1. science
2. social science
3. history
4. archaeology

BLACKWELL STUDIES IN GLOBAL ARCHAEOLOGY
historical
archaeology
Edited by
Martin Hall and
Stephen W. Silliman
Historical Archaeology
Blackwell Studies in Global Archaeology
Series Editors: Lynn Meskell and Rosemary A. Joyce
Blackwell Studies in Global Archaeology is a series of contemporary texts, each carefully
designed to meet the needs of archaeology instructors and students seeking volumes
that treat key regional and thematic areas of archaeological study. Each volume in the
series, compiled by its own editor, includes 12–15 newly commissioned articles by top
scholars within the volume’s thematic, regional, or temporal area of focus.
What sets the Blackwell Studies in Global Archaeology apart from other available texts is
that their approach is accessible, yet does not sacrifice theoretical sophistication. The
series editors are committed to the idea that useable teaching texts need not lack ambition. To the contrary, the Blackwell Studies in Global Archaeology aim to immerse readers
in fundamental archaeological ideas and concepts, but also to illuminate more advanced
concepts, thereby exposing readers to some of the most exciting contemporary developments in the field. Inasmuch, these volumes are designed not only as classic texts, but
as guides to the vital and exciting nature of archaeology as a discipline.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Mesoamerican Archaeology: Theory and Practice
Edited by Julia A. Hendon and Rosemary A. Joyce
Andean Archaeology
Edited by Helaine Silverman
African Archaeology: A Critical Introduction
Edited by Ann Brower Stahl
Archaeologies of the Middle East: Critical Perspectives
Edited by Susan Pollock and Reinhard Bernbeck
North American Archaeology
Edited by Timothy R. Pauketat and Diana DiPaolo Loren
The Archaeology of Mediterranean Prehistory
Edited by Emma Blake and A. Bernard Knapp
Archaeology of Asia
Edited by Miriam T. Stark
Archaeology of Oceania: Australia and the Pacific Islands
Edited by Ian Lilley
Historical Archaeology
Edited by Martin Hall and Stephen W. Silliman
Historical Archaeology
Edited by
Martin Hall and
Stephen W. Silliman
© 2006 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd
BLACKWELL PUBLISHING
350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148–5020, USA
9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK
550 Swanston Street, Carlton, Victoria 3053, Australia
The right of Martin Hall and Stephen W. Silliman to be identified as the Authors of the Editorial
Material in this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs, and Patents
Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or
otherwise, except as permitted by the UK Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988, without the
prior permission of the publisher.
First published 2006 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd
1 2006
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Historical archaeology / edited by Martin Hall and Stephen W. Silliman.
p. cm. — (Blackwell studies in global archaeology ; 9)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-1-4051-0750-1 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 1-4051-0750-2 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN-13: 978-1-4051-0751-8 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 1-4051-0751-0 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Archaeology and history. I. Hall, Martin, 1952– . II. Silliman,
Stephen W., 1971– . III. Series.
CC77.H5H565 2006
930.1—dc22
2005017584
A catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
Set in 10 on 12.5 pt Plantin
by SNP Best-set Typesetter Ltd, Hong Kong
Printed and bound in India
by Replika Press Ltd
The publisher’s policy is to use permanent paper from mills that operate a sustainable forestry policy,
and which has been manufactured from pulp processed using acid-free and elementary chlorine-free
practices. Furthermore, the publisher ensures that the text paper and cover board used have met
acceptable environmental accreditation standards.
For further information on
Blackwell Publishing, visit our website:
www.blackwellpublishing.com
Contents
List of Figures
vii
Notes on Contributors
ix
Acknowledgments
1Introduction: Archaeology of the Modern World
Martin Hall and Stephen W. Silliman
xiii
1
Part I: Dimensions of Practice
2Environments of History: Biological Dimensions of Historical
Archaeology
Stephen A. Mrozowski
23
3 Material Culture and Text: Exploring the Spaces Within and
Between
Patricia Galloway
42
4The Place of Space: Architecture, Landscape, and Social Life
Elizabeth P. Pauls
65
5Critical Archaeology: Politics Past and Present
Matthew M. Palus, Mark P. Leone, and Matthew D. Cochran
84
Part II: Themes in Interpretation
6Engendered Archaeology: Men, Women, and Others
Barbara L. Voss
107
vi
contents
7Ideology and the Material Culture of Life and Death
Heather Burke
128
8 Struggling with Labor, Working with Identities
Stephen W. Silliman
147
9Exploring the Institution: Reform, Confinement, Social
Change
Lu Ann De Cunzo
167
10 A Class All Its Own: Explorations of Class Formation and
Conflict
LouAnn Wurst
190
Part III: World Systems and Local Living
11Conquistadors, Plantations, and Quilombo: Latin America
in Historical Archaeological Context
Pedro Paulo A. Funari
209
12 Gold, Black Ivory, and Houses of Stone: Historical Archaeology
in Africa
Innocent Pikirayi
230
13 Becoming American: Small Things Remembered
Diana DiPaolo Loren and Mary C. Beaudry
14 Mission, Gold, Furs, and Manifest Destiny: Rethinking an
Archaeology of Colonialism for Western North America
Kent G. Lightfoot
15 Pacific Encounters, or Beyond the Islands of History
Jane Lydon
251
272
293
16 The Tide Reversed: Prospects and Potentials for a Postcolonial
Archaeology of Europe
Matthew Johnson
313
Index
332
Figures
1.1
1.2
3.1
3.2
3.3
3.4
3.5
4.1
5.1
5.2
5.3
6.1
6.2
7.1
7.2
8.1
8.2
9.1
9.2
The Ambassadors, Hans Holbein, 1533
Tupiweib, Albert Eckhout, 1641
Skeletal actor network for historical archaeology
Actor network of object-centered archivization
Actor network of document-centered archivization
General actor network of objects and documents in historical
archaeology
Actor network for Charles Thomas’ Pictish symbol
interpretation
Exterior of reconstructed earthlodge at Knife River Indian
Villages National Historic Site, Stanton, North Dakota
University of Maryland field school students discuss ongoing
excavation in Eastport with Annapolis Planning and Zoning staff
Maisha Washington leads students through an excavation exercise
themed around African-American heritage in Annapolis
Two students in Maisha Washington’s program
Awl handle from Little Rapids
The Narkomfin Communal House
The development of different analytical approaches to studying
ideology in archaeology
William Paca’s Garden, Annapolis, Maryland
Cellar under tent burned by the Colorado National Guard, killing
women and children, Ludlow Colony, 1914
Petaluma Adobe quadrangle, Rancho Petaluma, northern
California
Sanborn Fire Insurance Map of Providence, Rhode Island,
showing the spatial layout of the “Old State Prison” (1838–77)
Rhode Island State Prison (1838–77) exposed during excavations
in 1997
3
15
45
46
50
53
61
77
98
99
100
110
118
131
135
151
155
171
172
viii
9.3
9.4
9.5
11.1
11.2
11.3
12.1
12.2
12.3
13.1
13.2
13.3
14.1
14.2
14.3
14.4 15.1
16.1
16.2
list of figures
A portion of the solitary cells constructed in 1851 at the Ross
Female Factory (1847–55), Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania)
Australia
First floor plan of the Magdalen Society Asylum, Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania (1846–1915)
Fragment of blue transfer printed ceramic plate with natural,
rural, floral imagery symbolic of female purity
Map of Latin America with sites referred to in this chapter and
elsewhere in the volume
Only known contemporary rendering of Palmares in northeastern
Brazil
Pottery from Palmares
Map of Africa with sites, regions, and features referred to in this
chapter
Fort Sao Jorge da Mina (Elmina), the first Portuguese fort along
the Gold Coast, now Ghana, built in 1482
Site of Khami, western Zimbabwe, 1450–1650
Map of eastern North America with sites, regions, and features
referred to in this chapter and elsewhere in the volume
Patuxent Point shroud pin.
Artifacts from Presidio Los Adaes.
Map of western North America with sites, regions, and features
referred to in this chapter and elsewhere in the volume
Russian stockade at Colony (Fort) Ross, Sonoma County coast,
California
Neophyte quarters at La Purisíma Mission, Lompoc, California
View of blockhouse, Fort Vancouver, Oregon coast
Map of the Pacific with sites, regions, and features referred to
in this chapter and elsewhere in the volume
Christopher Saxton’s colored printed map of England and Wales,
published in 1579 as part of Lord Burghley’s Atlas
John Rutter’s rendition (1823) of Fonthill Abbey, Wiltshire,
England, built by William Beckford from 1796 onward
175
177
179
210
222
225
231
236
243
252
262
266
274
276
278
281
295
323
325
Notes on Contributors
Mary C. Beaudry is Professor of Archaeology and Anthropology at Boston University, where she supervises graduate and undergraduate work in historical archaeology. Her chief areas of expertise are historical and industrial archaeology of the
Americas and British Isles. She is a member of the steering committee for the
Contemporary Historical Archaeology & Theory Group, on the editorial board of
Post-Medieval Archaeology, and is author of Findings: The Material Culture of Needlework and Sewing (forthcoming).
Heather Burke lectures in the Department of Archaeology at Flinders University,
Adelaide, South Australia, specializing in historical archaeology, theory and method,
and the representation of the past. Her current research interests are focused on
the archaeology of contact and the colonial process, and her most recent publication
is The Archaeologist’s Field Handbook (2004).
Matthew D. Cochran is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Anthropology,
University College London. His research is centered broadly within material culture
studies, and more narrowly within issues of the experience of space and place. His
thesis project is a comparative ethnographic study of the construction of senses of
place at two contemporary thematic sites – the Annapolis Historic District and the
Arundel Mills Mall, near Annapolis, Maryland.
Lu Ann De Cunzo is Professor of Anthropology, Early American Culture and
Material Culture Studies at the University of Delaware. She is the author of Reform,
Respite, Ritual (1995) on the archaeology of institutions and A Historical Archaeology
of Delaware (2004). Her current work in Delaware focuses on the colonial capital,
New Castle, in the Atlantic world, and capitalism and the cultures of Piedmont
agriculture.
Pedro Paulo A. Funari is Professor of Historical Archaeology, Campinas State
University in Brazil, and a research associate at Illinois State University in the USA
and at Barcelona University in Spain. He is co-editor of Historical Archaeology: Back
notes on contributors
from the Edge (1999) and Global Archaeological Theory (2005). Funari has been senior
South American representative at the World Archaeological Congress (1994–2002)
and acting WAC Secretary (2002–03).
Patricia Galloway is Assistant Professor of Archival Enterprise in the School of
Information at the University of Texas at Austin. During 1979–2000 she was a
historian, archaeologist, archivist, and director of information services at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History. She holds an M.A. and Ph.D. in
comparative literature and a Ph.D. in anthropology, all from the University of North
Carolina-Chapel Hill. Recent publications include Choctaw Genesis 1500–1700
(1995), The Hernando de Soto Expedition (1997), and Practicing Ethnohistory
(2006).
Martin Hall serves as Deputy Vice Chancellor of the University of Cape Town,
having previously held a position as Professor of Historical Archaeology. He has
worked in Kwa-Zulu Natal researching the origins of the Zulu Kingdom and, more
recently, in the southernmost parts of Africa exploring the historical archaeology of
colonialism. He has authored numerous articles and books, including Archaeology
and the Modern World: Colonial Transcripts in South Africa and the Chesapeake (2000)
and Archaeology Africa (1996).
Matthew Johnson is Professor of Archaeology at the University of Southampton,
where he moved in 2004 after 12 years at the University of Durham. His research
interests include archaeological theory, medieval and historic architecture and landscape, and historical archaeology. Matthew has published four books, including An
Archaeology of Capitalism (1995), Archaeological Theory: An Introduction (1999), and
Behind the Castle Gate: From Medieval to Renaissance (2002). His fifth book, Ideas of
Landscape, will appear in 2006.
Mark P. Leone is professor in the Department of Anthropology, University of
Maryland, College Park. He is the director of Archaeology in Annapolis and has
published widely on historical archaeology, critical theory, landscape archaeology,
and the archaeology of African America. His most recent book is The Archaeology
of Liberty in an American Capitol: Excavations in Annapolis (2005).
Kent G. Lightfoot is Professor of Anthropology and Curator of North American
Archaeology (Phoebe Hearst Museum) at the University of California at Berkeley.
He specializes in the archaeology of ancient and colonial history of western North
America. He is currently undertaking research on colonial entanglements between
Native and European peoples in the greater San Francisco Bay Area, as illustrated
by his recent book: Indians, Missionaries, and Merchants (2004).
Diana DiPaolo Loren is an Associate Curator at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University. She is currently conducting research on
collections from French and Spanish colonies in the Eastern USA. Her research
interests include colonialism, creolization, race and identity, museum representations, social theories and the body. She co-edited Blackwell Publishing’s North
American Archaeology (2004).
notes on contributors
xi
Jane Lydon is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Centre for Australian Indigenous
Studies at Monash University. Her publications include Many Inventions:The Chinese
in the Rocks 1890–1930 (1999), Eye Contact: Photographing Indigenous Australians
(2005), and the co-edited Object Lessons: Archaeology and Heritage in Australia
(2005). She is currently working in collaboration with the Indigenous community
on an interdisciplinary project at Ebenezer Mission, north-western Victoria.
Stephen A. Mrozowski is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Massachusetts Boston where he serves as director of the Andrew Fiske Memorial
Center for Archaeological Research. His research interests include historical archaeology, urban archaeology, and archaeological epistemology. He is the co-author of
Living on the Boott: Historical Archaeology at the Boott Mills Boardinghouses, Lowell,
Massachusetts (1996) and co-editor of Lines that Divide: Historical Archaeologies of
Race, Class and Gender (2000).
