Permanent body modification in Mesoamerica and Central America

Archaeological research provides the potential to examine cultural practices over long periods of time to begin to disentangle the motivations for their adoption, change, and abandonment. By focusing on a specific area-- the territory now included in Mexico and Central America-- this talk demonstrates how histories of body modification can illuminate shared identities that cross linguistic, ethnic, and political boundaries, and distinctions created within regional traditions and individual societies. Beginning from the observation that the indigenous societies of this region viewed the human body as something that was produced by the actions of the adult community shaping infants, children, and adults, the talk contributes to the broader project of understanding body modification more widely, suggesting that a boundary between the natural body and the social person was neither universal nor understood to develop on its own.