Applying social theory and incorporating non-Western perspectives in the interpretation of bioarchaeological research This volume demonstrates how researchers in bioarchaeology and mortuary archaeology can work to better understand concepts of life and death in past societies of the Indigenous Americas. Through case studies that apply the “ontological turn” to human funerary and skeletal remains, contributors set aside Western views of reality, nature, and personhood to explore how people of various cultures understood existence and the human body. Contributors examine mortuary records from Inuit groups in Labrador and Greenland, Hopewell culture in the lower Illinois River valley, and Weeden Island and Puebloan traditions in the United States Southeast and Southwest. They look at the Paquimé community in Mexico, iconography of the Maya civilization, the demographics of Inka populations, and an ancient village on the Amazon River in Brazil. With attention to the viewpoints of these cultures, these essays deconstruct the boundaries between human remains and other interred artifacts, the living and the dead, and other binaries rooted deeply in Western science. Exploring Ontologies of the Precontact Americas reminds readers that their own ontological perspectives affect how they interpret the past. By considering diverse, non-Western worldviews and engaging with novel social theories of the body, this volume inspires new understandings of precontact societies.

Table of Contents:
Contents List of Illustrations vii 1. Bodies of Evidence: An Introduction 1 María Cecilia Lozada and Gordon F. M. Rakita 2. Necrontology: Housing the Dead in Precontact Labrador and Greenland 15 Peter Whitridge and Mari Kleist 3. Ontology, Time Travel, and Transformation in the Lower Illinois Valley 43 Jason L. King, Jane E. Buikstra, and Robert B. Pickering 4. Body Ontologies and Social Complexities in Precontact Florida 63 Neill Wallis and John Krigbaum 5. Ontological Insecurity and Social Transformation: Ritualized Violence and Corporeality—Pueblo Case Study 93 J. Cristina Freiberger and Debra L. Martin 6. Body Parts and Partible Bodies: Indications of Non-Western Ontologies at Paquimé, Chihuahua 115 Gordon F. M. Rakita, Adrianne Offenbecker, and Kyle Waller 7. Eating Death: Maya Rationales for Mortality during the Classic Period 134 James L. Fitzsimmons 8. Bodies, Bones, and the Dead: Representations and Cross-Category Connections in Classic Maya Iconography 155 Sarah E. Jackson 9. Isotopes and the Body Politic: Residential Origins and Relocations in the Inka Imperial Heartland 193 Bethany L. Turner   10. The Materiality of Bodies in the Mouth of the Amazon: Life and Death in the Indigenous Site of Curiaú Mirim I 220 Avelino Gambim Júnior Epilogue 265 Pamela L. Geller List of Contributors 287 Index 291