Matthew M. Palus is associate director of Archaeology in Annapolis and is a
doctoral candidate in the Department of Anthropology, Columbia University. He
is the author of several articles and important site reports from Annapolis. He has
written widely about Eastport, a suburb of Annapolis and a town founded as an
integrated community with property owners of European and African ancestry.
Elizabeth P. Pauls is the State Archaeologist of Iowa and an adjunct assistant
professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Iowa. Her interests include the creation and evolution of past landscapes, the role of architecture
and landscape in daily life, and the interplay of archaeological method and theory,
especially in illuminating gender and family practices during periods of colonialism
and cultural transformation.
Innocent Pikirayi is Senior Lecturer in Archaeology in the Department of Anthropology and Archaeology at the University of Pretoria. He has published widely on
Zimbabwean archaeology, including the historical archaeology of the Mutapa State,
and the Zimbabwe Culture from the early second millennium to the late 19th
century. He is currently researching the politics of archaeology in southern Africa,
the archaeology of the Mapungubwe phase of the Zimbabwe Culture, and the
demise of Great Zimbabwe.
Stephen W. Silliman is Assistant Professor of Anthropology and the Graduate
Program Director for the Master’s Program in Historical Archaeology at the University of Massachusetts Boston. His research focuses on Native North America,
historical archaeology, colonial and postcolonial studies, practice theory, and indigenous archaeology. He recently published Lost Laborers in Colonial California
(2004).
Barbara L. Voss is an Assistant Professor of Cultural and Social Anthropology at
Stanford University, where she also teaches in the interdisciplinary Archaeology and
Feminist Studies programs. She currently conducts research at the archaeological
site of El Presidio de San Francisco, a Spanish-colonial military settlement. She is
also the director of the Market Street Chinatown Archaeology Project, a study of
xii
notes on contributors
a collection of artifacts from the first Overseas Chinese neighborhood in San Jose,
California.
LouAnn Wurst is Associate Professor and Co-Chair of Anthropology at SUNY
College at Brockport. Her research focuses on issues of class, ideology, and gender
in the 19th century. Most of her field work has concentrated on local upstate New
York sites, and she has excavated farmsteads, rural stage coach taverns, large hotels
in Niagara Falls, and urban dwellings to elucidate aspects of everyday life. She is
currently working on a project located in the Finger Lakes National Forest to
examine how farm families dealt with the economic transformations of the 19th
century through the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1
We would like to thank the contributors to this volume for their hard work and
dedication to this project and for their inspiring work that helped ground this
introduction. We express gratitude to Rosemary Joyce and Lynn Meskell for their
vision as series editors and to Jane Huber and Emily Martin for their high-quality
production work, patience, and always friendly demeanor and encouragement. We
would also like to thank Craig Cipolla for helping to produce the maps for chapters
11–15, Tom Witt for doing preliminary manuscript copy-editing, and Leonie
Twentyman Jones for indexing and proofreading the final manuscript.
Chapter 2
Several individuals have discussed the issues outlined in this paper. I would like to
thank Heather Trigg, David Landon, and Robert Paynter for their help in sorting
out certain ideas. I would also like to thank Steve Silliman and Martin Hall for
their help in fine-tuning some of the themes discussed in the paper. Any short­
comings are of course the responsibility of the author.
Chapter 3
I would like to thank Clifford Long, who created a marvelous work environment
for excavations in Trondheim in the late 1970s, where sunlight at midnight gave me
time to explore the archaeological literature of northern Europe.
xiv
acknowledgments
Chapter 4
I owe thanks to the many people who helped to foster this essay. Steve Silliman and
Martin Hall were generous in inviting me to contribute to this volume, and even
more generous with their comments and patience as I completed the piece. My
interests in landscape began during graduate studies at the Department of Anthropology at the University of California at Berkeley, a venue that allowed me to develop
professional relationships with Steve and Martin as well as with spatial scholars
including Barbara Bender, Jim Deetz, Paul Groth, Matthew Johnson, and Ruth
Tringham. On the Plains, Stan Ahler, Bob Gardner, Ken and Joanne Kvamme, Paul
Picha, Donna Roper, Fern Swenson, Dennis Toom, Mary Whelan, and Ray Wood
have been invaluable field companions, while Gerard and Mary Kay Baker, Elaine
Buchholz, Bill and Linda Lutz, Frieda and Henry Miller, Cheri Stromme, and the
staff at Knife River Indian Village National Historic Site have provided a variety of
cultural insights and research support. The Office of the State Archaeologist, an
organized research unit at the University of Iowa, has been a congenial and lively
place to work on these and other archaeological issues; I very much appreciate the
support provided to that office and to me personally by Bill Decker, Interim Vice
President for Research. Finally, Erik and Nick Pauls and Pat and Jim Milford have
provided me with unvarying personal support throughout the years. I thank all of
you, while acknowledging that any errors in this chapter remain my own.
Chapter 5
The authors are grateful for consistent and generous support for Archaeology in
Annapolis provided by the Mayor and the City Council members of Annapolis. Dr.
Thomas W. Cuddy, Curator of Archaeology for the Historic Annapolis Foundation,
provided help and collegiality for the work described in this article. Ms. Maisha
Washington created and ran the science workshops for African-American youngsters that were run through the Banneker-Douglass Museum in Annapolis. The
authors are grateful to her for her generosity. In addition we thank Ms. Peg Wallace,
founder of the Annapolis Maritime Museum in Eastport, for bringing us to her
community. Alderman Josh Cohen supported our research in Eastport, as did eight
host families who permitted us to excavate on their properties and learn about their
homes between 2001 and 2004. Finally Professor Nan Rothschild has been consistent in her support for Archaeology in Annapolis, and contributes intellectually
through her membership on the dissertation committee of Matthew Palus.
Chapter 7
This chapter has been greatly improved as a result of detailed comments from
Stephen Silliman and Martin Hall and conversations with Jane Lydon and Mark
acknowledgments
xv
Leone. Jody Steele took the photograph of William Paca’s garden and has kindly
allowed me to use it here.
Chapter 8
I extend thanks to Paul Shackel and Martin Hall for their comments and suggestions on this chapter, but I also appreciate those other colleagues who have
also discussed various dimensions of an archaeology of labor with me over the
years: Jeanne Arnold, Mark Cassell, Julia Costello, Paul Farnsworth, David Landon,
Kent Lightfoot, Barbara Little, Randy McGuire, Steve Mrozowski, Alistair
Paterson, and LouAnn Wurst. However, fault no one but me for what is contained
herein.
Chapter 9
My debt of gratitude for this chapter extends back to its origins in the late 1980s,
when my colleagues at Clio Group, Inc. of Philadelphia supported my first foray
into the archaeology of institutions at the Magdalen Society asylum. Since then, I
have benefited from productive dialogues with, and the provocative scholarship on
institutions of, archaeologists Sherene Baugher, Mary Beaudry, Eleanor Conlin
Casella, James Garman, Roberta Gilchrist, Suzanne Spencer-Wood, and others. I
am especially grateful for the opportunity to look beyond the Magdalen Society
that Stephen Silliman and Martin Hall provided with the invitation to prepare this
chapter, and for their thoughtful comments on early drafts. Eleanor Conlin Casella,
James Garman, and the Philadelphia Contributionship graciously provided images
and permissions to publish them.
Chapter 11
I owe thanks to the following colleagues who forwarded papers (sometimes
unpublished ones), exchanged ideas and helped me in different ways: Scott
Joseph Allen, Margarita Díaz-Andreu, Mark Graham, Carlos Magno Guimarães,
Matthew Johnson, Simon Keay, Paulo Miceli, William Mierse, Charles E. Orser,
Jr., Michael Shanks, Christopher Tilley, and Peter Ucko. My special thanks go
to Martin Hall and Stephen Silliman for their comments and suggestions. The
ideas expressed here are my own, for which I alone am therefore responsible. I
must also mention the institutional support and funding, on different occasions,
from the The World Archaeological Congress, Brazilian National Research
Council (CNPq), São Paulo State Research Foundation (FAPESP), and the
Campinas State University, especially its Center for Strategic Studies (NEE/
UNICAMP).
xvi
acknowledgments
Chapter 12
Many thanks to Dores Maria Cruz for the photograph of Elmina and Craig Cipolla
(University of Massachusetts Boston) for preparing the map. I would also like to
acknowledge Professor Martin Hall and Stephen Silliman for their insightful criticisms on earlier versions of this paper, and Dr. Andrew Reid for encouraging me
to think broadly on the scope and potential of African historical archaeologies.
Chapter 13
The authors would like to thank Martin Hall and Steve Silliman for the opportunity
to participate in this publication. We also wish to thank Timothy Riordan, Senior
Research Archaeologist, Historic St. Mary’s City, Maryland, for generously providing an advance copy of his report on the Chapel Field burials at St. Mary’s City,
and Julia A. King, Director, Maryland Archaeological Conservation Laboratory, for
sharing data regarding the burials at Patuxent Point and for securing permission
for us to use the illustration of one of the shroud pins from that site. Thanks also
go to Pete Gregory, Northwestern State University, and George Avery, Los Adaes
Station Archaeologist, for generously sharing data on the Los Adaes collections.
Chapter 14
I appreciate very much the kind invitation of Steve Silliman and Martin Hall to
participate in this volume and to think about the broader implications of colonialism on the Pacific Coast. My sincere thanks to Roberta Jewett, Martin Hall, and
Steve Silliman for their constructive comments on earlier drafts of this chapter.
Chapter 15
I wish to thank numerous colleagues working around the Pacific for their generosity in sharing their expertise with me, in particular Harry Allen, Stuart Bedford,
Liam Brady, Tim Denham, Rodney Harrison, Ian Lilley, Tim Murray, Alistair Paterson, Nigel Prickett, Paul Rainbird, Lynette Russell, Christophe Sand, Anita
Smith, Ian Smith, and Matthew Spriggs.
Chapter 16
I thank Martin Hall and Steve Silliman for asking me to write this chapter, since
the process of writing it has made me realize how little I had hitherto reflected on
acknowledgments
xvii
its subject. I was fortunate to be asked to examine Dan Hicks’ Ph.D. thesis; Dan’s
writing further alerted me to the importance of Eric Williams’ work, and of the
history and archaeology of Bristol in particular. I am grateful to Tadhg O’Keeffe
for many fruitful discussions that informed both the general thrust of this article
and its comments on Ireland, though I take sole responsibility for the views
expressed.
Chapter 1
Introduction: Archaeology of
the Modern World
Martin Hall and Stephen W. Silliman
Introduction
“Historical Archaeology” means different things to different people. For some, the
field is the archaeology of European colonial expansion and subsequent postColumbian peoples (Falk 1991; Leone 1995; Paynter 2000a). For others, it is the
archaeology of capitalism (Leone and Potter 1988:19). For yet others, historical
archaeology is the outcome of the rich play between word and object, text and
artifact (e.g., Andrén 1998). Many believe that this latter aspect defines historical
archaeology by its method rather than its content (Orser 1996a:23–24; see also
Schuyler 1978) or by the uniqueness of the written word for inscribing history
(Funari et al. 1999a:9–10).
At the same time, many who study the periods for which documents exist, particularly those outside of the Americas, do not in fact refer to themselves as “historical archaeologists.” Instead, they label their work by general period, such as
Roman or Post-medieval, or by regional focus, such as Egyptology or Classical
Greek studies. Primarily in North America, with the advent of the Society for Historical Archaeology and its journal in 1967 (Pilling 1967) and particularly with the
work and influence of James Deetz (1994), does the label “Historical Archaeology”
come to demarcate the study of post-Columbian, literate colonial societies as distinct from the study of precontact indigenous ones. It is also in this context that
debates about historical archaeology’s disciplinary alignments flare, as practitioners
variably propose allegiances to anthropology or history. This “New World” usage
has, as of late, proven to be problematic given the rigid, artificial boundary set up
between “prehistory” and “history” (Lightfoot 1995; see also Funari 1999:39) and
given the literate traditions among the Maya in Mesoamerica that render them part
of a historical archaeology defined by the presence of writing. Yet, few historical
archaeologists would consider Mayan archaeology part of their subdiscipline.
Our purpose in this volume is neither to presume to resolve such questions of
martin hall and stephen w. silliman
delineation, nor to map the field. Our objective is rather to stretch and further
complicate questions such as these in the belief that dissent at the frontiers of
knowledge creation is the symptom of a healthy field of enquiry with a long and
valuable life ahead of it.
This said, we do need an organizing concept to frame and introduce the chapters
that comprise this volume. Here, a useful framework is that of an archaeology of
the modern world (cf. Hall 2000; Orser 1996a). Archaeology as a discipline is
conceptualized within the epistemology of modernity, and depends on the precepts of intellectual enquiry launched in the Renaissance and reformulated in the
Enlightenment. Early modern modes of enquiry were inseparable from the economic and political interests, and technological advances, that impelled exploration,
trade, and conquest first from the Mediterranean region and then from northern
Europe. The combination of such economic imperatives and new technologies – primarily in shipbuilding and navigation – enabled the collections of curiosities and
written records of encounters that were to become the substance of subsequent
intellectual work. Hans Holbein’s magnificent portrait of The Ambassadors captures
this conceptual transition (Figure 1.1). Clothed in all the finery of the “rich trade”
to exotic lands, the ambassadors pose with the instruments of navigation that enable
their prosperity and the maps of their new geographies. But their celebration is
qualified by the certainty of death and loss – Holbein’s tantalizing visual trick of a
skull suspended in the foreground of the picture, forcing a second and distorted
perspective on this new world of discovery (Berger 1972; Hall 2000).
