Paper short abstract:

The presentation looks at raptor imagery produced by North American peoples before Columbus. It explores how art practices in precolonial America may reflect locally perceived changes in ontological statuses between humans and birds of prey.

Paper long abstract:

The vast corpus of falconid representations made by Precolumbian Native North American peoples from the eastern woodlands shows a preoccupation with this bird species that exceeds any other visual and material repertoire of other animals produced before colonisation. Past interpretations of this corpus span from performance costumes to the representation of mythical beings. This paper offers other possible interpretations of this material in light of anthropology's 'ontological turn' theories about personhood and alternative states of consciousness. Here I explore how permeability between reality's different registers recorded ethnographically among American Indian peoples can shed some light on this artistic production that some anthropologists explain as being more than inert matter. Addressing the status of things and their production among these precolumbian peoples I apply new anthropological findings to a body of artistic production that, so far, has been framed by discussions on iconography, style, and form.