Efforts to decolonize archaeology have gained significant momentum in the last few decades, but have yet to extend robustly to zooarchaeology. Zooarchaeology is, however, well positioned to make unique contributions to decolonial practice. Drawing on insights from Indigenous studies, animal studies, and models of Indigenous science, we argue that North American zooarchaeology must engage in decolonization if reconstructions of past human–animal relationships are to be robust and ethically grounded. We identify some of the colonial legacies embedded in zooarchaeology’s methods, classifications, and interpretive frameworks, and highlight how these structures constrain knowledge production. We offer a series of interventions and actionable recommendations—from analytical protocols to disciplinary practice—that create pathways for zooarchaeologists to participate in the wider decolonial project.

The Eastern, or Rio Grande, Pueblos have always been more resistant to anthropological study than their Western Pueblo neighbors, a fact usually attributed to the impacts of Euro-American colonialism in New Mexico’s Rio Grande Valley. There are, however, internal structural differences between the Eastern and Western Pueblos that bear on the question of secrecy and resistance and that long predate the colonial period. All Pueblos have secret societies. In the Western Pueblos, these societies are embedded in and controlled by matrilineal descent groups (lineages and clans). In the east, kin-based organizations had declined by the late precolonial period (AD 1300–1600), and political power shifted to secret societies that control their community’s ceremonial calendar and virtually all governmental functions. The secrecy that surrounds these institutions strongly resists observations by—and questions from—both outsiders and uninitiated insiders. This article explores the origins of these differences and proposes that the Chaco Phenomenon (circa AD 900–1100) was a critical hinge point in the ritual and political divergence of East and West.

Emotions are a vital part of coalescent communities. Specifically, they help create the broader relational fields in which coalescent communities form; they also dictate the practices and sentiments of community members as well as the impacts of these communities on the wider world. This article examines the “affective fields” that created Noble-Wieting, a late thirteenth-century Langford-Mississippian village in what is now central Illinois. Due to population movements, social unrest, and climate change during the thirteenth through fifteenth centuries in the North American Midwest, feelings of unease and anxiety colored the larger relational and affective fields in which Noble-Wieting was constructed and were the driving force behind the construction of coalescent communities like Noble-Wieting. Archaeological evidence from an ongoing consultative and collaborative project at Noble-Wieting shows that the layout of the village and the activities that occurred there facilitated community integration and thus mitigated residents’ anxiety, at least to some degree. This study shows that the physical layout and materiality of communities are crucial in altering residents’ experiences and emotions.

Archaeologists have long interpreted Arizona and Sonora’s Upper Santa Cruz valley as a precolonial “contact zone” or “frontier” between the Trincheras and Hohokam traditions. These models are heavily influenced by the contemporary US-Mexico border and outdated core/periphery models. Furthermore, although plain ware represents most pottery from this region, it has never been used to understand the populations who inhabited the region or to reconstruct local communities of practice. This article provides the first systematic study of plain ware from 23 sites across the Upper Santa Cruz. We incorporate Bhabha’s (2004) “Third Space” theory to suggest that local potter communities actively responded to changing interactions with neighboring populations for more than five centuries. By focusing our attention on local ceramic production, and critically evaluating cultural boundaries, we reposition the Upper Santa Cruz as neither a periphery nor frontier but an area rich in its own dynamic cultural expressions and regional agency.

In a recent publication, Ellwood et alia (2022) presented results indicating that the LSU Campus Mounds (16EBR6) could be the oldest man-made extant structures in the Americas, that they were built in phases with a hiatus of approximately 2,000 years, and that they were used for ceremonial fires or cremations. In a subsequent publication, McGimsey et alia (2022) expressed their concerns regarding the conclusions presented in the Ellwood et alia publication. To resolve some of the controversial issues, McGimsey et alia identify six avenues for further research. In this article, we address selected aspects of four of these recommendations using synchrotron radiation (SR)–based techniques. SR-X-ray fluorescence spectra show no significant differences in the elemental concentrations of samples from various possible construction phases and in the concentration of samples from lighter-colored (ash?) and darker areas. For iron (Fe; a temperature-sensitive element) and for silicon (Si; the characteristic element for phytoliths), the corresponding X-ray absorption spectra show no significant differences in the chemical state between light- and dark-area samples. These results support neither the assumption that Mound B was built in two phases with a long hiatus nor the assumption that light-colored lenses consist of ash from hot fires.