Understood in this way, historical archaeology is about a process rather than
an era or a condition. Instead of introducing a classic archaeological “age” or
historian’s “period” or even a notion of “literacy” as primary, the contributors to
this volume explore differing perspectives on the processes that have formed and
shaped modernity, and the way that the past is understood from the perspective of
the present. This, of course, means that the chapters negotiate the various definitions of historical archaeology by taking up issues of texts and artifacts, of colonialism, and of capitalism, but not by restricting or organizing every theme around
them. In the second section of this volume, five contributors explore aspects of the
modern world from some of the differing and often overlapping intellectual strands
of modernity and postmodernity: class (Wurst, this volume), labor (Silliman, this
volume), ideology (Burke, this volume), the Foucauldian institution (De Cunzo,
this volume), and gender (Voss, this volume). Other chapters pursue additional
strands, sometimes complementary, sometimes contradictory: the role of environment (Mrozowski, this volume), space as a formative dimension (Pauls, this volume),
and identity and nation (Johnson, this volume; Loren and Beaudry, this volume;
Lydon, this volume). The point is not that these different strands can, or should,
be reconciled as a synthesis, as a grand narrative of an age. It is rather than these
chapters demonstrate, through richly worked cases, the diverse archaeological and
material ways in which we try to understand the modern and postmodern world
which enables and advances the practice of archaeology itself. As a result, historical
archaeology helps track the role of these histories in the present world, not only as
precursors and trendsetters, but also as public memories and heritage that are
introduction: archaeology of the modern world
Figure 1.1 The Ambassadors, Hans Holbein, 1533, Oil on wood, National Gallery, London
sometimes forgotten, sometimes memorialized, sometimes distorted, but always
mobilized for a multitude of purposes.
Eras, Periods, and Processes
Thinking about modernity as process rather than period helps avoid a trap to
which archaeology seems particularly vulnerable. Our discipline’s obsession with
“ages” has the most practical of lineages: any science of the past with a claim to
Enlightenment respectability required a chronology and, before the revolution of
radiometric dating techniques, chronology depended on stratification and the geological principle of uniformitarianism. In turn, the need to be able to distinguish
martin hall and stephen w. silliman
the earlier from the later made the easy identification of the “typical” imperative.
Despite new dating techniques, statistical and computer-based approaches to artifact classification, and a large literature on the theory and practice of typologies,
archaeologists often focus on the “normal” and “representative,” and discount the
evidence for history on the margins and in times of transition. Sub-Saharan Africa,
for example, has long lineages of “Stone Age Archaeology” and “Iron Age Archaeology” that are reinforced by the design of university curricula, museum collections, specialist conferences, and editorial policies for academic journals (Trigger
1990). Comparatively few archaeologists study the dynamics of transition and change
at the margins of these Ages – what happened when “Stone Age” hunter-gatherers
and pastoralists encountered and interacted with “Iron Age” farmers and herders
(Hall 1990). Similarly, American historical archaeologists such as Stanley South
(1977, 1978), who sought to develop “pattern analysis,” emphasized the normative
material culture signature of colonizing groups in North America, such as Spanish
and British, rather than the complex interdigitations of cultures and practices and
the multiethnic interactions in colonial communities. But it can be argued that these
processes at the “margin” are the more interesting incubators of historical process,
and the more profitable places to develop interpretations of process.
Historical archaeology has an ambivalent relationship with chronology and
typology. On the one hand, it is sometimes assumed – erroneously – that chronology
is not an issue in historical archaeology since we have texts and well-known industrial
manufacturing dates to aid us, and because many historical archaeologists pursue
whole projects that could be contained within the standard deviation of a single
radiocarbon date. This misses two points. Firstly, many “texts” are in fact constructed
archives that themselves require interpretation (Galloway, this volume; Johnson
1999). Neither chronology nor anything else can be simply “read” from the written
word. Secondly, the degree of precision required is context specific – ten years either
way can matter a great deal in interpreting, for example, early Spanish or Russian
settlement on the Pacific coast of North America (Lightfoot, this volume).
Further – and perhaps because chronology is as challenging for historical
archaeology as for other archaeologies – interest in normative types as definitive
and diagnostic of periods is as alive in the archaeology of the 18th century C.E. as
it is in the 18th century B.C.E. Standing backstage in many of the chapters of this
volume are the eminences of historical archaeology’s formative years – influential
actors such as Ivor Noël Hume, Stanley South, and James Deetz. Their archive and
patrimony are the stacked volumes of the journal Historical Archaeology, and the
debates over ceramic classifications, patterns in artifact assemblages that can be
read as typical of plantation slavery or culture contact, or the “Georgian Order” as
manifestation of a “worldview” diagnostic of emerging colonial identities. But as
several contributors to this volume show, attention to identifying “patterns,” “worldviews,” and “orders” can sacrifice process – the interpretation of history and the
awareness of change – to classification and stasis. Thus Beaudry and Loren (this
volume), evoking Deetz’s emphasis on the explanatory power of “small things,”
disaggregate the concept of a unified “American identity” and introduce a set of
more complex questions about identity formation and difference within the idea of
introduction: archaeology of the modern world
a nation. Silliman (this volume) shows how models of “acculturation,” which
assume that colonization brings together different ethnicities that easily meld into
new and distinct “types,” can render invisible the labor relations that were definitive
of historical process at the frontier. Similarly, Pikirayi (this volume) shows how the
conventions of an earlier historical archaeology have exiled African societies from
the storyboard in a double colonization that has seen conquest followed by the
denial of a place in history, the rendering of Africa as the timeless continent of
Conrad, Ridder Haggard, and Disney (Hall 2001).
The re-centering of process that is a strong, directing current beneath the surface
of these chapters unveils mirrors that can reflect back on modernity in fresh ways.
Funari (this volume) explores an Iberian intellectual tradition given emphasis by
contemporary debates in Latin American archaeology and still under-appreciated in
the Anglophone literature. Here, historical archaeology has remained connected with
history and therefore with narrative and the exploration of change. This has promoted
a reading of colonial life in Latin America that is integrated with the early modern
state in Spain and Portugal, the interaction of Catholicism and Islam, and the formative influence of the Roman Empire. This same frame of reference has stimulated
inquiry into slave runaway communities as societies-in-the-making, precisely those
people who are rendered “atypical” in earlier archaeological conventions that sought
the artifact patterns or worldviews of “normal” slave communities in the Chesapeake
or Caribbean (if, that is, the concept of “normal” slave life is to be allowed).
Lightfoot (this volume) argues for shifting the experience and perspective of Native
Americans to center stage in the archaeology of conquest and colonial settlement
along the Pacific seaboard. He shows how typological conventions serve to render
Native Americans invisible in archaeological conventions once they are assumed
immersed in colonial life (see also Silliman 2005). What, Lightfoot inquires, if we
were to shift the register, and see the process of colonization from the perspective of
the colonized? Lydon (this volume) asks the same question from the vantage point
of the Pacific’s 7,500 islands, pointing out that the ethnography of the Pacific has
long shaped Europe’s view of itself as civilized and as a civilizing agency. How can
archaeology provide a different, more critical, mirror on modernity? And Johnson
(this volume), reflecting self-critically on his own work and others’, peels open
Britain’s obsession with itself, and the assumption that process and change are driven
from within. How, Johnson asks, is social and economic change in port cities such
as Bristol to be explained when existing interpretations deny the slave trade that made
merchant families rich beyond their dreams, and the far-away plantations where they
developed their own savage society of colonization and left their genes?
These concerns with the way that history unfolds as narrative have at their heart
a common interest in the material world, an interest with what Arjun Appadurai
has termed the “social life of things” (Appadurai 1986). This materiality is appropriately eclectic, ranging from thimbles (Loren and Beaudry, this volume) to cities
and landscapes (Pauls, this volume), and from the residues of first colonial contact
by Portuguese adventurers touching the shores of West Africa (Pikarayi, this
volume) to the architecture of Victorian England (Johnson, this volume). Other
work – not represented here – connects us to our individual pasts: to industrial
martin hall and stephen w. silliman
archaeology (Casella and Symonds 2005; Gordon and Malone 1994; Stratton and
Trinder 2000) and the post-industrial world (Casella and Symonds 2005). James
Deetz recalled an existential moment when, excavating a pit in the Chesapeake, he
unearthed a vertically buried Buick with a registration plate younger than he was
(personal communication to Hall, 1989). For archaeologists, as professionals in a
quintessentially modernist discipline, an archaeology of the modern world is an
archaeology of ourselves.
The Direction of Historical Archaeology
Historical archaeology is practiced the world over in a myriad of forms, and this
volume attempts to capture some of that diversity. As a theme-driven volume, we
do not pretend that this book covers all the permutations and possibilities of global
historical archaeology, although we have designed it to chart the terrain of contemporary theory and practice and to outline a variety of ways forward. We have also
taken a distinctly global approach in coverage within and across chapters. Even
though it complicates any easy historical synthesis of the field as a whole (see
Andrén 1998 for an attempt), this focus helps to fill a current lacuna in the historical archaeology literature that can service advanced students, scholars in other
disciplines, and a broad public audience.
Readers will realize that the book means “global historical archaeology” in two
senses: first, to emphasize the nature of worldwide connections in the modern world
that structure but do not determine the on-the-ground lives of people; and second,
to introduce the varieties of historical archaeology practiced in different parts of
the world today. The intersections, parallels, contrasts, and cross-fertilizations
should prove fruitful for readers and contributors alike since historical archaeologists, particularly Americanist ones, often do not know much about historical
archaeology outside of North America. Chapters in the first two parts of the book
draw on cases from a multitude of geographical areas, but the final section grounds
a number of the historical archaeological themes and theories in particular regional
settings. We made conscious decisions to include those areas with substantial historical archaeological research – Eastern North America, Western North America,
Latin America, Africa, the Pacific, and England – realizing that this would necessitate leaving out critical research elsewhere due to space constraints.
In its focus primarily on themes and secondarily on geography, the book also
does not provide chapters geared toward specific topics that otherwise comprise
distinct subfields within historical archaeology. This does not mean that the content
of those distinct fields cannot be found throughout the book. A prime example is
the historical archaeology of the African Diaspora, a topic that has assumed a
prominent role in contemporary archaeology with respect to slavery and race in the
Americas (Mullins 1999; Orser 1999; Singleton 1995, 1999, 2004; Singleton and
Bograd 1995; Wilkie 2000, 2003) and in African homelands (DeCorse 1997, 2001;
Kelly 1997, 2001). This broader theme informs many of the chapters that follow.
For instance, Palus, Leone, and Cochran (this volume) discuss critical theory with
introduction: archaeology of the modern world
respect to African-American archaeology in Annapolis, Pikirayi (this volume) synthesizes the historical archaeology of Africa, and Silliman (this volume) considers
the lives and struggles of enslaved and emancipated laborers of African descent in
the context of racializing discourses and work experiences in the USA.
Another example of a topical realm not foregrounded as a distinct chapter,
despite its exponential growth in recent years, is the archaeology of “culture contact,”
or what might be more properly labeled the historical archaeology of indigenous
people or the archaeology of colonialism (Cusick 1998; Lightfoot 1995; Murray
2004; Rubertone 2000; Silliman 2004b, 2005). Instead, various chapters pick up
the relevant themes that pertain to Native Americans and other indigenous people
in the context of historical archaeology, such as labor (Silliman, this volume),
gender (Voss, this volume), and space (Pauls, this volume). In addition, the geographically centered chapters deal with indigenous experiences in the American
West (Lightfoot, this volume), parts of the Eastern United States (Loren and
Beaudry, this volume), Latin America (Funari, this volume), Africa (Pikirayi, this
volume), and the Pacific (Lydon, this volume).
As a complement to this volume, readers can consult introductory texts for basic
information on historical archaeology (Orser 2004), compilations (De Cunzo and
Jameson 2005; Orser 1996b), encyclopedic versions for brief synopses (Orser 2002),
or offerings for precollegiate students (Greene 2001). In addition, several extended
review articles cover theoretical trends in the discipline (Little 1994; Paynter 2000a,
2000b). Moreover, this is also not a “methods” book because we do not define
historical archaeology by its method and because the choice of methods depends
on the context and focus of specific archaeological research. Besides, other books
have already captured some of the diverse material culture studies that fall under
the rubric of historical archaeology (Brauner 2000; Karklins 2000) and have placed
them into student-friendly exercises (Barber 1994). Yet, Galloway’s chapter (this
volume) does carefully consider the theoretical process that undergirds archaeological methodologies for combining written documents and material artifacts. This
builds on the work of other historical archaeologists who have devoted effort to
carefully examining the methodological interplay of things and words (Andrén
1998; Beaudry 1988; Deagan and Scardaville 1985; Johnson 1999; Leone 1988;
Leone and Potter 1988; Little 1992).
Themes in Historical Archaeology
Given this context, there is, then, an openness in the themes that follow, representing a field of enquiry that is resistant to classification. Some might even link
the openness to the particularity and the beneficial fragmentation of historical
archaeology that was poignantly identified by Johnson (1999). The extent of the
project that lies ahead is well captured by Johnson (this volume:page 316) once
again, looking outward from the point of origin of colonial expansion: “the theory
underlying European historical archaeology, whether implicit or explicit, has tended
often to militate against explicit consideration of things colonial. This has been such
martin hall and stephen w. silliman
a dominant and implicit position in most of the literature that Europe, and even
countries and regions within Europe, could be mistaken for hermetically sealed
units rather than engaged in a web of social and material relations that by the end
of our period and arguably soon after the start of it stretched across the globe.”
This promise of an enhanced understanding can be expressed in six dimensions of
inquiry: scale, agency, materiality, meaning, identity, and representation.
