Publisher Description

Rethinking Colonial Pasts through Archaeology explores the archaeologies of daily living left by the indigenous and other displaced peoples impacted by European colonial expansion over the last 600 years. This new, comparative focus on the archaeology of indigenous and colonized life has emerged from the gap in conceptual frames of reference between the archaeologies of pre-contact indigenous peoples, and the post-contact archaeologies of the globalEuropean experience. Case studies from North America, Australia, Africa, the Caribbean, and Ireland significantly revise conventional historical narratives of those interactions, their presumed impacts, and theirongoing relevance for the material, social, economic, and political lives and identities of contemporary indigenous and other peoples (e.g. metis or mixed ancestry families, and other displaced or colonized communities).The volume provides a synthetic overview of the trends emerging from this research, contextualizing regional studies in relation to the broader theoretical contributions they reveal, demonstrating how this area of study is contributing to an archaeologypracticed and interpreted beyond conceptual constraints such as pre versus post contact, indigenous versus European, history versus archaeology, and archaeologist versus descendant. In addition, the workfeatured here underscores how this revisionist archaeological perspective challenges dominant tropes that persist in the conventional colonial histories of descendant colonial nation states, and contributes to a de-colonizing of that past in the present. The implications this has for archaeological practice, and for the contemporary descendants of colonized peoples, brings a relevance and immediacy to these archaeological studies that resonates with, and problemetizes, contested claims to aglobal archaeological heritage.

Author Biography

Neal Ferris is the Lawson Chair of Canadian Archaeology and an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology/Museum of Ontario Archaeology, at the University of Western Ontario. Rodney Harrison is a Reader in Archaeology, Heritage, and Museum Studies in the Institute of Archaeology at University College London. Michael V. Wilcox is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Stanford University.

Table of Contents

List of ContributorsPart 1: Ambiguous Definitions and Discordances1: Rodney Harrison: Shared Histories: Rethinking 'Colonized' and 'Colonizer' in the Archaeology of Colonialism2: Stephen W. Silliman: Archaeologies of Indigenous Survivance and Residence: Navigating Colonial and Scholarly Dualities3: Jeff Oliver: Native-Lived Colonialism and the Agency of Life Projects: A View from the Northwest Coast4: Kurt A. Jordan: Pruning Colonialism: Vantage Point, Local Political Economy, and Cultural Entanglement in the Archaeology of Post-1415 Indigenous PeoplesPart 2: Colonizing and Decolonizing Spaces, Places, Things, and Identities5: M. Dores Cruz: The Nature of Culture: Sites, Ancestors and Trees in the Archaeology of Southern Mozambique6: Michael V. Cox: Indigenous Archaeology and the Pueblo Revolt of 1680: Social Mobility and Boundary Maintenance in Colonial Contexts7: Jun Sunseri: Hiding in Plain Sight: Engineered colonial landscapes and indigenous reinvention on the New Mexican frontier8: Mark Tveskov and Amie Cohen: Frontier Forts, Ambiguity, and Manifest Destiny: The Changing Role of Fort Lane in the Cultural Landscape of the Oregon Territory, 1853-19299: Charles R. Cobb and Stephanie Sapp: Imperial Anxiety and the Dissolution of Colonial Space and Practice at Fort Moore, South Carolina10: Jane Lydon: Intimacy and Distance: Life on the Australian Aboriginal Mission11: Diana DiPaolo Loren: Casting Identity: Sumptuous Action and Colonized Bodies in Seventeenth Century New England12: Rob Mann: Persistent Pots, Durable Kettles, and Colonialist Discourse: Aboriginal Pottery Production in French Colonial BassePart 3: Displacement, Hybridity, and Colonizing the Colonial13: Audrey Horning: Challenging Colonial Equations? The Gaelic Experience in Early Modern Ireland14: Matthew A. Beaudoin: The Process of Hybridization among the Labrador Métis15: James A. Delle: Archaeology and the "Tensions of Empire"16: Mark W. Hauser and Stephan Lenik: Material Practices and Colonial Chronologies in Dominica, Eastern CaribbeanPart 4: Contested Pasts and Contemporary Implications17: Neal Ferris: Being Iroquoian, Being Iroquois: A Thousand Year Heritage of Becoming18: Andrew Martindale: Archaeology Taken to Court: Unravelling the Epistemology of Cultural Tradition in the Context of Aboriginal Title Cases19: Paul J. Lane: Being 'Indigenous' and Being 'Colonized' in Africa: Contrasting Experiences and Their Implications for a Post-Colonial Archaeology20: Peter R. Schmidt: Deconstructing Archaeologies of African Colonialism: Making and Unmaking the SubalternCommentary and Afterword21: Peter van Dommelen: Commentary: Subaltern Archaeologies22: Chris Gosden: Commentary: The Archaeology of the Colonized and Global Archaeological Theory23: Ann B. Stahl: Afterword: Vantage Points in an Archaeology of Colonialism

Review

this excellent volume's critical exploration of the nature of archaeological epistemologies should interest many archaeologists and historians. * Craig N. Cipolla, Medieval Archaeology *

Promotional

An exploration of the archaeologies of daily living left by the indigenous and other displaced peoples impacted by European colonial expansion over the last 600 years.

Long Description

Rethinking Colonial Pasts through Archaeology explores the archaeologies of daily living left by the indigenous and other displaced peoples impacted by European colonial expansion over the last 600 years. This new, comparative focus on the archaeology of indigenous and colonized life has emerged from the gap in conceptual frames of reference between the archaeologies of pre-contact indigenous peoples, and the post-contact archaeologies of the global
European experience. Case studies from North America, Australia, Africa, the Caribbean, and Ireland significantly revise conventional historical narratives of those interactions, their presumed impacts, and their
ongoing relevance for the material, social, economic, and political lives and identities of contemporary indigenous and other peoples (e.g. metis or mixed ancestry families, and other displaced or colonized communities).The volume provides a synthetic overview of the trends emerging from this research, contextualizing regional studies in relation to the broader theoretical contributions they reveal, demonstrating how this area of study is contributing to an archaeology
practiced and interpreted beyond conceptual constraints such as pre versus post contact, indigenous versus European, history versus archaeology, and archaeologist versus descendant. In addition, the work
featured here underscores how this revisionist archaeological perspective challenges dominant tropes that persist in the conventional colonial histories of descendant colonial nation states, and contributes to a de-colonizing of that past in the present. The implications this has for archaeological practice, and for the contemporary descendants of colonized peoples, brings a relevance and immediacy to these archaeological studies that resonates with, and problemetizes, contested claims to a
global archaeological heritage.

Review Quote

this excellent volume's critical exploration of the nature of archaeological epistemologies should interest many archaeologists and historians.

Feature

Chapters range from North America, Australia, and Africa to the Caribbean and Ireland, providing a broad context.
Focuses on the archaeology of the lived life of the colonized through European colonialism over the last 600 years.
Presents new developments in anthropological and archaeological theory and showcases how these ideas are applied to real world case studies.
Considers the contemporary relevance and politics around questions of agency and identity.

Details