Rethinking Colonial Pasts Through Archaeology

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

Historical archaeology studies once relied upon a binary view of colonialism: colonizers and colonized, the colonial period and the postcolonial period. The contributors to this volume scrutinize imperialism and expansionism through an alternative lens that rejects simple dualities and explores the variously gendered, racialized, and occupied peoples of a multitude of faiths, desires, associations, and constraints. Colonialism is not a phase in the chronology of a people but a continuous phenomenon that spans the Old and New Worlds. Most important, the contributors argue that its impacts—and, in some instances, even the same processes set in place by the likes of Columbus—are ongoing. Inciting a critical examination of the lasting consequences of ancient and modern colonialism on descendant communities, this wide-ranging volume includes essays on Roman Britain, slavery in Brazil, and contemporary Native Americans. In its efforts to define the scope of colonialism and the comparability of its features, this collection challenges the field to go beyond familiar geographical and historical boundaries and draws attention to unfolding colonial futures.

Challenging Colonial Narratives demonstrates that the traditional colonial dichotomy may reflect an artifice of the colonial discourse rather than the lived reality of the past. Matthew A. Beaudoin makes a striking case that comparative research can unsettle many deeply held assumptions and offer a rapprochement of the conventional scholarly separation of colonial and historical archaeology. To create a conceptual bridge between disparate dialogues, Beaudoin examines multigenerational nineteenth-century Mohawk and settler sites in southern Ontario, Canada. He demonstrates that few obvious differences exist and calls for more nuanced interpretive frameworks. Using conventional categories, methodologies, and interpretative processes from Indigenous and settler archaeologies, Beaudoin encourages archaeologists and scholars to focus on the different or similar aspects among sites to better understand the nineteenth-century life of contemporaneous Indigenous and settler peoples. Beaudoin posits that the archaeological record represents people’s navigation through the social and political constraints of their time. Their actions, he maintains, were undertaken within the understood present, the remembered past, and perceived future possibilities. Deconstructing existing paradigms in colonial and postcolonial theories, Matthew A. Beaudoin establishes a new, dynamic discourse on identity formation and politics within the power relations created by colonization that will be useful to archaeologists in the academy as well as in cultural resource management.

: Archaeology has been complicit in the appropriation of indigenous peoples' pasts worldwide. While tales of blatant archaeological colonialism abound from the era of empire, the process also took more subtle and insidious forms. Ian McNiven and Lynette Russell outline archaeology's "colonial culture" and how it has shaped archaeological practice over the past century. Using examples from their native Australia-- and comparative material from North America, Africa, and elsewhere-- the authors show how colonized peoples were objectified by research, had their needs subordinated to those of science, were disassociated from their accomplishments by theories of diffusion, watched their histories reshaped by western concepts of social evolution, and had their cultures appropriated toward nationalist ends. The authors conclude by offering a decolonized archaeological practice through collaborative partnership with native peoples in understanding their past.