Scale
Firstly, the dimension of scale. How does a historical archaeology of the modern
world hold in the same frame attention to the “small things forgotten” of everyday
life and particular individuals and the global system of distribution characteristic
of modernity? The biography of that most ubiquitous of objects – the clay tobacco
pipe – captures the possibilities inherent in such issues of scale. Mass produced in
17th-century Dutch cities and branded with distinctive maker’s marks, crates of
tobacco pipes on a wharf in Amsterdam could be dispatched to New Amsterdam
(New York), Mauritzstad (Brazil), the Cape of Good Hope at the southernmost tip
of Africa, the Indonesian entrepôts of the Dutch East India Company, or an underwater Australian reef. As artifacts, they provide information on chronology, trade
and barter, individual habits or global trade patterns, and can be “read” at the level
of the feature, site, or region.
Several chapters in this volume explore the properties and possibilities of scale.
As Johnson (this volume:page 318) puts it, “the major task facing European historical archaeology, and indeed historical archaeology in general, is not to shift focus
to an exclusively larger scale, but to grasp the relationship between the small-scale
and local, wider processes of transformation, and the colonial experience.” Pauls
(this volume:page 67), in her essay on space in historical archaeology, has a similar
concern: “At what locus does the action of the human experience truly take place?
Which scale of analysis holds the most explanatory power?” Pauls sees value in
distinguishing between “space” and “place,” with the latter imbued with the consequences of experience – the artifacts, mementoes, and memories that are the grist
of archaeological interpretation. In a complementary fashion, Funari (this volume)
moves across both the grand sweep of colonialism – the ties that bind together the
histories of Spain, Portugal, and Iberian America – and the detailed formation of
culture and language, the modes of expression at the level of the individual. For his
part, Mrozowski (this volume) uses the scalar qualities of historical archaeology
skillfully to reintroduce the contentious issue of the environment as a factor in
history. Accepting that the individual body is the core site at which nature and
culture intersect, Mrozowski widens the frame to include landscapes, cities, and
industrial complexes as interactive ecologies.
It is clear that there has yet to be a full appreciation of the inherent possibilities
of scale in historical archaeology. At one level, there are clear omissions. Historical
archaeology tends to be both Eurocentric and Anglophile (Funari 1999). While this
can be mitigated by associating the field with modernity – understood as a par-
introduction: archaeology of the modern world
ticular non-exclusive mode of thought – there is as yet little engagement with the
other world systems of the past millennium. Both Pikirayi (this volume) and Funari
(this volume) show the rich possibilities of the interface with Islam, whether in the
syncretic cultural traditions of the East African littoral, the cultural landscapes of
North Africa, or the historical archaeology of Andalusia, and the symbolic politics
of mosques and cathedrals. At another level, rich possibilities rest in as yet unrealized
connections across scales. For example, historical archaeology now has as established subfields the study of plantation slavery in the Chesapeake and Caribbean
(Singleton 1999, 2004; Singleton and Bograd 1995), the study of maroon societies
in Brazil (Funari, this volume), and the archaeology of Gold Coast slave castles in
Africa (DeCorse 2001; Pikirayi, this volume). But these have yet to be integrated
into a comprehensive archaeology of slavery that links these local manifestations as
an archaeology of both local servitude and the reach of the triangular trade that
connected Europe, West Africa, and the Caribbean, and enabled the emergence of
new elites in Europe’s port cities (Hicks 2000; Johnson, this volume).
Agency
A second dimension of the chapters in this volume is agency – how to interpret the
“absent presence” behind the artifacts, the force driving the process of history. This
is a key issue for all archaeology, for the artifact is usually part of an assemblage,
and the assemblage is a palimpsest of individual activities. It is an accentuated issue
for historical archaeology for two reasons. Firstly, there are again the properties of
scale, since historical archaeology works both at the point of individual action and
at the scale of world systems. Secondly, historical archaeologists usually work with
both artifacts and texts, and texts often identify individuals. For example, a household assemblage may invite interpretation as a “pattern” – a statistical representation of inferred behavior, drawn from the proportional recovery of different types
of artifacts. At the same time, the site from which the assemblage came may
have a probate record, listing the possessions of a named individual. How is the
archaeologist to use these rather different categories of evidence to interpret the
agency shaping the processes of history? This was the question so eloquently tackled
by James Deetz (1994) in his In Small Things Forgotten, and the continuing challenge
of agency in interpretation accounts for the continuing relevance of Deetz’s essay,
some thirty years on.
Pauls (this volume), in her chapter on landscape, architecture, and social life,
sees space as a way of conceptualizing the various expressions of agency that shape
the archaeological record. Pauls perceives space as the connection between the
individual and the world, the significance of “the connections between physical
space, the constant negotiation of individual and group identities, and the bodily
experiences associated with specific spaces and activities” (Pauls, this volume:
page 70). She stresses the “tangled, recursive web” of these interactions – a theme
taken up by Mrozowski (this volume) in his consideration of environment as agency.
Mrozowski notes that structuralist archaeology left little role for environmental
10
martin hall and stephen w. silliman
influence, since the search for the abstracted, structural determinants of
“worldview” assumed the preeminence of culture over nature. One could extend
Mrozowski’s criticism to the Marxist tradition of archaeological interpretation: for
Palus, Leone, and Cochran (this volume) and Wurst (this volume), the determinant
of change in history is the dialectics of class. For this Western tradition of Marxist
interpretation, the economic and social relations of production are the key to understanding agency. Mrozowski seeks to reinsert the environment into archaeological
interpretation by differentiating between different regimes of interaction with the
natural world, avoiding the dangers of a generalizing essentialism. Both Pauls and
Mrozowski, along with Galloway (1991, this volume) in her consideration of the
relationship between texts and artifacts, stress the importance of archaeological
technique in opening up new windows on agency: advances in geographical information systems that allow the command of vast arrays of new data on landscapes,
improved excavation techniques, and the detailed environmental evidence that
comes from palynology, botany, parasitology, soil chemistry, zooarchaeology, and
similar fields.
Materiality
In many respects, these approaches are still works in progress, but they hinge on
the third theme, that of materiality. Historical archaeology’s challenge and perhaps
its strength is that it does not have a dominant theory of the material world to call
its own. In this respect, De Cunzo’s (this volume) essay on the archaeology of the
institution is provocative. For De Cunzo, studies of institutions “share a concern
with the culture and economy of capitalism and relationships of power in the
modern world. They recount the social, political, and moral acts of establishing
institutional places. They outline the goals and purposes of these ‘places of
Othering,’ ‘power containers,’ and ‘protected places of disciplinary monotony.’ They
explore their missions to create and maintain the social body through action on
individual bodies, souls, and minds. They probe acts intended to transform, reform,
and punish. They seek to understand conceptions of identity, madness, deviance,
and normalcy in different times and places” (De Cunzo:page 182). Building on
Foucault, De Cunzo shows how a range of studies have used the concept of the
institution to connect, on the one hand, the individual and collectivized manifestations of power in actions and behavior with, on the other hand, the material
manifestation of the institution. Places such as prisons, schools, hospitals, churches,
and mosques evidence a collective agency – individualized actions shaped and
regulated by the forces of modernity. Landscapes, as De Cunzo shows with the
evocative example of the work of convict gangs in Australia, can be interpreted as
both the consequence and determinant of institutionalized behavior.
To grapple with materiality, historical archaeology owes much either directly to
Marx, or to subsequent theorists writing in, or in response to, Marx’s work: Louis
Althusser, Michel Foucault, Pierre Bourdieu. The other major theoretical thread is
structuralism: Claude Levi-Strauss via Henry Glassie to James Deetz. Often seen
introduction: archaeology of the modern world
11
as incompatible, with archaeological structuralism trending to the ahistorical, it has
been Johnson’s self-depreciated achievement to incorporate the Georgian Order into
an archaeology of capitalism (Johnson 1996, this volume). What still remains incomplete, however, is a distinctively archaeological theory of materiality. The contributions in this volume have benefited from conceptual bricolage, drawing profitably
from other disciplines for theoretical tools that open valuable windows of interpretation on the complex world of objects. However, the subject matter of historical
archaeology allows an understanding of the nonverbal language of things through
both space and time, offering exciting theoretical possibilities for the future.
Meaning
A fourth dimension follows from this concern with agency and materiality: in
looking for meaning, how do historical archaeologists read and interpret their
various sources of evidence – text, oral tradition, artifact, landscape – to write their
stories? Because archaeology is an eclectic discipline, lacking a dominant theoretical consensus, concepts of what constitutes meaning can be quite varied. Several
contributors make this point. Funari (this volume), for example, points out that
while North American archaeologists tend to be strongly influenced by anthropology, their Latin American counterparts are more strongly influenced by history,
art history, and architecture. For Johnson (this volume), the disjunction between
historical archaeology and post-medieval archaeology in Britain is due to the latter’s
alignment with history. For his part, Pikirayi (this volume) questions the appropriateness of privileging texts in searching for meaning, and argues for an archaeology that finds meaning in the past through looking at material culture alongside
oral history and ethnography. Palus, Leone, and Cochran (this volume), as well as
Wurst (this volume), approach the past from a Marxist tradition and therefore seek
meaning in the dialectics of this historical process. But Burke (this volume) makes
the point that there is little evidence of a consensus around concepts critical to
interpretation: “Is ideology just another word for ideas? Is there a standard of accuracy relevant to ideology, or is it all necessarily ‘false consciousness’? Does ideology
require that its constituent beliefs be clearly articulated, or can it rely on implicit
beliefs? Does ideology only refer to shared beliefs, or is it ever possible to refer to
an individual’s ideology?” (Burke, this volume:page 130).
Identity
The variations in approaches to meaning in the chapters in this collection are a
microcosm of debates within the discipline as a whole. This is an openness that is
stimulating, but which may need to find some resolution if historical archaeology
plans to make significant progress in its core intellectual project – understanding
the underdetermined spaces within and between material culture and text that
Galloway (this volume) has explored. What form might such progress take? Here,
12
martin hall and stephen w. silliman
some convergence is evident, providing the fifth dimension that draws together the
contributions to this book. Concerned as they are with the meaning to be read from
the play between things and words, historical archaeologists are increasingly concerned with identity – with the intersection of race, class, gender, and ethnicity and
the ways in which the material world is deployed as a form of expression (Delle
et al. 1999; Jones 1999; Scott 1994).
Silliman’s (2004a, this volume) work on labor and identity serves to frame
the issues. In his own research on a large, mid-19th-century hacienda near San
Francisco Bay in California, Silliman found evidence that men and women had
alienated their labor in different ways. Adult Californian Indian men, who spent
time managing livestock and plowing fields, left little trace in the archaeological
record. In contrast, adult women brought needles, scissors, and other sewing items
into the home, directly relating to tasks in and around the residential and working
areas under the management of resident settlers. Silliman notes that this resonates
with similar evidence in other early colonial situations. For example, while Australian Aborigines and white settler Australians participated together in the pastoral
industry, indigenous workers retained distinctly Aboriginal practices, rendering
them almost invisible in the historical record (Harrison 2004). Hall’s (1999, 2000)
work in the Dutch colonial Cape has shown that, when an assemblage from a
backyard well is compared with the material culture listed in a contemporary
probate record, distinct and different material identities emerge: the traces of female
slave domestic labor in the well assemblage, and an overwhelmingly male, and
master, identity in the probate listing. As Voss (this volume:page 119) articulates it,
“archaeological research on gender has also firmly demonstrated that gender identities are dually shaped both by daily practices and by institutional forces. And,
perhaps most importantly, historical archaeological research has brought to the
forefront the vital connections between gender and other aspects of social identity
such as race, class, ethnicity, and occupation.”
We see in these examples the complex intersection of gender and class, played
out through the words and things that serve to constitute identity. In such examples,
we are a long way from the generalized pattern recognition of early historical
archaeology, or the simple acculturation models that assume that the outcome of
contact between Californian Indians and Spanish settlers, or Aboriginal Australians
and settler pastoralists, or Indonesian slaves and Dutch patriarchs, will be mixed
assemblages showing a little of each culture. Many times, the nature of these interactions, whether struggles with identities or expressions of agency, grows out of
labor relations. As Silliman’s (this volume) chapter implies, we need to think
of these intersections as the outcomes of “individuals negotiating the terrain of
colonial and industrial labor through material culture and lived experience.”
As Voss (this volume) and Wurst (this volume) show in their chapter contributions, gender and class are well-understood concepts, buttressed by a rich theoretical literature, and with strong lineages of interpretation in archaeological work.
Ethnicity seems a more slippery concept, both self-apparent and elusive. Just as
simple acculturation models now lack explanatory power, so are simple material
markers of ethnicity unlikely. This has been demonstrated through many years of
introduction: archaeology of the modern world
13
plantation archaeology: initial assumptions that slaves would, or could, retain possessions that marked West African tribal identity in any straightforward way have
been shown to be simplistic. But at the same time, people do clearly use material
culture to claim an affinity and shared history with others, as historical archaeology
has shown over and again.
An excellent case study in historical archaeology’s potential to track and interpret
identity-in-the-making is Funari’s (this volume) summary of his own work at Angola
Janga, or Little Angola, the Brazilian runaway settlement forged by escaped slaves
and indigenous South Americans as a contrapuntal community to the oppression
of the plantations. Here, archaeological fieldwork has proved a vital addition to
Dutch and Portuguese documents in showing how a new identity can emerge. There
is surely considerable potential in extending this approach to other situations in
which a shared history of oppression provides a cauldron for culture formation,
both beyond the boundaries of a dominant society, and within its borders, as
minorities deploy what James Scott (1996) has called the “weapons of the weak.”
