Session: #971

Content:

This session aims to discuss themes focused on laboring communities from antiquity to the pre-modern period, developed by social and environmental archaeologists, as well as historians and ethnographers. We invite participants to reflect on communities that have been marginalized or subjected to exploitation and social inequality. Our focus are the communities engaged in demanding labor activities, often related to the extraction or production of primary sources, and who, as a result, have become primary, albeit unconscious, agents of significant ecological transformations.
The goal is to explore the material life conditions of traditionally marginalized groups of workers in specialized sectors, such as plantations or mines. We would like to hear about different perspectives on how new technologies have influenced emerging environmental and labor-related hazards, and how these communities have coped with the adverse health and environmental consequences of their work activities. Through environmental archaeological data, we would like to discuss if and how working communities developed spaces of resistance against competing powers, as well as the conceptualization and dissemination of new knowledge to manage work- related risks.
Understanding these historical conditions allows us to reflect on labor practices in the past and their enduring material legacy. It also allows us to explore the disparities that persist in the contemporary world and how they can be addressed. We invite speakers to consider (bio)archaeological markers of resistance to inequality or marginalization and their effects, while also incorporating health and social inequality into the discussion. We anticipate generating a discussion about a scholarship on the study of inequality in the past and demonstrating how it can provide unique insights into the range of impacts on people’s health and ways of life.

Session: #971

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