SESSIONS

Sessions programmées

     

Canadian Contributions to Mesoamerican Archaeology: Legacy and Future Directions

Geoff McCafferty and Shawn Morton, University of Calgary

Canadian-trained researchers and research institutions have had a long and distinguished history in Mesoamerican Archaeology. From the ground-breaking work of half a century ago to the prolific research of current scholars, this session seeks to provide a retrospective on Canadian contributions to Mesoamerican Archaeology and to outline a trajectory for continuing research into the future.

Session Contacts: Geoff McCafferty (mccaffer [at] ucalgary [dot] ca) or Shawn Morton (sgmorton [at] ucalgary [dot] ca).

From Cutting Edge to "I got cut by my own trowel!": Research from Archaeology Field Schools

Brian Pegg, Kwantlen Polytechnic University

Field schools have always been a way to develop cutting edge research in an educational setting, and to provide students skills in excavation, survey, research, and presentation of data and results.  They have also sometimes been a way to find "grunt labour" for archaeology projects.  Ideally, however, field school students should be full partners in the research behind the field projects, including sometimes publication and presentation.  Current field schools in archaeology are incredibly diverse, from community based archaeology, to CRM themed projects, to pure research in exotic locations.  This session is intended as a venue for field school students, instructors, or directors to present research developing from their field projects, framing their research in the context of benefits to local communities, students, or the discipline we all practice.

For information, contact Brian Pegg (Kwantlen Polytechnic University) at brian [dot] pegg [at] kwantlen [dot] ca or brianpegg [at] gmail [dot] com

Landscapes and Memory: People, Places and Narratives

Gerald A. Oetelaar, University of Calgary 

Landscape archaeology emphasizes the interrelationships between humans and their environment but this interaction involves much more than a quest for resources and raw materials. For the majority of indigenous populations, the landscape is a series of named places linked by paths, movement and narratives. At any given time, the place names, the paths, and the narratives represent a history of human land use which structures the interaction between living communities and the landscape. These groups, in turn, transmit the accepted codes of ethical conduct toward the land, the resources and the people to the next generation. In this way, the patterned use of a landscape becomes a historical journey in which people travel along the same paths and visit the same places over and over again. This session seeks to explore the archaeological traces of such an attachment to place through the evidence for the repetitive and long-term use of specific sites and or localities.

Please contact Gerald A. Oetelaar (goeteala [at] ucalgary [dot] ca) for further information and to submit a paper abstract for this session.

 

Marine and Maritime Archaeologies: Putting the Coast Back in Coastal

Megan Caldwell, University of Alberta; Richard M. Hutchings, University of British Columbia

For most regions of the world, including all of North America, the practices of marine and maritime archaeology remain fractured and marginalized. As a consequence, these sub-disciplines exist at the boundaries of the mainstream, even in regions where ‘coastal' cultures are the primary research focus. Thus, for many areas the ‘maritime' archaeological record is represented almost exclusively by terrestrial or ‘dry' sites, to the exclusion of intertidal, subtidal, and other aquatic landscapes. Having recognized this, archaeologists are increasingly turning to marine and maritime archaeologies to enhance their understanding of human-environment interaction at the land-water interface. For this session, we invite papers that work towards bridging the disconnect that exists between ‘terrestrial', ‘coastal', ‘maritime', and ‘marine' archaeologies, especially through new research and the use of multidisciplinary and novel approaches.

For information, please contact Rich Hutchings at richhutchings [at] hotmail [dot] com

People in the Northern Past: Social Approaches in Arctic Archaeology

Peter Dawson and Max Friesen

Issues of social life involving such topics as identity, gender, status, household organization, interaction, conflict, and trade are all critical to the study of northern peoples, past and present.  Recently, archaeologists working across the Arctic have made significant strides toward understanding social life through interpretation of such archaeological phenomena as architecture, material culture, archaeofaunas, and regional site distributions.  In this session, we seek to explore a wide range of social issues in an inclusive manner, and encourage submissions dealing with all regions and time periods in the Arctic past.

Please contact Peter Dawson (pcdawson [at] ucalgary [dot] ca) for further information and to submit a paper abstract for this session.

Recent Contributions of Geoarchaeological Theory and Method to Archaeological Interpretation

Don Butler and Andrea Freeman

Interpretation of almost any archaeological site requires some degree of geological, geographic, and/or ecological problem solving. Theoretical and methodological developments across the geosciences, then, have been pervasively applied in archaeology, and new approaches have enhanced our understandings of site formation processes, taphonomy, chronologies, agricultural practices, ancient landscapes and climates, provenance, trade and interaction, households, place and social memory, ethnographic expressions of behavioural variability, and archaeological expressions of socially structured behaviour. This session explores recent contributions in all areas of geoarchaeological theory and method, and specifically highlights how these advances enhance archaeological interpretation.

Session Contact: Don Butler ph:(403)220-6956 email: dhbutler [at] ucalgary [dot] ca

 

Roots and Grains and the Peoples Who Ate Them

Julio Mercader and Dyan Laskin Grossman

This session explores the pivotal role that wild grains, legumes, piths, and starch-rich underground storage organs played for ancient societies.  There is an evolutionary, technological, and chronological divide between groups favouring exploitation of underground resources versus societies preferring above ground starch acquisition, with Pleistocene and later foraging societies on one side and Holocene early farmers and complex societies on the other. What is the evolutionary meaning of this dichotomy and what can we learn about the tempo and mode of past dietary diversification through the eyes of archaeometry, paleo-ethnobotany, and ethnoarchaeology?

Please contact Julio Mercader (mercader [at] ucalgary [dot] ca) or Dyan Laskin Grossman (d [dot] laskingrossman [at] ucalgary [dot] ca) for further information or to submit a paper proposal.