Loren and Beaudry (this volume:page 256) take this approach in rethinking
American identity, seeing not a unifying trend, but rather the differing experiences
of distinct groups: “the process of becoming American drew on the knowledge of
these different identities and involved the strategy of purposeful manipulation of
material culture to represent oneself in a particular fashion for personal, sexual,
economic, or political reasons.” Their study of the eastern seaboard is matched by
Lightfoot’s (this volume; see also Lightfoot 2004) essay on identity formation on
the North American Pacific coast. Here, and reminiscent of runaway communities
in earlier Brazil, some California Indians distanced themselves from the new settler
communities by opting for rugged, rural locations away from the missions, such as
the far eastern hinterlands of San Francisco Bay. In addition, Lydon (this volume:
page 296) shows how the historical archaeology of the Pacific itself must be understood both as a region of diverse, shifting, and ever-migrant identities, and as an
image against which European identity was itself formed: “images of Pacific peoples
provided the materials for Western identity-making, as the diverse cultures of
Oceania were fundamental to a developing 19th-century European anthropology
charting humanity according to increasingly rigid categories of biological race.
Explorers’ accounts of these ‘savages’ formed a counterpoint to a European identity
that was modern, rational and progressive – everything they were not.”
Representation
Lydon’s perspective on the Pacific serves well to introduce the sixth dimension
unifying the essays in this volume – representation. How do historical archaeologists
represent the past to the present and how, as agents themselves, do they read the
past in relation to the present? An emphasis on the relationship between the present
and the past is, of course, definitive of critical archaeology and Marxist method.
Key here has been Mark Leone’s long engagement with the archaeology of
Annapolis – the “critical archaeology” well represented in this volume in the chapter
14
martin hall and stephen w. silliman
by Palus, Leone, and Cochran (see also Handsman and Leone 1989; Leone et al.
1987). Many of the other chapters have a clear authorial position in relation to the
politics of the present day (Lightfoot, this volume; Lydon, this volume). Wurst (this
volume) argues that, as a concept, class must be understood as a set of relationships
to be explored by dialectic method, leading to an inevitable connection between
the past and present as history is born from an awareness of conflict and contradictions. For Palus, Leone, and Cochran (this volume) as well, archaeology must
always have a political purpose, and must therefore be a public archaeology, finding
and exploring the experiences, aspirations, and interests of the present. The
emblematic project for critical archaeology is the Colorado Coal Field investigation,
starting with the concerns of the labor movement today, and exploring backward
in time for the reassurance and dignity of history (Ludlow Collective 2001; McGuire
and Reckner 2002; Saitta 2004). As Wurst (this volume) and Silliman (this volume)
summarize herein, the example of the Colorado Coal Field Archaeology Project as
an “engaged archaeology” does not compromise either evidence or interpretation.
It rather sets up what Palus, Leone, and Cochran (this volume) see as a public
dialogue, contributing to a critical citizenship that is at the heart of democracy. But
an appreciation of the connection between present and past is by no means the
preserve of Marxist archaeology, and most authors in this volume, implicitly or
explicitly, frame their enquiries within the concerns of the present. Some historical
archaeologists have sought the link between past and present in a critique of critical archaeology (Wilkie and Bartoy 2000), while others have pursued issues in
public history, heritage, and collaboration (McDavid 2002; Wilkie 2001) or in personal, narrative, and politicized accounts of archaeological practice and results
(Schrire 1995; Spector 1993). If post-processualism and postmodernism have
taught us anything, it is surely that the implication of the present in interpretations
of the past is both inevitable and beneficial.
In this last respect, the essays in this volume can be seen as an expression of the
world in which they are written. Early historical archaeology was the child of high
modernism and the search for general, unifying principles, whether the law-like
generalizations of the New Archaeology of the 1960s, pattern recognition, or a
wide-ranging structuralism that sought the cognitive systems shaping culture,
and consequently the human condition. Contemporary historical archaeology is
shaped in an unconfident world of fragmentation, contradiction, and conflict.
This sea-change is captured by Lydon (this volume:page 306) in her overview of
the archaeology of the Pacific region: “the current academic concern with the rootless, deterritorialized character of identity has replaced essentializing conceptions
in pursuing themes such as displacement and dislocation. Yet as a number of scholars have pointed out, Oceania has always been characterized by processes of migration, colonization, and diaspora, leading to calls for a rediscovery of these
transnational contexts. . . . Where an earlier historiography had stressed the ‘fatal
impact’ of European encounters in the Pacific, analysis now emphasizes the diversity, adaptability, and autonomy of local forms of culture, and the agency of Indigenous peoples.” The challenge that Lydon sees for Oceania is a challenge for
historical archaeology in general – that of holding the frame of a world system that
introduction: archaeology of the modern world
15
linked all continents in a reciprocal network, while paying attention to the diversity
of local agency and keeping in view the complex relationships between past and
present.
Epilogue
Historical archaeology’s “present moment” is captured by another portrait of early
modernity: Albert Eckhout’s portrait of a Tupi woman, painted in 1641 (Figure 1.2).
Part of the brief Dutch colonial adventure in Brazil, Eckhout represents his image
of a savage sexuality against the backdrop of earlier Portuguese plantations. As with
Figure 1.2 Tupiweib (1641) by Albert Eckhout. Thomsen, Thomas. “Albert Eckhout.” (c) Levin OG.
Munksgaard, Copenhagen, 1938. Courtesy of The Chief Librarian, Erland Kolding Nielsen, of the
Kongelike Bibliotek, Copenhagen, Denmark
16
martin hall and stephen w. silliman
Holbein before him, Eckhout seems ambivalent about this new world of conquest,
and about the crate-loads of botanical and zoological specimens, ethnographic collections, drawings and paintings that Prince Mauritz would ship back to The Hague
to found the museum that still bears his name (Thomsen 1938). Rather than a skull
in the foreground of his painting, Eckhout depicts a bloated toad (Hall 2000). Historical archaeology has the conceptual tools to analyze Mauritz’s artifact assemblage,
the colonial landscape, and the archive of contemporaneous texts and commentaries.
But other views of this world – represented here by the Tupi woman looking back at
Eckhout from his canvas – remain to be further explored more deeply.
REFERENCES
Andrén, Anders 1998 Between Artifacts and Texts: Historical Archaeology in Global Perspective. New York: Plenum Publishing.
Appadurai, Arjun, ed. 1986 The Social Life of Things. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Barber, Russell J. 1994 Doing Historical Archaeology: Exercises Using Documentary, Oral,
and Material Evidence. Upper Saddle River: Pearson Education.
Berger, John 1972 Ways of Seeing. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Brauner, David R., ed. 2000 Approaches to Material Culture Research for Historical
Archaeologists, 2nd edition. Tucson: Society for Historical Archaeology.
Beaudry, Mary C., ed. 1988 Documentary Archaeology in the New World. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Casella, Eleanor Conlin, and James Symonds, eds. 2005 Industrial Archaeology: Future
Directions. New York: Springer.
Cusick, James G., ed. 1998 Studies in Culture Contact: Interaction, Culture Change,
and Archaeology. Center for Archaeological Investigations, Occasional Paper No. 25.
Carbondale: Southern Illinois University.
Deagan, Kathleen, and Michael Scardaville 1985 Archaeology and History on Historic
Hispanic Sites: Impediments and Solutions. Historical Archaeology 19(1):32–37.
DeCorse, Christopher R. 1997 Historical Archaeology in West Africa: Culture Contact,
Continuity and Change. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.
—— 2001 An Archaeology of Elmina: Africans and Europeans on the Gold Coast, 1400–
1900. Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.
De Cunzo, Lu Ann, and John H. Jameson, Jr. 2005 Unlocking the Past: Celebrating
Historical Archaeology in North America. Gainesville: University Press of Florida.
Deetz, James F. 1994 [1977] In Small Things Forgotten: An Archaeology of Early American
Life. New York: Anchor Books, Doubleday.
Delle, James A., Stephen A. Mrozowski, and Robert Paynter, eds. 1999 Lines That Divide:
Historical Archaeologies of Race, Class, and Gender. Knoxville: University of Tennessee
Press.
Falk, Lisa 1991 Historical Archaeology in Global Perspective. Washington, DC: Smithsonian
Institution Press.
Funari, Pedro Paulo A. 1999 Historical Archaeology from a World Perspective. In Historical
Archaeology: Back from the Edge. Pedro Paulo A. Funari, Martin Hall, and Siân Jones,
eds. Pp. 37–66. One World Archaeology. London: Routledge.
introduction: archaeology of the modern world
17
Funari, Pedro Paulo A., Siân Jones, and Martin Hall, eds. 1999a Introduction: Archaeology
in History. In Historical Archaeology: Back from the Edge. Pedro Paulo A. Funari, Martin
Hall, and Siân Jones, eds. Pp. 1–20. One World Archaeology. London: Routledge.
Galloway, Patricia 1991 The Archaeology of Ethnohistorical Narrative. In Columbian Consequences, vol. 3: The Spanish Borderlands in Pan-American Perspective. David Hurst
Thomas, ed. Pp. 453–470. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution.
Gordon, Robert B., and Patrick M. Malone 1994 The Texture of Industry: An Archaeological View of the Industrialization of North America. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Greene, Meg 2001 Buttons, Bones, and the Organ Grinder’s Monkey: Tales of Historical
Archaeology. North Haven: The Shoe String Press, Inc.
Hall, Martin 1990 Farmers, Kings and Traders: The People of South Africa, 200–1860.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
—— 1996 Archaeology Africa. Cape Town: David Philip.
—— 1999 Subaltern Voices? Finding the Spaces between Things and Words. In Historical
Archaeology: Back from the Edge. Pedro Paulo A. Funari, Martin Hall, and Siân Jones,
eds. Pp. 193–203. One World Archaeology. London: Routledge.
—— 2000 An Archaeology of the Modern World. London: Routledge.
—— 2001 Timeless Time – Africa in the World. In Archaeology: The Widening Debate.
Barry Cunliffe, Wendy Davies, and Colin Renfrew, eds. Pp. 439–464. London: British
Academy.
Handsman, Russell G., and Mark P. Leone 1989 Living History and Critical Archaeology
in the Reconstruction of the Past. In Critical Traditions in Contemporary Archaeology:
Essays in the Philosophy, History, and Socio-Politics of Archaeology. Valerie Pinsky and
Alison Wylie, eds. Pp. 117–135. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Harrison, Rodney 2004 Shared Landscapes: Archaeologies of Attachment to the Heritage
of the Pastoral Industry in NSW. Hurstville, New South Wales: Studies in the Cultural
Construction of Open Space 3, NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service.
Hicks, Dan 2000 Ethnicity, Race, and the Archaeology of the Atlantic Slave Trade. Assemblage: The Sheffield Graduate Journal of Archaeology 5. www.shef.ac.uk/assemb/5/hicks.
html
Johnson, Matthew H. 1996 An Archaeology of Capitalism. Oxford: Blackwell.
—— 1999 Rethinking Historical Archaeology. In Historical Archaeology: Back from the
Edge. Pedro Paulo A. Funari, Martin Hall, and Siân Jones, eds. Pp. 23–36. One World
Archaeology. London: Routledge.
Jones, Siân 1999 Historical Categories and the Praxis of Identity: The Interpretation of
Ethnicity in Historical Archaeology. In Historical Archaeology: Back from the Edge. Pedro
Paulo A. Funari, Martin Hall, and Siân Jones, eds. Pp. 219–232. One World Archaeology.
London: Routledge.
Karklins, Karlis, ed. 2000 Studies in Material Culture Research. Tucson: Society for Historical Archaeology.
Kelly, Kenneth G. 1997 The Archaeology of African-European Interaction: Investigating the
Social Roles of Trade, Traders, and the Use of Space in Seventeenth and Eighteenth
Century Hueda Kingdom, Republic of Benin. World Archaeology 28(3):77–95.
—— 2001 Change and Continuity in Coastal Benin. In West Africa during the Atlantic Slave
Trade. Christopher R. DeCorse, ed. Pp. 81–100. London: Leicester University Press.
Leone, Mark P. 1988 The Relationship Between Archaeological Data and the Documentary
Record: 18th Century Gardens in Annapolis. Historical Archaeology 22(1):29–35.
—— 1995 A Historical Archaeology of Capitalism. American Anthropologist 97:251–
268.
18
martin hall and stephen w. silliman
Leone, Mark P., and Parker B. Potter, Jr. 1988 Introduction: Issues in Historical Archaeology.
In The Recovery of Meaning: Historical Archaeology in the Eastern United States. Mark
P. Leone and Parker B. Potter, Jr., eds. Pp. 1–22. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution
Press.
Leone, Mark P., Parker B. Potter, Jr., and Paul A. Shackel 1987 Toward a Critical
Archaeology. Current Anthropology 28(3):137–145.
Lightfoot, Kent G. 1995 Culture Contact Studies: Redefining the Relationship between
Prehistoric and Historical Archaeology. American Antiquity 60(2):199–217.
—— 2004 Indians, Missionaries, and Merchants: The Legacy of Colonial Encounters on the
California Frontiers. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Little, Barbara J. 1994 People with History: An Update on Historical Archaeology in the
United States. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 1:5–40.
Little, Barbara J., ed. 1992 Text-Aided Archaeology. Boca Raton: CRC Press.
Ludlow Collective 2001 Archaeology of the Colorado Coal Field War 1913–1914. In
Archaeologies of the Contemporary Past. Victor Buchli and Gavin Lucas, eds. Pp.
94–107. London: Routledge.
McDavid, Carol A. 2002 Archaeologies That Hurt; Descendants That Matter: A Pragmatic
Approach to Collaboration in the Public Interpretation of African-American Archaeology.
World Archaeology 34(2):303–314.
