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Land and Archaeology

Alejandro Haber (Universidad Nacional de Catamarca, School of Archaeology)
Martin Wobst (University of Massachusetts, Department of Anthropology)

Abstract

Archaeology is heavily dependent on land-related concepts. Almost every archaeological argument and publication implies relationships to land, and makes assumptions and applies concepts about land. Without those usually implicit and often hidden assumptions one could not talk about archaeological sites, archaeological surveys, or archaeological landscapes, nor settlement patterns, or archaeological cultures. Relationships to land are more or less overtly implied in many archaeological theories and theoretical models, and archaeology is practiced on land, surveying, excavating, measuring and removing data on land. Relationships to land are conceptualized very differently by colonizers and colonized, before and after colonization, by urban and rural people, by lords and peasants, and by the same people in different phases of their history. Many of these relationships differ significantly from those implied by archaeological theories and practices. To some peoples land is a powerful and loving being, with important implications for their relationships to that land. Land is often a very central issue in Indigenous and other peoples’ theorizing, in contrast to the concept of territory. Often, land claims are the foremost aims in Indigenous and/or peasants’ social and political movements. Particular territories are usually very important in Indigenous and/or local collective identities.

This symposium will help expose and critically scrutinize the different discourses on the relationships to land in archaeology, the diversity and richness of relationships to land, and the ways in which archaeology has reinforced or disempowered particular kinds of relationships to land and discourses about land. Under this theme, participants are encouraged to create symposia, strategy sessions toward future interactions, round tables, work-shops, counter-posed position papers, or critical analyses of recent practice. Initial planning anticipates the following topics:

Sessions