Slow (Bio)archaeology: Recovering Stories of Irish Immigrant Lives in the Huntington Anatomical Collection

• Alanna L. Warner-Smith ^[1]
  1. [1] American University

     American University

     Estados Unidos

     
• Localización: Historical Archaeology, ISSN 0440-9213, Vol. 58, Nº. 2, 2024, págs. 351-370
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • I consider the power of “slow archaeology” in a study of the Huntington Anatomical Collection, focusing on Irish immigrants who lived and worked in New York City over the course of the 19th and early 20th centuries. I argue that normative bioarchaeological categories and methods cannot fully account for the varied life histories of persons in the collection. Instead, I turn to the tenets of slow archaeology to move between scales of analysis and material traces. With a slow approach, embodied experiences of labor are highlighted and discourses about laborers are challenged. A slow approach seeks to recover the lived experiences of individuals exploited in life and made anonymous in death and is one potential way toward a more ethical bioarchaeology.