McGuire, Randall H., and Paul Reckner 2002 The Unromantic West: Labor, Capital, and
Struggle. Historical Archaeology 36(3):44–58.
Mullins, Paul 1999 Race and Affluence: An Archaeology of African America and Consumer
Culture. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishing.
Murray, Tim, ed. 2004 The Archaeology of Contact in Settler Societies. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Orser, Jr., Charles E. 1996a A Historical Archaeology of the Modern World. New York:
Plenum Press.
—— 1996b Images of the Recent Past. Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press.
—— 1999 The Challenge of Race to American Historical Archaeology. American
Anthropologist 100(3):661–668.
—— 2002 Encyclopaedia of Historical Archaeology. London: Routledge.
—— 2004 Historical Archaeology, 2nd edition. London: Pearson Prentice-Hall.
Paynter, Robert 2000a Historical and Anthropological Archaeology: Forging Alliances.
Journal of Archaeological Research 8(1):1–37.
—— 2000b Historical Archaeology and the Post-Columbian World in North America. Journal
of Archaeological Research 8(3):169–217.
Pilling, Arnold R. 1967 Beginnings. Historical Archaeology 1:1–12.
Rubertone, Patricia 2000 The Historical Archaeology of Native Americans. Annual Review
of Anthropology 29:452–446.
Saitta, Dean J. 2004 Labor and Class in the American West. In North American Archaeology.
Timothy R. Pauketat and Diana DiPaolo Loren, ed. Pp. 359–385. London: Blackwell.
Schrire, Carmel 1995 Digging Through Darkness: Chronicles of an Archaeologist.
Richmond: University of Virginia Press.
Schuyler, Robert L., ed. 1978 Historical Archaeology. Farmingdale, NY: Baywood.
Scott, Elizabeth M., ed. 1994 Those of Little Note: Gender, Race, and Class in Historical
Archaeology. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
Scott, James C. 1985 Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance. New
Haven: Yale University Press.
introduction: archaeology of the modern world
19
Silliman, Stephen W. 2004a Lost Laborers in Colonial California: Native Americans and the
Archaeology of Rancho Petaluma. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
—— 2004b Social and Physical Landscapes of Contact. In North American Archaeology.
Timothy R. Pauketat and Diana DiPaolo Loren, eds. Pp. 273–296. London: Blackwell
Publishing.
—— 2005 Culture Contact or Colonialism? Challenges in the Archaeology of Native North
America. American Antiquity 70(1):55–74.
Singleton, Teresa A. 1995 The Archaeology of Slavery in the United States. Annual Review
of Anthropology 24:119–140.
—— 2004 Before the Revolution: Archaeology and the African Diaspora on the Atlantic
Seaboard. In North American Archaeology. Timothy R. Pauketat and Diana DiPaolo
Loren, eds. Pp. 319–336. London: Blackwell Publishing.
Singleton, Teresa A., ed. 1999 “I, Too, Am America”: Archaeological Studies of AfricanAmerican Life. Charlottesville and London: University Press of Virginia.
Singleton, Teresa A., and Mark D. Bograd 1995 The Archaeology of the African Diaspora
in the Americas. Ann Arbor, Michigan: Society for Historical Archaeology.
South, Stanley A. 1977 Method and Theory in Historical Archaeology. New York: Academic
Press.
—— 1978 Pattern Recognition in Historical Archaeology. American Antiquity 43(2):223–
230.
Spector, Janet D. 1993 What This Awl Means: Feminist Archaeology at a Wahpeton Dakota
Village. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press.
Stratton, Michael, and Barrie Stuart Trinder, eds. 2000 Twentieth-Century Industrial
Archaeology. London: Routledge.
Thomsen, Thomas 1938 Albert Eckhout; ein Niederlandischer Maler und sein Gonner
Moritz der Brasiliander. Copenhagen: Munksgaard.
Trigger, Bruce 1990 The History of African Archaeology in World Perspective. In A History
of African Archaeology. Peter Robertshaw, ed. Pp. 309–319. London: James Currey.
Wilkie, Laurie A. 2000 Creating Freedom: Material Culture and African American Identity
at Oakley Plantation, Louisiana, 1840–1950. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University
Press.
—— 2001 Communicative Bridges Linking Actors Through Time: Archaeology and the
Construction of Emancipatory Narratives at a Bahamian Plantation. Journal of Social
Archaeology 1(2):225–243.
—— 2003 The Archaeology of Mothering: An African-American Midwife’s Tale. London:
Routledge.
Wilkie, Laurie A., and Kevin Bartoy 2000 A Critical Archaeology Revisited. Current
Anthropology 41(5):747–777.
Part I
Dimensions of Practice
Chapter 2
Environments of History:
Biological Dimensions of
Historical Archaeology
Stephen A. Mrozowski
Introduction
When Europeans began their global diaspora in the 15th century they set in motion
a process of transformation that would help shape the modern world. First as
explorers and then as colonists, Europeans were in some ways oblivious to their
own power. Beyond what they carried in the way of knowledge or technology, these
instruments of imperial design brought with them an army of biological agents who
silently began their own colonizing efforts. Once contact between once-separated
hemispheres became regular, changes were set in motion that included the introduction of Old World pathogens that often had a devastating impact on indigenous
populations. Introduced plant and animal species changed the character of regional
floral and faunal communities, as did the hunting, trapping, and fishing activities
of colonial settlers. Reverse trends were also set in motion as New World crops and
animals were introduced into areas such as Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and
Europe. These too would have a transformative effect on the environments of these
continents and their populations.
The scope of these events has been examined by scholars such as Eric Wolf
(1982), Alfred Crosby (1986), and Jared Diamond (1999), but each has taken a
very different approach to the subject. Wolf sought to present an antidote to the
Eurocentric histories of the modern era presented by scholars such as Immanuel
Wallerstein (1974) by focusing on the populations of the areas being colonized
(Wolf 1982:22–23). Crosby aimed to examine the biological dimensions of colonial
expansion, in particular the movement of plants and animal species across the globe.
Diamond took the more ambitious – and controversial – approach of trying to
explain human history as the product of accident and environmental determinism.
Not surprisingly, many social scientists felt Diamond’s majestic goals, while laudable, perpetuated a vision of the modern world dominated by the destiny of Western
civilization (Jarosz 2003; Sluyter 2003).
24
stephen a. mrozowski
It is difficult to criticize the breadth of Diamond’s project; however, lost within
its ambition is any notion of the events as they actually unfolded or the experiences
of the individuals who were willing or unwilling participants. These remain the goals
of a historical archaeology that seeks to understand the biological and cultural
dimensions of the events that have shaped the modern world. For much of its
history, the field of historical archaeology has focused primarily on the cultural side
of this equation. The chief reason has been the dominance of paradigms that have
stressed the central importance of material culture analysis while demonstrating
little if any interest in the environment (e.g., Deetz 1977; Leone et al. 1987;
Schuyler 1999). This chapter presents an alternative vision that situates the work
of biologically-oriented historical archaeologists within a non-dualist, anti-essentialist epistemology. It also demonstrates how the results of this kind of research have
contributed to a deeper understanding of the biological dimensions of processes
such as colonization, urbanization, and industrialization.
Epistemology and the Environment
As historical archaeology has evolved as a discipline, one of its most enduring features has been a focus on material culture studies (Beaudry 1996; Hall 2000;
Paynter 2000). The longevity and productivity of this approach speaks for itself.
However, one of the drawbacks to its success has been to limit the growth of alternative or complementary approaches. In his classic study, In Small Things Forgotten,
the late James Deetz made explicit reference to his views concerning the environment and the role of the natural sciences in historical archaeology:
This lessened dependency on the natural sciences is but a reflection of the role
played by the natural world in the history of human development. The earlier in time
one goes, the more directly and intimately tied to their environment. . . . As culture
became more complex, our removal from the natural world increased. Since Historical
Archaeology treats only the past few hundred years of our multimillion year history,
it follows that this last, brief time would find us at our greatest remove. (Deetz
1977:22)
Deetz’s lack of interest in the environment seems to stem from his use of a structuralist paradigm that was grounded in a dualist epistemology that saw nature and
culture as separate realities (Mrozowski 1996).
Similar issues influenced the work of critical theorists in archaeology who viewed
ecological explanations as the product of positivist and reductionist epistemologies
(e.g., Leone et al. 1987). Within the broader discipline of anthropology, the tension
between positivist and critical epistemologies resulted in some departments breaking apart along biological and cultural lines (Soper 1996). These concerns led some
to construct new, more dialectical epistemologies that reject dualist assumptions
– especially the nature/culture divide (Benton 1996; Descola and Pálsson 1996;
Escobar 1999; Goodman and Leatherman 2001; O’Connor 1998), while recogniz-
environments of history
25
ing that assumptions such as these are deeply embedded in the historical consciousness of Western society (see Teich et al. 1997).
To date, these epistemological debates have had only limited impact on the
practice of historical archaeology (but see Mrozowski 1996, 1999a), yet they hold
great promise for constructing a theoretical framework that helps to transcend the
biological/cultural divide. Questions surrounding the essentialism of nature are
particularly relevant in this regard because they can cloud the dialectical relationship shared by biology and culture and its inherent ambiguities (McGuire 2002:129;
Mrozowski 1996:465–467). The anti-essentialist epistemology espoused by Arturo
Escobar, for example, combines a culturally and historically contingent view of
nature with that of nature as a “biophysical reality” (Escobar 1999:1–2). By accepting this multidimensional view of nature, historical archaeologists can more productively integrate the environment into their research. The beginnings of this
process are already evident in more sophisticated studies of foodways and agricultural practices, examinations of the biological impact of colonization on the composition of human, faunal, and floral communities across the globe; and the growth
of urban and industrial landscapes. Although these studies have varied widely in
scale and substance, most have been framed by one of three larger historical processes: colonization, urbanization, and industrialization.
Early Colonial Encounters
As dramatic and culturally destabilizing as early encounters undoubtedly must
have been, even before colonization began there were environmental processes at
work that would shape the course of some early colonial encounters. Well before
the establishment of permanent colonies, European-borne diseases such as smallpox had a devastating impact on the indigenous populations of the New World,
Africa, and Australia (Campbell 2002; Diamond 1999:77–78; Larsen 2002). The
influence of disease was also felt by the European traders and explorers whose
endeavors were greatly hampered by African and Asian diseases such as malaria
(Diamond 1999:77–80, 210–212). With no preexisting immunity to many European pathogens, the speed and effectiveness of some diseases – often resulting in
95 percent mortality rates – had a particularly lethal effect among the Native
populations of North America (e.g., Dobyns 1991; Perttula 1991). Campbell
describes similar circumstances in Australia where European diseases withered
Aboriginal populations even in the most remote sections of the country (Campbell
2002). The results were not universal, however. For some, the impacts were ruinous,
while others may have experienced improved health in changed contexts (Larsen
2002:144).
Historical archaeologists, often working in collaboration with environmental
scientists, are beginning to uncover evidence of other preexisting biological conditions that influenced the trajectory of early colonial ventures. One example comes
from the work of Stahle and Cleveland and their colleagues at the University of
Arkansas tree-ring laboratory. Their research both at Santa Elena in South Carolina
26
stephen a. mrozowski
(Anderson et al. 1995) and at Jamestown, Virginia (Stahle et al. 1998) provide
compelling examples of the way history can be rewritten with an eye toward
environmental contexts (see Figure 13.1). Historians of Jamestown have long
focused their attention not so much on why the colony failed, but rather on
why the English who landed in Virginia were so ill-prepared for what they
encountered (Morgan 1971). Why did so many die so quickly and so easily?
Why did relations with the local Native Americans turn violent so fast? Answers
to both of these questions have been found in the least likely source, in the climatic
record sealed in the tree-rings of bald cypress trees of Virginia and South
Carolina. The study of these tree-rings revealed a recent climatic record punctuated
by two periods of deep drought. The first appears to have coincided with the
abandonment of portions of the Savannah River Valley during the late prehistoric
period (Anderson et al. 1995:258–286). These same conditions may have also
contributed to increased tension between Native groups in the area and the Spanish
settlers of Santa Elena who eventually abandoned the colony (Anderson et al.
1995:266–268).
A second period of extended drought took place just prior to the arrival of the
English at Jamestown. Again, Stahle et al. (1998) found evidence of extreme
drought between 1606 and 1612 that was second only to a similar period of dry
conditions between 1208 and 1215. The English colonists of Jamestown arrived in
the driest conditions seen in the region for 800 years (Stahle et al. 1998:566). Along
with the brackish conditions that extreme weather like this fostered, it also made
the establishment of crops difficult and helped with spread of disease. Disease may
have also played a major role in the demise of the Roanoke Colony prior to the
settling of Jamestown. Mires (1994) suggests that European colonists may have
infected the local Native populations with influenza. The spread of a new disease
may have triggered local Native groups to seek revenge on the small colony, leading
to its destruction (Mires 1994:30–38). Their perceived connection between the
arrival of the Europeans on their shores with the appearance and rapid spread of
the disease was essentially correct. When viewed within the context of an intercultural encounter, the lack of biological understanding on the part of both groups
resulted in an instability that would become a hallmark of colonialism itself (see
Moussette 2003).
The research carried out at Jamestown and Roanoke point to the manner
in which environmental and biological information often reveals critical, but
previously undocumented, facets of early colonial histories. Although drawn from
a much later context, the analysis of lake sediments from New South Wales,
Australia, may be helping to rewrite the early colonial history of this area. In a
series of publications, Gale, Haworth, and their colleagues have examined the
lake sediments from Guyra in New South Wales (Gale and Haworth 2002; Haworth
et al. 1999). Through a combination of sedimentary and palynological analyses,
Gale and Haworth have found evidence of rapid filling rates that they believe
resulted from European occupation decades before the documented settlement
of this part of New South Wales in 1830. A key component to their analysis is
the use of lead 210 (210Pb) dating that allows specialists to construct high resolu-
environments of history
27
tion, tightly dated chronologies from stratified sediments (Haworth et al. 1999:
52–54).