"Breaks new ground regarding how to think about colonial encounters in innovative ways that pay attention to a wide range of issues from health and demography to identity formations and adaptation."—Debra L. Martin, coeditor of The Bioarchaeology of Violence "Amply demonstrates the breadth and variability of the impact of colonialism."—Ken Nystrom, State University of New York at New Paltz European expansion into the New World fundamentally altered Indigenous populations. The collision between East and West led to the most recent human adaptive transition that spread around the world. Paradoxically, these are some of the least scientifically understood processes of the human past. Representing a new generation of contact and colonialism studies, this volume expands on the traditional focus on the health of conquered peoples by considering how extraordinary biological and cultural transformations were incorporated into the human body and reflected in behavior, identity, and adaptation. By examining changes in diet, mortuary practices, and diseases, these globally diverse case studies demonstrate that the effects of conquest reach further than was ever thought before—to both the colonized and the colonizers. People on all sides of colonial contact became entangled in cultural and biological transformations of social identities, foodways, social structures, and gene pools at points of contact and beyond. Contributors to this volume illustrate previously unknown and variable effects of colonialism by analyzing skeletal remains and burial patterns from never-before-studied regions in the Americas to the Middle East, Africa, and Europe. The result is the first step toward a new synthesis of archaeology and bioarchaeology. Contributors: Rosabella Alvarez-Calderón | Elliot H. Blair | Maria Fernanda Boza | Michele R. Buzon | Romina Casali | Mark N. Cohen | Danielle N. Cook | Marie Elaine Danforth | J. Lynn Funkhouser | Catherine Gaither | Pamela García Laborde| Ricardo A. Guichón | Rocio Guichón Fernández | Heather Guzik | Amanda R. Harvey | Barbara T. Hester | Dale L. Hutchinson | Kristina Killgrove | Haagen D. Klaus | Clark Spencer Larsen | Alan G. Morris | Melissa S. Murphy | Alejandra Ortiz | Megan A. Perry | Emily S. Renschler | Isabelle Ribot | Melisa A. Salerno | Matthew C. Sanger | Paul W. Sciulli | Stuart Tyson Smith | Christopher M. Stojanowski | David Hurst Thomas | Victor D. Thompson | Vera Tiesler | Jason Toohey | Lauren A. Winkler | Pilar Zabala

This essential handbook explores the relationship between the postcolonial critique and the field of archaeology, a discipline that developed historically in conjunction with European colonialism and imperialism. In aiding the movement to decolonize the profession, the contributors to this volume—themselves from six continents and many representing indigenous and minority communities and disadvantaged countries—suggest strategies to strip archaeological theory and practice of its colonial heritage and create a discipline sensitive to its inherent inequalities. Summary articles review the emergence of the discipline of archaeology in conjunction with colonialism, critique the colonial legacy evident in continuing archaeological practice around the world, identify current trends, and chart future directions in postcolonial archaeological research. Contributors provide a synthesis of research, thought, and practice on their topic. The articles embrace multiple voices and case study approaches, and have consciously aimed to recognize the utility of comparative work and interdisciplinary approaches to understanding the past. This is a benchmark volume for the study of the contemporary politics, practice, and ethics of archaeology. Sponsored by the World Archaeological Congress

Colonial encounters between indigenous peoples and European state powers are overarching themes in the historical archaeology of the modern era, and postcolonial historical archaeology has repeatedly emphasized the complex two-way nature of colonial encounters. This volume examines common trajectories in indigenous colonial histories, and explores new ways to understand cultural contact, hybridization and power relations between indigenous peoples and colonial powers from the indigenous point of view. By bringing together a wide geographical range and combining multiple sources such as oral histories, historical records, and contemporary discourses with archaeological data, the volume finds new multivocal interpretations of colonial histories.

Decolonizing Indigenous Histories makes a vital contribution to the decolonization of archaeology by recasting colonialism within long-term indigenous histories. Showcasing case studies from Africa, Australia, Mesoamerica, and North and South America, this edited volume highlights the work of archaeologists who study indigenous peoples and histories at multiple scales. The contributors explore how the inclusion of indigenous histories, and collaboration with contemporary communities and scholars across the subfields of anthropology, can reframe archaeologies of colonialism. The cross-cultural case studies employ a broad range of methodological strategies—archaeology, ethnohistory, archival research, oral histories, and descendant perspectives—to better appreciate processes of colonialism. The authors argue that these more complicated histories of colonialism contribute not only to understandings of past contexts but also to contemporary social justice projects. In each chapter, authors move beyond an academic artifice of “prehistoric” and “colonial” and instead focus on longer sequences of indigenous histories to better understand colonial contexts. Throughout, each author explores and clarifies the complexities of indigenous daily practices that shape, and are shaped by, long-term indigenous and local histories by employing an array of theoretical tools, including theories of practice, agency, materiality, and temporality. Included are larger integrative chapters by Kent Lightfoot and Patricia Rubertone, foremost North American colonialism scholars who argue that an expanded global perspective is essential to understanding processes of indigenous-colonial interactions and transitions.