T11/S01: Voices of the Past: Uncovering Women’s Roles in Ancestral Knowledge and the Practice of Archaeology
Format: Paper presentations with discussion
Organisers:
Dr Amrita Sarkar, Dept of AIHC and Archaeology, Deccan College Postgraduate and Research Institute, Deemed University, Pune, India, amrita.sarkar@dcpune.ac.in
Dr Rita Jeney, Bhaktivedanta College, Budapest, rita.jeney@gmail.com
In this session we would like to examine how gender dynamics have shaped and influenced ancestral knowledge related to landscape and territorial management. This includes exploring how women’s knowledge, perspectives, and practices have contributed to sustainable resource use, environmental stewardship, and the transmission of ecological wisdom across generations. For example, the Madhubani (Maithili) Art form, originating in the Mithila region of India and Nepal, was developed by women. This created a strong lineage of female artists and a rich heritage tied to women’s roles within the community. Even recent studies on the megalithic culture of northeastern states of Mizoram, India, suggests that women may have played significant roles in these cultures, possibly as leaders or custodians of ancestral knowledge. Similar examples are available in other parts of the world. For example, Brumfiel’s highlighted the economic and political agency of women in pre-Columbian societies, demonstrating their active participation in agricultural production, trade, and ritual practices. This session will delve into how women archaeologists can develop relationships with women custodians of traditional art or knowledge from marginalised communities, the challenges they face, and the inspiring aspects of these collaborations. We envision the session as a platform to discuss critical issues on how women’s knowledge is deeply intertwined with cultural and traditional practices. Additionally, the session will also explore how women archaeologists collaborate, mentor, and support each other, and how these relationships contribute to knowledge production, research methodologies, and the broader understanding of the past.
T11/S02: Women’s Knowledge: Non-hegemonic Knowledge and Ethics, Scientific Practices and Listening in the Global South
Format: Paper presentations with discussion
Organisers:
Juliana Salles Machado, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Brazil, julianasallesmachado@gmail.com
Sonia Archila, Dept of Anthropology, University of Los Andes, Colombia, sarchila@uniandes.edu.co
Verónica Isabel Williams, University of Buenos Aires; Conicet Researcher; Director of Institute of Cultures (UBA-CONICET), Argentina, veronicaw33@gmail.com
As we know, scientific practice has been conceived and practiced for much of our history by white men. Even after the feminist conquest that culminated in the participation of female archaeologists in institutions, laboratories and field practices, we still have inequality in positions of power and in the theoretical-methodological references that guide both field and laboratory practice, as well as their interpretations, further aggravated by the intersectionalities of race, class and heteroidentification. This bias ends up maintaining a partial perspective of our understanding of the world and the societies with whom we interact and with which we jointly seek to build knowledge. In this session, we would like to gather examples from the Global South that can help us reflect on how the relationships established between women in scientific practice, whether in theoretical-methodological formulation or research issues, or in the particular relationship they establish with female spheres in local communities, or in the interpretation of data, have repercussions on the knowledge of how non-hegemonic societies, Indigenous peoples, quilombolas, and many others in the Global South, are represented in historical, archaeological and anthropological discourse.
T11/S03: Feminist Pedagogy Practices for the Popular Economy and Non-formal Education in Museums (and Other Cases)
Format: Paper presentations with discussion
Organisers:
Emilia Millón, ISES-CONICET/UNT, Argentina, millon.emilia@gmail.com
Denise Pozzi-Escot, Museo Pachacamac, Ministerio de Cultura, Perú, denisepozziescot@yahoo.es
Sofía González S., La-Ponte: Research Centre and Ecomuseum, Guatemala, info@laponte.org
Various formats of museums—eco-museums, interpretation centres, educational trails, and popular workshops—emerged from the hope of non-formal education and shared knowledge. Traditional national museums, often rooted in large archaeological collections with significant bureaucratic and security responsibilities, have also started democratizing knowledge and heritage. These efforts aim to decolonise museum practices and engage surrounding communities, particularly those with ancestral claims to these spaces.
This session seeks to intersect feminist pedagogy and popular education, introducing a seldom-discussed element: the popular economy. It contrasts the neoliberal subject—central to sustaining neoliberal capitalism—with the relational subject proposed by feminism and popular education. These practices enhance quality of life not only economically but also through personal growth, empowering women who work in museums and protect cultural heritage.
In times of rapid, individualistic, and often violent economic policies, it is crucial to foster collective imagination and strengthen community bonds. The neoliberal subject rejects critical thinking, active communities, and bodies in motion, instead enforcing a violent pedagogy that silences dissent, hierarchises bodies, and undermines comprehensive sexual education. It reinforces masculinity as the standard, marginalising other perspectives.
To counter this, a “pedagogy of life” emphasises sustainability (Perez Orozco 2014), critical reflection, emotional experiences, and diversity. It challenges the private/public divide, encouraging open dialogue about what has traditionally been silenced. As Rita Segato argues, “only a world of relationships and community sets limits on the objectification of life” (2018, p. 16, translated by authors). Learning, in all its forms, is liberating and essential for imagining a future rooted in relationships rather than individualism.
T11/S04: Sonic Landscapes: Placing the Body, Dwelling the Territory, Upholding Caregiving
Format: Paper presentations with discussion
Organisers: María Laura Taddei Salinas, Facultad de Ciencias Naturales e I.M.L., Universidad Nacional de Tucumán, Argentina, laurataddei@csnat.unt.edu.ar
Rosario Haddad, Instituto de Investigación en Etnomusicología, Dirección General de Enseñanza Artística (IIET-DGEART), Argentina, mrosariohaddad@gmail.com
Soema Montenegro, Colectivo Interdisciplinario e Intercultural de los Valles Altos de Catamarca, Argentina, cantoresonante@gmail.com
The body is a creative and emancipatory vehicle, a generator of knowledge and an archive of memory. However, it is its flesh, bones and visceral nature that allows it to be both a knowing and a sentient subject. The body facilitates contact and engagement with the world and is shaped by the historical processes we experience through it. Conceptualising the body as a territory allows us to rethink it in order to reconstruct a history through lived experiences and bodily responses. Among all the aspects of the contemporary world in which we are immersed—modern, moral, bourgeois, individualistic, patriarchal and capitalist—we want to highlight two aspects that have been overshadowed: the persistence of the sonic quality beneath the primacy of the visual and the feminine configuration of the landscape. In such contexts, sonorous epiphenomena—seemingly ephemeral—are an integral part of people’s embodied and practical experience of the world, persisting over time in various forms: memories, sensations and bodily expressions; sonorous traces such as instruments and/or sound-producing objects (geophones, lithophones, idiophones in general); and the sonorous qualities of landscape elements, whose cyclicality leads to memory and re-experience. Meanwhile, the feminine has traditionally been associated with caring, seemingly confined to the domestic sphere. However, women—especially in rural, peasant and Indigenous contexts—have extended this sphere to include home gardens, pastures, their livestock, and the supervision of play and recreational spaces for children and youth. In doing so, they have expanded domestic contexts into a continuous landscape, no longer naturalised or romanticised, but politicised as sites of sovereignty and resistance. In this session we invite to explore sonorous memories through the bodies of peasant and Indigenous women, the soundscapes they inhabit, and the ways in which sound and listening construct, contest and transform bodies.