In this instance, a well-dated chronology of lake bottom deposits suggests that
soil erosion during the documented period of colonial expansion (1836–61) resulted
in a fifty-fold increase in the sediment rate (Gale and Haworth 2002:129). Pollen
analysis of lake sediments also indicates changes in local vegetation that also may
have contributed to higher erosion rates (Gale and Haworth 2002:131). The authors
ascribe the vegetation changes and increased erosion to land clearance, the introduction of livestock into the region, and an overall change in drainage patterns
resulting from human activity in the 30-year period (1806–36) prior to the area’s
documented settlement. Gale and Haworth suggest that this earlier erosion likely
did not result from the activities of the Aboriginal populations of the area and
should therefore be attributed to undocumented colonists, such as squatters or
escaped convicts, who were already pushing past the limits of settlement (Gale and
Haworth 2002:129) and may have even carried diseases that eventually spread well
into the interior of the continent (e.g., Campbell 2002).
Biological Impacts of Colonization
As the studies discussed above attest, environmental conditions could both shape
the character of colonial encounter, as revealed at Jamestown, and be shaped
by them, as the case from New South Wales demonstrates. Historical archaeology
also has the potential to document changes wrought by colonial expansion and
trade on biotic communities. The trade in furs and their lengthy popularity
in Europe resulted in large-scale, hierarchical operations led by French, Dutch,
English, and Russian colonial agents that devastated populations of beaver, otter,
and other small fur-bearing mammals in colonized areas. Studies conducted by
historical archaeologists reveal the complexities of this trade and the scale of its
impact.
Hamilton’s studies (1996, 2000) of the Canadian fur trade illustrate the multifaceted character of the enterprise and the link that existed between symbolic
behavior and its biological implications. In this case, company hierarchies were
visible not in the foods being consumed, but rather in the manner in which the
food waste was discarded almost exclusively around enlisted men’s quarters
(Hamilton 2000:262–263). The efficiencies of such enterprises and the symbolic
structures that reproduced them were a lethal combination that resulted in a steady
supply of animal pelts as long as popularity continued, which it did well into the
19th century.
Russian colonial efforts in Alaska and California studied by Kent Lightfoot and
his students revolved around the trade in furs (Lightfoot 2003). Here, as in Canada,
pressure on local animal populations – in this case otter – resulted in the constant
movement southward of the colonial enterprise. As they moved south, Russian
colonists carried with them Native men that they had pressed into service. With the
establishment of new communities such as that at Fort Ross in California, these
28
stephen a. mrozowski
Native men often joined with local Native women to comprise the multicultural
households that were common in these settlements (see Figure 14.1). The scope of
the fur trade would eventually result in limited returns due to overexploitation of
the fur resource.
Similar evidence of overexploitation comes from South Africa, where first Dutch
and subsequently English colonial efforts would have a profound impact on Native
peoples and the landscape in this area (Hall 2000:57–60). One example comes from
the site of Oudepost I, located along the Churchhaven Peninsula at the Cape (see
Figure 12.1). Faunal remains speak to the efficiency of European technology, in
this case rifle and shot (Schrire 1995:107), in the hunting of a wide variety of species
of birds. In summarizing the results of her research at Oudepost I, Carmel Schrire
provides an eloquent description of the impact Dutch colonial efforts would have
on the land and the native Khoihhoi of South Africa:
The bottom line, then, is that the Oudepost bones illustrate in detailed material terms
one aspect of the colonial grab of native resources in this newly invaded land. Extrapolating beyond this post to the long chain of other posts and farms along the frontier,
we may envisage in very specific terms, how the new settlers cut a broad swathe through
the wild food base, swamping the old Khoikhoi pattern of small persistent cull with a
sudden vigorous onslaught. (Schrire 1995:107)
Schrire’s description captures the essence of what archaeology can bring to the
study of colonization: not only evidence of broad patterns of behavior, but the flavor
of those actions. The scale of the results and their comprehensibility on a human
scale contribute to images of colonialism that give texture to our understanding of
the process.
In the same way that Russian colonization resulted in the displacement of human
populations in North America, bioarchaeological evidence from South Africa indicates similar demographic processes at work. Stable isotope analysis of the skeletal
remains from a mass grave associated with Fort Knokke near Cape Town identified
many as slaves (see Figure 12.1). Based upon a combination of dietary reconstruction and documentary evidence, it appears that the graves contain slaves who were
being transshipped from Mozambique to Brazil (Cox and Sealy 1997: 220–221).
Stable isotope analysis also assisted in reconstructing the life history of a single
individual found beneath the floor of a slave lodge at the 18th-century estate of
Vergelegen located east of Cape Town (Sealy et al. 1993). Skeletal and stable isotope
analysis revealed the woman’s earlier home was rich in tropical plants (Sealy et al.
1993:86–89). Whether she came from West Africa, Malaysia, or India remains
unclear, although all are possibilities. Her story, limited though it may be, nevertheless speaks to the details and experiences of the lives of those who were willing or
unwilling participants in the broader colonial drama.
The intricacies of the colonial process are also revealed in the movement of plant
and animal species across the globe. Reitz (1992) has argued, for example, that the
ability of colonial populations to successfully adapt Old World species to new environments was a key element in the sustainability of early settlements (see also Reitz
environments of history
29
and McEwan 1995; Deagan 1996:368). Evidence that some Old World species of
cattle fared better in the southern portions of North America and the Caribbean
comes from the work of Reitz and Ruff (1994). In some instances, the introduction
of Old World breeds had deleterious effects on the local environment. Bowen
has discussed the way that herding practices employed by Chesapeake farmers during
the 17th century – the herding of livestock first in forests and then in fields –
contributed to the degradation of local soils (Bowen 1999:363–365), a pattern
similar to that seen by Gale and Haworth in Australia (2002).
The impact of colonial ventures was also felt in the Old World. The most notable
examples revolve around the incorporation of crops such as maize, tobacco, potatoes, and a wide variety of other species into the diets of Europeans (Diamond
1999), Africans (Alpern 1992:24–31), and later colonial ventures in places such as
Australia (Diamond 1999:319). One of the more interesting examples of New World
crops affecting European populations comes from Mays’ work (1999) on the history
of sugar production. Drawing on a variety of sources and analyses, his research not
only confirmed a dramatic rise in the incidence of dental caries during the medieval
period, but also indicated an equally significant increase during the 19th century
when technological changes in sugar production led to a dramatic lowering of prices.
The result was a noticeable drop in dental health among sugar consumers in Britain
(Mays 1999:338), a pattern that was probably experienced on a global scale.
Food in Colonial Contexts
The impact of sugar on the diets of Europeans provides a vivid example of the
importance of food as a measure of cultural transformation, a fact well substantiated by the foodways studies carried out by historical archaeologists in a variety of
colonial contexts. Historical archaeologists working in Spanish colonial contexts
have carried out numerous studies that examine the interaction of Spanish, Native
American, and African-American food practices. Reitz and Scarry’s research has
shown that Spanish colonists relied heavily upon locally available foods in constructing a diet that combined Native American and Spanish foods and practices (Reitz
1992; Scarry and Reitz 1990:350–352; see also Deagan 2003). One of Scarry and
Reitz’s more interesting conclusions was that frustrations over unmet expectations
among Spanish colonists may have stemmed from their inability to reproduce
European foodways in the New World to the extent they wished. Despite the success
of some Old World plants and animals in the New World, Spanish reliance on local
species may have contributed to the perception that colonists lived a deprived existence (Scarry and Reitz 1990:352).
Similar observations about Spanish colonial settlements have been made by both
deFrance (2003) working in Bolivia and Trigg (2004) working in New Mexico.
DeFrance examined the faunal remains from two sites located in the community
of Tarapaya, a wealthy enclave outside the large urban center of Potosí (see Figure
11.1) (deFrance 2003:117). Tarapaya was a favored area for the wealthier Spaniards
wishing to escape the more urbanized Potosí (deFrance 2003:107). The dietary
30
stephen a. mrozowski
preferences of these elites reflect their desire to reconstruct Iberian cuisine. Although
New World species were incorporated into the diet, the dominance of domesticated
animals such as sheep and goats – well adapted to higher elevations – and cattle
points to the importance of these European species in the food practices of the
Spanish colonists of Bolivia.
Trigg’s study examines an area of secondary colonization involving a population
that had been predominately born in the New World. This difference clearly played
a role in their dietary practices and their own perceptions of acceptable cuisine. In
the same manner that colonists of Florida, the Caribbean, and Bolivia appear to
have placed a premium on Spanish cuisine, the later colonists of New Mexico
already had experience with New World plants and animals (Trigg 2004:241). The
substitution of staple grains such as wheat and maize served as a measure of identity rather than meat as had been the case in Spain and other parts of New Spain
(Trigg 2004:240–241).
The adoption of Old World plants and animals by Native groups in the New
World provides another example of dietary changes brought about during colonialism. At Rancho Santa Cruz, a small hamlet outside the village of Chihuitán in
Oaxaca, Mexico (see Figure 11.1), Zeitlin and Thomas found that local Native
populations increasingly incorporated European domesticated animals into their
diet during the 17th and 18th centuries, while continuing other cultural practices
such as the use of stone tools (Zeitlin and Thomas 1997:15–16). Similar results
have been discovered at Rancho Petaluma in California (see Figure 14.1), where
Native dietary practices reflected the growing influence of Spanish and MexicanCalifornian foods at the same time that stone tool use and production continued
(Silliman 2004:156–166).
Evidence of adaptation and change has framed the study of foodways practices
among historical archaeologists working in other colonial contexts. For example,
Janowitz (1993:20–21) has found evidence of a joining of Native American and
Dutch dietary practices in New Amsterdam (see also Cantwell and Wall 2001:
177–180). Maize became a dietary mainstay as did local wild game and fish;
however, this did not result in a shift in the practice of food preparation.
Instead the evidence points to the incorporation of new foods into a relatively stable,
culturally consistent foodways system (Janowitz 1993:20–21). Comparable conclusions were reached by Scott (1996) in her comparisons of French and English
colonists living in Michigan during the 18th century. She found that where frontier
conditions had a homogenizing effect on food availability, subtle evidence of ethnic
differences were detectable (Scott 1996:353). Cheek (1999) provides still another
facet to this picture by identifying regional differences in foodways practices among
the English colonists of the Chesapeake, Philadelphia, and New York that resulted
from a combination of economic and environmental factors.
One group who faced the continuing challenge of adapting to new social and
environmental realities were enslaved Africans. In Spanish colonial contexts in
Florida and the Caribbean, strong evidence exists that African, Native American,
and European cultural traditions combined in what were often multicultural households (Deagan 2003; see also Armstrong 1999). This combination was also visible
environments of history
31
within freed African communities such as Fort Mose in Florida (Deagan and
Landers 1999; Reitz 1994).
Research in the American South has confirmed that hunting, foraging, stealing,
and producing small crops all comprised part of the economic strategies employed
by African-American slaves (Edwards-Ingram 1999; McKee 1999). Larry McKee
(1988, 1999) has argued that the various strategies employed by enslaved Africans
to feed themselves were an important part of their identity. Hunting, stealing, and
trading all provided enslaved Africans with some control over these elements of
their daily practice. Across the Atlantic in South Africa, Martin Hall (1992) has
used a similar argument to interpret the dietary remains found beneath the floor
of a grain storage building in the large fortress known as the Castle in Cape Town.
In this instance, both composition and body elements represented in the faunal
assemblages of slaves and white officers reveal differences that are similar to those
seen on plantations in the American South (Hall 1992:392).
The biological dimensions of colonial expansion reveal the intricacies and texture
of this global event. The various examples outlined above point to the intersection
of cultural and biological forces in shaping the colonial experience. In many instances
the success or failure of colonial ventures – such as those at Jamestown, Roanoke,
Florida, California, and South America – hinged on the ability of Europeans to
adapt to new environments or to survive the reaction of Native populations
to diseases brought by the newcomers. These studies also demonstrate the need to
view nature dialectically as both physical reality and perceived reality (Escobar
1999; Mrozowski 1996, 1999b). Despite the adaptation of Old World species to
New World conditions or the adoption of New World species into the diets of
Spanish colonists in Florida, the Caribbean, Bolivia, and New Mexico, perceptions
of success were still measured by comparisons with Iberian life. Ultimately success
rested on the ability of Europeans, indigenous populations, and Africans to construct new realities expressed perhaps most clearly in the appearance of new foodways practices. There were, of course, other keys to the stabilization and eventual
flourishing of modern society out of colonial beginnings across the globe, including
both the establishment of cities and the eventual spread of industrial technology.
Urbanization
The establishment of urban communities in the New World, South Africa, Asia,
Australia, and New Zealand served as a pivotal event in the growth of a world
economic order borne of colonial beginnings. In virtually every case, the founding
of these cities resulted in the transformation of environments and the production
of urban space. Other processes at work, such as the growth of urban foodways,
would have a tremendous impact on surrounding biotic communities (e.g.,
Rothschild and Balkwill 1993) and the development of regional market systems
(Cantwell and Wall 2001; Cheek 1999; Landon 1996). However, for the purposes
of this chapter, I have chosen to focus primarily on the production and use of space
and its environmental implications.
