Archaeology of the Body

ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE BODY

M. Heckenberger; Turlington B123; Office hours: T: 2:00-5:00

Turlington B357; TH: 8-10 (3:00-6:00)

Syllabus available at:

The archaeology of the body focuses on diverse aspects of the person and, particularly, the human social body. It considers the body as representation, as identity, and as experience, questions of embodiment, the body as technology and as the site of social and power relations, the scalar and multiple qualities of the body, and how bodies aggregate or congeal into larger social and political bodies and how bodies. The focus of an archaeology of or on the body is on the physicality and materiality of the human body, as a critical medium or intersection of the social person and the external world. It therefore considers how bodies are inscribed in the material world, in material culture, built environment and landscape. It addresses not only how human bodies are constructed, but how movements and engagements between bodies re-construct the material world. These basic issues of the body or corporeality are considered with respect to major issues in anthropological theory, such as identity, agency, power, gender, and race. The final session considers how understanding the body can be used in contemporary social theory and practice to promote not only understanding but inclusion of diverse persons and social groups in contemporary social and political life, notably in global urban settings.

Evaluation: (1) due to small size, the seminar requires class participation, and therefore only one unexcused absence is allowed (excused absences include documented emergency situations and absences authorized beforehand); (2) depending on class size, one or (more likely) two short presentations and moderated discussions are required; (3) a final paper (15-20 pages of text).

The first class meeting is on 9/11; a fairly large reading load is required prior to this first meeting. All required readings will be available one week before the class they are due on the graduate student lounge.

Part 1: Introduction: Archaeologies and Bodies:

Week 1 (readings up to first meetings: 9/11, ):

- Y. Hamilikis et al., Introduction: Thinking through the Body, In Thinking through

the Body: Archaeologies of Corporeality, pp. (Kluwer)

- J. Thomas (1996): Time, Culture & Identity: An Interpretive Archaeology (London: Routledge), chapters 1-4.

- T. Ingold (2000): The Perception of Environment: Essays in Livelihood, Dwelling, and Skill (London: Routledge), chapters 8-11, 13.

- - R. Joyce. 2005. The Archaeology of the Body. ARA

Week 2 (9/18): Bodies and Persons

- S. Gillespie. 2001. Personhood, Agency and Mortuary Ritual: A Case Study from the Ancient Maya. Jour. of Anthropological Archaeology 20:73-112.

- C. Fowler. 2002. “Body Parts.” In Thinking through the Body (Hamilikis et al.)

- Y. Hamilikis. 2002. “The Past as Oral History.”In Thinking through the Body (Hamilikis et al.)

- C. Morris and A. Peatfield. 2002. “Feeling through the Body.” In Thinking through the Body (Hamilikis et al.)

- J. Thomas. 2002. Archaeology’s Humanism and the Materiality of the Body.” In Thinking through the Body (Hamilikis et al.)

- M. Lambek. 1998. Body and mind in mind, body and mind in body: some anthropological interventions in a long conversation, in Bodies and Persons, A. Strathern and M. Lambek, pp. 103-125

- A. Richlin. 1997. Towards a History of Body History. In Inventing Ancient Culture, M. Golen and P. Touhey, pp. 16-35 (Routledge)

Part II: Embodiment

Week 3 (9/25). Embodiment 1

P. Bourdieu. 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice (2&3, pp. 72-197). Cambridge:CUP.

Week 4 (10/2). Embodiment 2

- T. Csordas. 1988. Embodiment as a Paradigm for Anthropology. Ethos 18:5-47.

- 1994. Introduction: The Body as Representation and Being-in-the-World, in Embodiment and Experience: The Existential Ground of Culture and Self, pp. 1-24 (CUP)

- L. Meskell and R. Joyce. 2003. Introduction. In Embodied Lives: Figuring Ancient Maya and Egyptian Experience (Routledge).

- A. Smith. 2001 The Limitations of Doxa: Agency and Subjectivity from an Archaeological Point of View. Journal of Social Archaeology. 1:155-171.

S. Low. 2000. Constructing Difference (pp. 154-179). In On the Plaza (Texas).

Part III: Discipline and Subjectivity

Week 5 (10/9). Foucault and the Body Politic (1977)

M. Foucault. 1977. Discipline and Punish (selected readings, tba)

M. Heckenberger. 2008. Plaza as Panopticon: An Ethnoarchaeology of the Body in Amazonia (ms.)

J. Moore. 1996. The Architecture of Social Control: Theory, Myth, and Method. In Architecture & Power in the Ancient Andes, pp. 168-219 (CUP).

Week 6 (10/16). The Body and the Self (Foucault 1986; Giddens 1991; Wolputte 2004)

M. Foucault. 1978. The History of Sexuality (V. 3). Part 3-4 (pp. 69-144)

H. Dreyfus and P. Rabinow. Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics (selected readings, tba).

A. Giddens. 1991. Modernity and Self Identity (selected readings tba)

Wolputte. 2004. “Hang on to Yourself.” ARA

Week 7 (10/23). Scale and Anti-Bodies

M. Strathern. 2004.“The Whole Person and Its Artifacts,” ARA

T. Turner. 1994. “Bodies and Antibodies”

T. Turner. 1995. “Social Body and Embodied Subject: Bodiliness, Subjectivity, and

Sociality among the Kayapo”

R. Wagner. 1991. “The Fractal Person”

Part IV: Identity and Inscription

Week 8 (10/30). Body Representations and Identities

Hansen. 2004. “The World in Dress.” ARA

T. Turner. 1980. “The Social Skin”