Seminar Dates: June 18-26, 2006

Archaeology is, at its heart, a comparative discipline. Our knowledge of past behaviors is based, implicitly or explicitly, on comparisons to other human groups. For archaeologists working on complex non-state societies, for example, the cultures and societies of Oceania have served as some of the most enduring models for our thinking about diverse cultural phenomena, such as exchange, power, art, evolution, and memory. A wealth of literature has considered the parallels between ethnographically known and other ancient complex societies. Yet, the particular conditions of colonialism in the modern world may be blinding archaeologists to other questions and other interpretations of the archaeological data.

Comparative Archaeologies represents an alternative model of comparative research. The seminar embraced the totalities and historicities of past societies by focusing on nuanced comparisons of multiple issues between societies of similar form. Human populations in the American Southwest (AD 900-1600) and in the Iberian Peninsula (3000-1500 BC) were engaged in comparable social and political processes, but institutional and historical factors have discouraged the systematic comparison of their archaeologies.

This seminar brought together, for the first time, scholars working in the American Southwest in the period AD 900-1600 and archaeologists working in the Iberian Peninsula in the period between 3000-1500 BC to engage and discuss a common set of themes and problems. These five core topics will be

Art • Bodies • Food • Landscapes • History

We anticipate that the seminar will generate new insights, new questions, and new understandings of patterns in long-term social change in complex societies.

Seminar Directors: Katina T. Lillios, Associate Professor, and William M. Graves, Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, The University of Iowa

Keynote Papers

Comparative Archaeologies of the Iberian Peninsula and the American Southwest. Katina Lillios and William Graves, Dept. of Anthropology, University of Iowa

Comparative Approaches in Archaeology. Timothy Earle, Dept. of Anthropology, Northwestern University

Archaeology of the American Southwest (AD 900-1600): Themes and Questions. Barbara Mills, Dept. of Anthropology, University of Arizona

Archaeology of the Iberian Peninsula (3000-1500 BC): Themes and Questions. Antonio Gilman, Dept. of Anthropology, California State University, Northridge

Art

Sites and Practices. Rock Art and the Social Landscape of Neolithic and Copper Age Mediterranean Iberia. Sara Fairén Jiménez, Dept. of Archaeology, University of Reading, UK

Art and Power in the Prehispanic U.S. Southwest. Jill E. Neitzel, Dept. of Anthropology, University of Delaware

Bodies

Changing Perspectives on Mortuary Practices in Copper Age and Early Bronze Iberia. Estella Weiss-Krejci, Dept. of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Vienna, Austria

Sharp-Force Trauma or Postmortem Manipulation: Behavioral and Cultural Implications for Ancestral Pueblo Populations (900-1300 A.D.). Ventura R. Pérez, Dept. of Anthropology, University of Massachusetts

Gender

Bodies in Motion: Implications of Gender in Long Distance Exchange Between Lisbon and Alentejo Regions in Late Neolithic (Portugal) Rui Jorge Narcisco Boaventura, Faculdade de Letras, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal

The Role of Art in Social Change: Rock Art and Ceramics from the Prehistoric Pueblos of New Mexico. Marit K. Munson, Dept. of Anthropology, Trent University, Canada

Landscapes

Transformations, Evocations, Echoes, Resistance: Monumental Landscapes and Spaces in the Late Prehistory and Protohistory of Southern Iberia (V to I millennia BC). Leonardo García Sanjuán, Dept. of Prehistory and Archaeology, University of Seville, Spain

The North American Oikeumene: A.D. 900-1200. Peter N. Peregrine, Dept. of Anthropology, Lawrence University, Appleton WI

Histories

Labor in the Making of Copper Age Lineages in Iberia. Pedro Díaz-del-Río, Dept. of Prehistory, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Madrid, Spain

Iberia, the Southwest, and their Worlds. Stephen H. Lekson, Dept. of Anthropology and Curator, Museum of Natural History, University of Colorado, Boulder