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Although the application of semiotics to the archaeological study of rock art is not new, Peircean perspectives are still uncommon, and those implementing the concepts of qualisigns and qualia are only rarely employed. Yet, an approach centered on sensuous properties can serve as a valuable complement to other materiality- and landscape-based frameworks popular in contemporary rock art research. Using Ancestral Pueblo rock art from the Middle and Northern Rio Grande region of the U.S. Southwest as an example, I offer an archaeological narrative of how social values may be attached to conventionalized qualia rooted in sensorial experiences. Specifically, I examine how diverse media—rock art, shields, objects of adornment, and feathers—were connected through luminosity and security, culturally conceptualized qualitative properties that became formalized and enregistered in the context of new social institutions and modes of group conduct appearing during the 14th century CE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, the field of paleogenomics has grown into an exciting and rapidly advancing area of scientific inquiry. However, scientific work in this field has far outpaced the discipline's dialogue about research ethics. In particular, Indigenous peoples have argued that the paleogenomics revolution has produced a "vampire science" that perpetuates biocolonialist traditions of extracting Indigenous bodies and heritage without the consent of, or benefits to, the communities who are most affected by this research. In this article, we explore these ethical issues through the case study of a project that sequenced the ancient DNA (aDNA) of nine Ancestral Puebloan people from Chaco Canyon, New Mexico. By providing a "thick description" of this controversy, we are able to analyze its metanarratives, periodization, path dependency, and historical contingencies. We conclude that the paleogenomics revolution needs to include an ethical revolution that remakes the field's values, relationships, forms of accountability, and practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hybridity is a term used by anthropologists to characterize the amalgamation of influences from two (or more) different cultural groups. Hybridity has captivated archaeology in recent years, especially archaeologists investigating colonialism in Native American contexts. At the same time, a growing chorus of critics has begun to question anthropology’s devotion to hybridity and hybrid objects. These critics take issue with the term’s alleged Eurocentrism, implications of cultural purity, and evolutionary etymology. In this article, I address these critiques and advocate a more circumscribed use of hybridity in archaeology. I caution against the abandonment of the term entirely, because the archaeological identification of hybridity provides insights into both present-day (etic) and past (emic) perspectives on cultural amalgamation. Hybridity reveals the biases of contemporary researchers regarding the societies we study, as well as highlighting the ways in which power structures centered and marginalized colonial subjects in the past. To illustrate these points, I draw on case studies involving the Hopi Mickey Mouse kachina, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Indigenous-colonial whips from the American Plains and southeast Australia, and seventeenth-century Pueblo ceramics from the American Southwest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]