Oral traditions and mounds, owls and movement at Poverty Point: An archaeological ethnography of multispecies embodiments and everyday life

Abstract

Collaborative and Indigenous archaeologies call on researchers to recenter theory and practice on descendant peoples' lives and ways of knowing. Extending this project, this article takes story and dance as a site of theory, foregrounding Indigenous modes of embodiment in which bodily and sensory perspectives are cultivated through participation in more-than-human beings. Drawing on research with members of a small, Muskogee-identified community in the US South, it frames the large-scale earthworks at the Poverty Point site in Louisiana as representing a horned owl. This evokes stories about a people who lived in an owl-shaped village and who could move in particularly owlish ways. Critiquing ontological frameworks in which the sensory is universal and mind is removed from body and land, I argue that ancient peoples may have cultivated perspectival embodiments through the everyday activity of living together in the collective form of an owl. Moreover, as contemporary descendants return to Poverty Point, the land animates shared, multispecies sensory fields that enroll descendants into a longue durée of owlish encounters and entanglements, or what my hosts simply call “Owl's teachings.” Here, I call for an archaeology reimagined in the context of Native American and Indigenous studies, asking how mounds might animate resurgent possibilities rooted in (and routed through) deep Indigenous histories of return.

Hypoxia in Paleolithic decorated caves: the use of artificial light in deep caves reduces oxygen concentration and induces altered states of consciousness

“…Indigenous people saw their well-being, prosperity, and perpetuation of the world order as dependent upon maintaining good relations and communicating with the entities inhabiting the upper and the lower worlds. Communicating with the upper world was achieved, in many cases, by transforming into birds by wearing bird feathers or talons, or by performing bird dances while imitating birds movements and sounds (Bloch 2019;Hill 2019;Koons 2019;Kristensen and Holly 2013;Overton and Hamilakis 2013;Sloan 2014;Watson 2020). It is also possible that ASCs were intended, in some respect, to achieve connectedness with the upper world by means of out-of-body experiences and flying, two well-known characteristics of this neurological state.…”

“…Many past and present indigenous cosmologies see the universe as three-tiered, consisting of the underworld, the 'here and now' world, and the above, the upper world (Ardhana 2016;Auersbach 2018;Blumdell and Ferreira 2018;Brady and Ashmore 1999;Clarke 2015;Darmayanti 2016;Funk 2018;Gjerde 2019;Gonzalez-Garcia 2017;Helskog, 1999;Leete 2017;Lucero 2018;Montello and Moyes 2012;Nakhodkina 2018;Pugh-Kitingan 2014). Likewise, indigenous societies emphasize a strong relationship between cultural/group identity and places, landscapes, and geographic landmarks (Basso 1996;Bloch L., 2019;Darmayanti 2016;Hays-Gilpin 2019;Helskog 1999;Montello and Moyes 2012). In many indigenous societies, actively connecting with the cosmos, environment, and places is considered necessary for the group's well-being and successful adaptation (Kearney, Bradley, and Brady 2019;Taçon 2019;Taçon and Baker 2019).…”

Animate Earth, Settler Ruins: Mound Landscapes and Decolonial Futures in the Native South

“…People returned to Poverty Point again around 1100–1150 CE and constructed the most recent mound (Ortmann 2010, 674). Contemporary Native American people of many nations continue to visit the site (Mojica 2012; Howe 2014; Bloch 2019). The Choctaw novelist LeAnne Howe (2014) interprets the largest mound at Poverty Point as a hawk that embodies teachings told in more‐than‐human bodies and relations.…”

“…The Choctaw novelist LeAnne Howe (2014) interprets the largest mound at Poverty Point as a hawk that embodies teachings told in more‐than‐human bodies and relations. Hakope interprets the form of the large mound and ridges as representing a horned owl, noting that a number of miniature owl‐shaped beads and pendants have been found at the site (Bloch 2019). When Hakope described oral traditions about traders who visited an “owl‐shaped village” on their way to places like Cahokia, another Pvlvcekolv elder pointed out that, archaeologically, Cahokia dates to several thousand years after the bulk of Poverty Point.…”

Minding the gap: Attempts at community archaeology and local counter-narratives at an archaeological site in Turkey

“…I abandoned my initial plans and turned to ethnographic research to understand their perspectives on the past, the Kerkenes site, the archaeologists, and archaeology as an endeavor. Archaeological ethnography is used to study community understandings of the past, place, and heritage as well as community values, ideas, and needs (see Bloch, 2019; Breglia, 2006; Castaneda and Matthews, 2008; Castaneda, 2009; Hamilakis and Anagnostopoulos, 2009; Meskell, 2005). Over the next eight years (during the excavation seasons of 2010–2012, 2014–2017, and 2019), I investigated local attitudes using a methodology combining immersive participant observation, open-ended interviews, focus groups, and multi-timed digital ethnography.…”