Frontiers are intriguing milieus because they are sociocultural contact zones yet removed enough from the empire/state core as to allow the emergence of alternative and hybrid forms of life. Simultaneously, they are liminal spaces in which power and violence are deployed and/or negotiated on a daily basis. Frontiers have been widely studied in archaeology, anthropology, history, sociology and politics. Yet, the material culture of borderland bodies has been largely neglected. This is striking given that colonising bodies (and minds) was a continuous albeit incomplete mission in colonial regions and frontiers, and material practices were a constitutive part of it. The ontological reality of the body makes the latter extremely thought-provoking for the study of colonial borderlands. Borderland bodies are indeed a very particular way of being and becoming, and it is by affecting and being affected by material culture that such ontology is performed.

‘BODIES MATTER’ focuses on the study of bodies (and the self) in colonial borderlands by comparing three frontiers at various periods and geographies: the Spanish Empire’s southern borderland in the Americas in the 16th-19th century, the Punic western Mediterranean in the 6th-2nd century BC, and the Islamic-Christian Ethiopian frontier between the 10th and 15th century.

Drawing on decolonial approaches, this project examines how people lived on, through, and against frontiers by analysing architecture, clothing and body adornment, and burials to evaluate continuities and discontinuities in kinaesthetic and sensorial experiences, and to assess the impact of colonial and imperial policies on slaves, indigenous communities, women and subaltern groups.