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Natural Graffiti and Cultural Plants: Memory, Race, and Contemporary Archaeology in Yosemite and Detroit
Author(s) -
Chenoweth John M.
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
american anthropologist
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.51
H-Index - 85
eISSN - 1548-1433
pISSN - 0002-7294
DOI - 10.1111/aman.12906
Subject(s) - memorialization , realm , race (biology) , sociology , natural (archaeology) , the imaginary , cultural memory , wilderness , identity (music) , aesthetics , environmental ethics , anthropology , history , archaeology , art , gender studies , law , political science , ecology , psychology , philosophy , biology , psychotherapist
This article argues that some elements of material culture can creatively cross the line between notions of “nature” and “culture” as these and related ideas are often tacitly understood by some modern people. This has implications for the biosphere, but the division of these categories is also tied up with the division of people, processes of identification, memorialization, and the way some people are defined out of the human realm altogether. Modern material culture—objects used, left, manipulated, and removed by people—seems particularly adept at telling us about these categories in the minds of some modern people. An archaeology of the contemporary examines how people interact with different kinds of “natural” things in places where nature and culture, in the modern imaginary, meet and conflict. In the starkly different contexts of the city of Detroit and Yosemite National Park, such objects have been managed and manipulated in a way that speaks to crucial issues of memory, identity, and race. [ contemporary archaeology, nature and culture, memory, national parks, Detroit ]