The proposed panel session aims to discuss the impact of migrations on ancient economies. We aim to understand the economic role of migrants in the local communities and their position in the host societies through a wide range of... more
The proposed panel session aims to discuss the impact of migrations on ancient economies. We aim to understand the economic role of migrants in the local communities and their position in the host societies through a wide range of contributions about ancient economic spaces in the Mediterranean and in Central Europe. In particular, we will discuss the function of migration and mobility within the fields of production, exchange and consumption. In the field of the production, we are going to analyse technological developments and economic growth in host communities following the cultural interaction and the transmission of technological knowledge due to human mobility. Furthermore, we will analyse the social position of the migrants in the work market of their new communities and in the new settled territories. A key aspect will be the contribution of migrants to the production and their networking role for the exchange. The ports of trade will be taken in consideration as a meeting-point of different economic systems. In the field of consumption, we are going to present the coexistence of different economic mentalities, as factors of innovation and conflict in local communities. Consumerism will be taken in consideration to understand dynamics of interaction, integration and segregation. The consumption behavior will be considered as proxy to understand the social identities of migrants and their expressions. The speakers are asked to compare their case studies to build a common platform of discussion, overtaking chronological and geographical specificities, in the way to discuss more general methodological and theoretical questions: Which archaeological data are suitable to detect the relationships between economic behavior and cultural identities? How did different economic and political systems affect the position of migrants in the local communities and their participation to local and global economies? Which are the effects of different strategies of economic integration of migrants in the host societies on the economic development and on the social stability of local markets and communities? Is our interpretation biased by our modern perspectives or is it possible to contextualize an agent based perception of the economic role of ancient migrants?
Early scholarship on the disruption to political dynasties at the end of the Classic period in the Maya Lowlands argued that political collapse and the new material culture associated with it were due to the invasion of Putun/ Chontal... more
Early scholarship on the disruption to political dynasties at the end of the Classic period in the Maya Lowlands argued that political collapse and the new material culture associated with it were due to the invasion of Putun/ Chontal peoples from the Gulf Coast. One of the sites thought to have been targeted by such an invasion was Ucanal, Petén, Guatemala. Although no excavations had been undertaken at the site when the Putun invasion hypothesis was formulated, recent archaeological research at Ucanal provides an opportunity to re-visit the question of foreigners. This paper examines residential settlement histories and isotopic values from human teeth at Ucanal to better understand the changes that occurred during the Terminal Classic period. Our research indicates that while the possibility of foreign rule remains, the invasion hypothesis cannot fully capture the complex dynamics, multi-directional movements, and pluralistic influences of this time period. Ucanal was a thriving, heterogenous city with connections to multiple regions and peoples. Individuals born outside the Ucanal region were indeed present at the site, although the ways in which foreign identities were constituted were as much about peoples' practices and performances of self (and others) as about where they were born.
This paper examines how mapping technology is central to the operation of the United States Border Patrol security apparatus on the US/Mexico Border, and explores how the very same mapping technology can be used in critique this security... more
This paper examines how mapping technology is central to the operation of the United States Border Patrol security apparatus on the US/Mexico Border, and explores how the very same mapping technology can be used in critique this security project. Drawing on the concept of counter-mapping, we use spatial data collected by the Undocumented Migration Project – a long-term anthropological project aimed at understanding various elements of the violent social process of clandestine migration between Latin America and the United States – to critique the spatial ideology of PTD and the technological conditions of its production.
Massive infrastructures of transportation and border security, designed to control flows of people and things, dominate the contemporary US–Mexico border. Together, these material projects work to inscribe the hegemonic processes of... more
Massive infrastructures of transportation and border security, designed to control flows of people and things, dominate the contemporary US–Mexico border. Together, these material projects work to inscribe the hegemonic processes of neoliberal capitalism and national sovereignty onto the physical landscape and into everyday life, giving them an aura of inevitability and permanence. Using archaeology, we challenge this narrative by exploring the counter-infrastructures developed by marginal communities in the US–Mexico borderlands – including miners, hippies, and migrants – to navigate and/or resist these projects. Specifically, we compare the shifting fields of in/visibility created by infrastructure and counter-infrastructure from the 1880s to the present to emphasize that bordering projects are neither inevitable nor permanent.
Since the 1990s, US border policies have worked to funnel undocumented migration into remote stretches of the Sonoran Desert, where deadly terrain and temperatures make border crossing most dangerous. This weaponization of the desert... more
Since the 1990s, US border policies have worked to funnel undocumented migration into remote stretches of the Sonoran Desert, where deadly terrain and temperatures make border crossing most dangerous. This weaponization of the desert finds some cover, we argue, behind the scalar projects of state-centered maps emphasizing vast geography and gross statistics over personal pain and trauma. Counter-mapping against these projects, we draw on archaeological and ethnographic data from the Undocumented Migration Project (UMP), and geospatial data for thousands of deceased migrants across southern Arizona, to witness how migration, as both socio-historical process and humanitarian crisis, emerges from human-scale strategies and experiences of suffering. A thousand footprints in the sand / Reveal a secret no one can define-Bruce Springsteen
Since the 1990s, US border policies have worked to funnel undocumented migration into remote stretches of the Sonoran Desert, where deadly terrain and temperatures make border crossing most dangerous. This weaponization of the desert... more
Since the 1990s, US border policies have worked to funnel undocumented migration into remote stretches of the Sonoran Desert, where deadly terrain and temperatures make border crossing most dangerous. This weaponization of the desert finds some cover, we argue, behind the scalar projects of state-centered maps emphasizing vast geography and gross statistics over personal pain and trauma. Counter-mapping against these projects, we draw on archaeological and ethnographic data from the Undocumented Migration Project (UMP), and geospatial data for thousands of deceased migrants across southern Arizona, to witness how migration, as both socio-historical process and humanitarian crisis, emerges from human-scale strategies and experiences of suffering. A thousand footprints in the sand / Reveal a secret no one can define-Bruce Springsteen
This paper examines how mapping technology is central to the operation of the United States Border Patrol security apparatus on the US/Mexico Border, and explores how the very same mapping technology can be used in critique this security... more
This paper examines how mapping technology is central to the operation of the United States Border Patrol security apparatus on the US/Mexico Border, and explores how the very same mapping technology can be used in critique this security project. Drawing on the concept of counter-mapping, we use spatial data collected by the Undocumented Migration Project – a long-term anthropological project aimed at understanding various elements of the violent social process of clandestine migration between Latin America and the United States – to critique the spatial ideology of PTD and the technological conditions of its production.
Pugh, Timothy 2009 The Kowoj and the Lacandon: Migrations and Identities. In The Kowoj: Identity, Migration, and Politics in Late Postclassic Petén, Guatemala, edited by Prudence M. Rice and Don S. Rice, pp. 368-384. University Press of... more
Pugh, Timothy 2009 The Kowoj and the Lacandon: Migrations and Identities. In The Kowoj: Identity, Migration, and Politics in Late Postclassic Petén, Guatemala, edited by Prudence M. Rice and Don S. Rice, pp. 368-384. University Press of Colorado, Boulder.
