaches have infiltrated archaeology
and grown exponentially in published studies
(Brughmans 2013; Mills 2017).
By taking a diachronic and network perspective, the Gallina become a people who chose their way in their world. Specifically, they decided to step out of a cultural and ideological trajectory diametrically opposed to their ideas on how life should be organized. Once socially and historically situated, the Gallina highlands look more like a place of refuge for people who were rebelling against political and religious changes in the northern Southwest than an area populated by simple folk unable to keep pace with their rapidly changing neighbors. The Gallina region suddenly becomes a much more complicated place—a diverse collection of people dedicated to creating a new community at the edges of their previous world, one with clear material connections to antecedent regional groups (see Simpson 2016) but with new architectural and artifactual forms (i.e., tri-notched axes and pointed-bottom vessels). However, they are not a hybrid group like the colonial resistors Homi K. Bhabha (1994) was describing when he redefined hybridity. Instead, as a product of their atavistic movement, they become hybrids through time. By appropriating the past for their own intentions, they become rebels in their present—pioneers of a future history.
In Foreign Objects: Rethinking Indigenous Consumption in American Archaeology, edited by Craig N. Cipolla, pp. 29–43. University of Arizona Press, Tucson.
organization of society in a way that fosters egal-
itarian or equitable forms of association and coop-
eration and resists all forms of domination. An
anarchist perspective involves an awareness of,
and critique of, how power is implemented
through social relations, whether positively as in
collaborative acts of mutual aid to common goals
or negatively as in assertions of authoritarian
power contrary to the interests of the community
as a whole. As a theory concerning power and
social relations, archaeologists apply anarchism
for analyses of past societies, to interpret and
evaluate forms of egalitarian or hierarchical rela-
tions, modes of domination or resistance, and
expressions of control or autonomy. Moreover, it
is not just for considering the past, but the theory
can be applied to contemporary social arrange-
ments concerning archaeology in multiple ways:
how archaeologists organize themselves for
research teams and field crews, involve local or
descendant communities, or relate to the various
publics concerning heritage. Anarchism has had
an increasing influence upon archaeology in
recent years, just as the theory has influenced
other disciplines throughout the social sciences
and humanities.
techniques have been employed to disentangle this turbulent era in regional and global history. These diverse approaches reveal and then explore multi-layered networks of objects and people and uncover how Lesser Antillean communities were created and transformed
through teaching, trade, migration, movement, and exchange of goods and knowledge.
interactions of individuals using the accumulated
material culture of the past, yet detecting these
interactions can be difficult using traditional
archaeological analytical tools. The development
of a methodological framework emerging from
graph theory, coupled with the growth of computational
power and a growing multidisciplinary
theoretical framework aimed at interpreting these
analyses, have eased the difficulties of uncovering,
analyzing, and interpreting networks in the
past. From examining physical locations of sites
and how they interact together (Peregrine 1991) to
examining trade routes and migration pathways
(Hofman et al. 2018), and the exchange of
ideas across time and space (Mills et al. 2013),
network approaches have infiltrated archaeology
and grown exponentially in published studies
(Brughmans 2013; Mills 2017).
This damage doesn’t stop with miseducation. For example, take headlines relating to archaeology in the Americas. There is a culturally constructed emotional value attached to most words that forms a cognitive shortcut for how we think. For some words, this emotional value is pretty minimal. For others, it draws on powerful cultural constructs to create a strong response. As noted above, mystery is one such word that has this strong emotional response. Others, in the U.S. at least, include travel and exploration and discovery. These myths of discovery and exploration are particularly damaging because they paint a picture where Indigenous groups are not able caretakers of their own histories and landscapes. Headlines that promote this contribute to the erasure of modern Indigenous connections to landscapes by denying what descendant communities and researchers know, as well as what they are capable of knowing. This has huge implications for Indigenous management of their traditional lands. most U.S. citizens learn about modern Indigenous groups through the media and pop culture. So these sensational headlines disconnect Indigenous communities from their history in the public arena. This historical disconnection erases the presence of Indigenous groups from the public consciousness. According to a recent study by Reclaiming Native Truth, potentially 40 percent of the American population think that Native Americans no longer exist. This invisibility means that support for Indigenous struggles faces a steep uphill battle.
de la Wenner-Gren Foundation), donde comenzamos a poner los ‘tiestos’ de una arqueología anarquista en un marco coherente. Desde allí, muchos de nosotros continuamos trabajando juntos en éste y otros proyectos relacionados a la arqueología anarquista, mientras nuestro
círculo se fue ampliando tanto como los proyectos involucrados. Te invitamos a unirte, o seguir el trabajo que estamos haciendo en http://www.anarchaeology.org/site-forum/.
Organized by Sarah Rowe and Lewis Borck
This session brings together researchers whose clear political and theoretical perspectives have led them to explore how conflict laden contexts shape and reshape landscapes during different historical eras around the world.
The adoption of new consumption practices is an agentive process where simple knowledge of “foreign” objects is not sufficient to explain their adoption. We present a model in which knowledge and attitude interact to determine the integration of these social practices. A negative attitude may result in active resistance to those “foreign” objects and practices.
To recognize resistance without colonial period documents, we integrate inferential tools developed by postcolonial researchers examining historically neglected groups with a formal social network model in which knowledge and adoption of “foreign” objects are considered separate historical events. Attitude, pivotal to the model, is multivocal and governs future interactions. This model demonstrates how and why consumptive practices are affected by culture contact, and demonstrates how archaeological/historical data can be operationalized to approach the adoption of “foreign” objects and practices.