Faculty Presentations: Lanoë and Zedeño to Present on Their Paleoindian Research Program

On Friday, November 13, Assistant Research Professor François Lanoë and Professor Nieves Zedeño will give a lecture titled “Blackfoot Early Origins: Community-based Paleoindian Archaeology” at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks Department of Anthropology Colloquium Series. 

Abstract: Archaeologists and Native communities strongly differ and often conflict in how to approach the deep past. At long time scales both parties tend to disregard the potential contributions that the other’s knowledge may provide, as well as distrust potential political interpretations of the findings. The Blackfoot ancestral territory, at the southern end of the Ice-Free Corridor, is one such place where archaeological discourses about repeated episodes of dispersal during the settlement of North America have tended to alienate Native communities. The Blackfoot Early Origins project is a collaboration between tribes of the Blackfoot Confederacy and the Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology at the University of Arizona to provide an inclusive way to approach the deep past and meet both stakeholders’ agendas. Research questions target testing long-standing dispersal hypotheses but in a way that contributes to forging the Blackfoot identity, and can be appropriated by the tribes as part of traditional knowledge that may be taught to future generations.

Anthro News Digest date: 11/13/2020