Rethinking Colonialism
Rethinking Colonialism
Comparative Archaeological Approaches
“Insightful. Challenges archaeologists to think deeply about how we study colonialism.”—Lee M. Panich, coeditor of Indigenous Landscapes and Spanish Missions: New Perspectives from Archaeology and Ethnohistory
“Manages the rare feat of offering a range of detailed case studies that engage in a much broader comparative debate.”—Peter van Dommelen, coeditor of Rural Landscapes of the Punic World
“Facilitates critical engagement not only with colonialism’s pasts, but perhaps more importantly, with its presents and futures. The volume’s international contributors draw on regional traditions, interpretive frameworks and theoretical perspectives which, in sum, make an important collective contribution to global comparative archaeologies.”— Rodney Harrison, coeditor of Rethinking Colonial Pasts through Archaeology
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.
Craig N. Cipolla, lecturer in historical archaeology and a Marie Curie Research Fellow at the University of Leicester, is the author of Becoming Brothertown: Native American Ethnogenesis and Endurance in the Modern World. Katherine Howlett Hayes, associate professor of anthropology at the University of Minnesota, is the author of Slavery before Race: Europeans, Africans, and Indians at Long Island’s Sylvester Manor Plantation, 1651–1884.
Content List of Figures vii List of Maps ix Preface and Acknowledgments xi 1. Introduction: Re-Imagining Colonial Pasts, Influencing Colonial Futures 1 Katherine H. Hayes and Craig N. Cipolla Part I Colonial Structures Past and Present 2. Colonial Consumption and Community Preservation: From Trade Beads to Taffeta Skirts 17 Craig N. Cipolla 3. Globalizing Poverty: The Materiality of Colonial Inequality and Marginalization 40 Paul R. Mullins and Timo Ylimaunu 4. Indigeneity and Diaspora: Colonialism and the Classification of Displacement 54 Katherine H. Hayes 5. Cultural Colonization without Colonial Settlements: A Case Study in Early Iron Age Temperate Europe 76 Peter S. Wells 6. Colonial Encounters, Time, and Social Innovation 99 Per Cornell 7. Rethinking Colonialism: Indigenous Innovation and Colonial Inevitability 121 Stephen A. Mrozowski, D. Rae Gould, and Heather Law Pezzarossi 8. Materializations of Puritan Ideology at Seventeenth-Century Harvard College 143 Christina J. Hodge, Diana D. Loren, and Patricia Capone 9. Working with Descendant Communities in the Study of Roman Britain: Fragments of an Ethnographic Project Design 161 Richard Hingley 10. The Archaeology of Slavery Resistance in Ancient and Modern Times: An Initial Outlook from a Brazilian Perspective 190 Lúcio Menezes Ferreira and Pedro Paulo A. Funari Part II Looking Back, Moving Forward: Comparative Colonialism and the Future 11. Comparative Colonialism and Indigenous Archaeology: Exploring the Intersections 213 Stephen W. Silliman 12. Comparative Colonialism: Scales of Analysis and Contemporary Resonances 234 Audrey Horning List of Contributors 247 Index 249