32
stephen a. mrozowski
The production of urban space often resulted in dramatic changes that historical
archaeologists have been able to read through environmental archaeology. In a
colonial city such as Boston, Massachusetts, the establishment of a new landscape
resulted in the appearance of new plant communities (Mrozowski 1987). The
alteration of existing environments was an essential first step in the construction of
cities throughout the colonial era. The production of urban space took a similar
path in other colonial cities including New York (Cantwell and Wall 2001:227–231;
Rothschild 1990), Buenos Aires, Argentina (Schávelson 1999:153–161), Quebec
(Auger and Moss 2001), St. Augustine, Florida (Deagan 2003), Cape Town, South
Africa (Hall 2000) and Sydney, Australia (Karskens 2003:42). Even in those
instances where planning played a strong role in early urban development – such
as in Buenos Aires (see Figure 11.1) (Schávelson 1999:153–159) and New York
(see Figure 13.1) (Cantwell and Wall 2001:188–195) – the use of space for everything from food production to waste and water management often fostered a crucible for disease.
Examining changing notions of health and sanitation is one component of the
broader study of urban environments that also includes the analysis of soils recovered from urban privies (Bain 1998; Geismar 1993; Reinhard 1992). The study of
human and animal parasite remains, for example, has focused on the reconstruction
of environmental conditions and the manner in which social differences such as
class were expressed in patterns of disease (Bain 2000; Mrozowski 1991, 1996;
Reinhard et al. 1986). While parasite infection was a reality for virtually everyone
living in modern cities, differences in the degree of infection or access to possible
medical treatments do appear to represent markers of differential status, in particular along class lines (Mrozowski 1996, 1999a).
Tracing the establishment and growth of urban environments is also possible
through the analysis of insect and faunal remains. Alison Bain (1998, 2000) has
pioneered the study of urban insect communities from archaeological contexts
in the New World. Her work has focused on the use of insect assemblages to
examine environmental changes resulting from colonization at the micro- and
macro-scales. Insect remains offer the extra bonus of being relatively unambiguous
signatures of environmental change. Nan Rothschild and her colleagues working
in New York have used zooarchaeological data to study impact of urbanization on
animal communities (Rothschild 1989; Rothschild and Balkwill 1993). Research
of this kind not only supplies evidence of how rapidly biotic communities can
change, but it also provides a complement to studies of urban foodways by
suggesting links between the loss of habitat and declining percentages of wild
foods in the diets of city dwellers (Cantwell and Wall 2001:177–205; Cheek 1999;
Landon 1996).
Cities played a central role in the development of colonial societies and the
capitalist economies that fueled their growth. The landscapes of these early cities
were a rich mosaic of shared spaces that gave rise to ecologies closely linked to the
social relations of production and commerce. With the growth of mechanized industry and industrial capitalism, new cities emerged while older communities were
often transformed. These changes spawned new land use practices and their atten-
environments of history
33
dant ecologies that were themselves expressions of new, more hierarchical social
structures.
Industrialization
With the coming of mechanized industry, the face of urbanization changed profoundly. The growth of industrial cities in Europe and North America (and later
Japan) represents a watershed in human history. Like colonization, industrialization
altered the global landscape and continues to shape the modern and postmodern
worlds. There is an ecology to this industry that has been a mainstay of industrial
archaeology in Britain (Alfrey and Clark 1993:31–59; Palmer and Neaverson
1998:17–32), North America (Hardesty 1988, 1998, 1999; Shackel 1996), and
Australia (Jack and Cremin 1994). The work at Ironbridge Gorge in Shropshire,
often referred to as the cradle of the Industrial Revolution, represents an archaeology that explores the nexus of environmental and social variables in shaping the
history of the region (Alfrey and Clark 1993:11–59). Such an approach is essential
given the power of industry to transform nature into a seemingly unending stream
of material commodities. This transformative power shaped both urban and rural
landscapes and often spawned the growth of bustling cities and towns where cattle
or sheep had once pastured (e.g., Jack and Cremin 1994:96–107; Mrozowski et al.
1996). In other instances, industry led to the recasting of older cities as new residential and land use patterns accompanied the establishment of factories and the
housing needed for their workers.
Donald Hardesty (1998; see also Hardesty and Fowler 2001) has been one of
the more innovative voices in the field when it comes to the study of industry. For
him, the environment is a critical factor in constructing an archaeology of the
modern world:
An environmentally focused historical archaeology of the modern world falls somewhere between the short time span and high resolution studies of ecologists working
in today’s world and the long time span and low resolution studies of our archaeological colleagues interested in the more ancient past. The archaeological record of the
modern world is an unsurpassed source of information about human–environmental
interplay within a middle range time span. (Hardesty 1999:51)
Hardesty’s comments are significant not solely because of his concerns for the
environment, but also because he recognizes the importance of middle-range scale
issues, both spatially and temporally. It is also clear that a global historical archaeology needs to be concerned not just with the past, but with the future as well
(Hardesty 2001). These are ambitious goals, but evidence abounds that historical
archaeologists have already begun to construct an archaeology of industry that
examines more than just technology and technological change.
Many of the earliest industrial enterprises were established in rural settings.
Although the growth of mechanized industry would have a tremendous impact on
34
stephen a. mrozowski
urbanization on a global scale, it was the countryside that first felt the hand of its
transformative powers. At Ironbridge in England, the direction and pace of industrial development can be read in a changing landscape of factories, canals, mines,
and housing (Alfrey and Clark 1993:145–168). At Lithgow in New South Wales,
Australia, the presence of ores in an otherwise rural area led to the establishment
of a steel town that would have all of the hallmarks of an urban, industrial community. Constructed on either side of the railroad line that would connect it to
Australia’s commercial centers, Lithgow now stands as a quiet monument to industrial development rather than the noisy, smoke-draped place it had once been. Jack
and Cremin note that the poor living and working condition in Lithgow had always
been a source of turmoil for the many who toiled in the community (Jack and
Cremin 1994:123).
The mining of ores and precious metals occupied a central place in industrial
development well before the advent of factory-based industry. Mining for silver
and gold was an important part of the Spanish colonial effort during the 16th
and 17th centuries (e.g., deFrance 2003), as it was in places such as South
Africa (Behrens 2004), Australia (Jack and Cremin 1994:59–77), and the American
West (Hardesty 1988, 1998). Hardesty’s (1998, 2001) innovative research has
focused on the growth of industrial landscapes as well as the long-term impact
industry has had on the environment writ large. Historical archaeologists working
in the western United States have continued to develop this focus on mining
and other forms of rural industry. For instance, Gillespie and Farrell’s study of
mining camps in Arizona revealed that companies took steps to meet the newly
established state standards for housing and sanitation (Gillespie and Farrell
2002:59–68).
Legislation to promote better standards of living and hygiene for workers such
as that discussed by Gillespie and Farrell (2002) grew directly out of concerns for
worker well-being that first emerged in the industrial cities of Europe, the United
States, and Australia during the 19th century. The interdisciplinary investigations
of the Boott Cotton Mills (Mrozowski et al. 1996) and subsequent research in
Lowell, Massachusetts (Mrozowski 1999a) have explored the growth of that city’s
urban environment as part of a broader examination of the social and biological
consequences of industrialization (see Figure 13.1). Among the results of this
research has been evidence of rodent infestations in company boarding houses and
the presence of lead in the soils surrounding the Boott boarding house yards
(Mrozowski et al. 1996:53). Medical research illustrates just how dangerous even
a slightly elevated lead level can be, particularly for children, if exposed to leadladen soils, drinking water traveling through deteriorating lead pipes, or paint
(Canfield et al. 2003; Rogan and Ware 2003:1515–1516). Lead data from yards
used by workers of the Boott and Lawrence manufacturing companies far exceeded
the 10 milligrams per deciliter of blood threshold which can cause intellectual
impairment (Canfield et al. 2003; Rogan and Ware 2003) as well as delay puberty
in girls (Selevan et al. 2003). The results from Lowell can be easily extrapolated to
other 19th-century cities where overcrowding and poor sanitation could result in
the spread of disease. The creation of slums and densely populated areas in cities
environments of history
35
across the globe (see Mayne and Murray 2001) all resulted in conditions that were
highly conducive to the spread of disease.
Conclusion and Future Directions
Over the past 20 years historical archaeologists have become increasingly interested
in the role of environmental studies. As the numerous examples discussed here can
attest, those studies are providing critical perspectives on the many changes wrought
by colonization, urbanization, and industrialization. The biological dimensions of
those changes are inseparable from the cultural forces that helped to shape these
historical processes. In the Lowell case, for instance, it is easy to ponder whether
the performance of immigrant children in school was affected by learning disabil­
ities linked to lead poisoning. Joined with the other vagaries of poverty and prejudice, the picture that emerges is one that speaks to the pathologies of social
inequality. Regardless of the context, the biological dimensions of living in densely
populated urban communities contradict epistemologies that see culture and nature
as separate realities (Descola and Pálsson 1996; Escobar 1999; Mrozowski 1996).
One metaphor that works to illustrate the fallacy of dichotomous epistemologies is
the body as environment (Butler 1993; Haraway 1991; Lowe 1995; see Meskell
1999). In cases where disease can be linked to poor sanitation, the body serves as
an appropriate metaphor for characterizing the impact industry had on the wellbeing of working class communities. By placing the body into its broader environment, historical archaeologists can begin reconstructing the ecologies of capitalism
and chronicle their change over time (Mrozowski in press). In so doing they provide
a unique perspective on history of capitalism and its continuing influence in today’s
world and in the future.
By recognizing the dialectical relationship of nature as physical reality and nature
as perceived reality, as Escobar has argued (1999), historical archaeologists can
begin to deepen their understanding of the innumerable histories that have contributed to the evolution of the modern world. Those histories were often conditioned by biological factors such as the presence of disease, the need to adapt to
novel environments, and the coming together of disparate populations in forming
new communities. New directions in this regard are already visible. The work of
people such as Stahle et al. (1998) at Jamestown point to the potential for making
new discoveries that helps in rewriting colonial history. Similar results from New
South Wales suggest other avenues of research for recasting the events that shaped
Australia’s colonial origins (Gale and Haworth 2002). Hardesty’s work (2001,
2003) on issues of sustainability provides still another avenue for an environmentally-oriented historical archaeology. As new research is undertaken, comparative
and more integrative approaches to colonialism, urbanization, and industrialization will be possible. Kealhofer’s (1999) recent call for a more integrative approach
to the study of landscape is one such example. Johanna Behrens’ recent examination of the Modderfontein dynamite factory in South Africa drew upon case
studies from North America to provide her study with greater global breadth
36
stephen a. mrozowski
(Behrens 2004:350–366). The work of Grace Karskens (2003) in Sydney, Susan
deFrance (2003) in Bolivia, and Heather Trigg (2004) in the American Southwest
represent other examples of placing local experiences into a broader global
context.
In October of 1897 an Aboriginal man in northern Australia was transported
by police to a prison in the southern portion of the continent. Having never been
in this part of Australia before, he found himself in a strange environment not
inhabited by spirits with which he could communicate. He found the new place
filled with kartiya, or non-aborigines, as well as plants and animals that were
strange to him (Harrison 2002:260). Pieced together from written descriptions of
prison life in late 19th-century Australia, this fictional narrative captures a firsthand account of colonization through the eyes of the colonized. Its description of
a transformed world, populated by strange people, foreign plants and animals, and
an unfamiliar spirit world, captures the texture of the colonial encounter. It is this
texture, the lived experience, that demands a historical archaeology capable of
constructing comparable images of past realities and the experiences of those who
lived them.
REFERENCES
Alfrey, Judith, and Catherine Clark 1993 The Landscape of Industry: Patterns of Change in
the Ironbridge Gorge. London: Routledge.
Alpern, Stanley 1992 The European Introduction of Crops into West Africa in Precolonial
Times. History in Africa, 19:13–43.
Anderson, David G., David W. Stahle, and Malcolm K. Cleveland 1995 Paleoclimate and
the Potential Food Reserves of Mississippian Societies: A Case Study from the Savannah
River Valley. American Antiquity 60(2):258–286.
Armstrong, Douglas V. 1999 Archaeology and Ethnohistory of the Caribbean Plantation. In
“I, Too, Am America”: Archaeological Studies of African-American Life. Teresa Singleton,
ed. Pp. 173–192, Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.
Auger, Reginald, and William Moss 2001 The Archaeology of Physical and Social Transformation: High Times, Low Tides and Tourist floods on Quebec City’s Waterfront. In The
Archaeology of Urban Landscapes, Explorations in Slumland. Alan Mayne and Tim
Murray, eds. Pp. 132–144. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bain, Alison 1998 A Seventeenth Century Beetle Fauna from Colonial Boston. Historical
Archaeology 32(3):32–48.
—— 2000 Archaeoentomological and Archaeoparasitological Reconstructions at Iˆlot Hunt
(CeEt-110): New Perspectives in Historical Archaeology (1850–1900). British Archaeological Reports, vol. S973. Oxford, Archaeopress.
Beaudry, Mary C. 1996 Reinventing Historical Archaeology. In Historical Archaeology and
the Study of American Culture. Lu Ann De Cunzo and Bernard L. Herman, eds. Pp.
473–497. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press.
Behrens, Joanna 2004 Navigating the Liminal: An Archaeological Perspective on South
African Industrialization. In African Historical Archaeologies. Andrew M. Reid and Paul
J. Lane, eds. Pp. 347–373. London: Kluwer.
environments of history
37
Benton, Ted 1996 The Greening of Marxism. New York: Guilford.
Bowen, Joanne 1999 The Chesapeake Landscape and the Ecology of Animal Husbandry. In
Old and New Worlds. Geoff Egan and Ronald L. Michael, eds. Pp. 358–367. Oxford:
Oxbow.
Butler, Judith 1993 Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex. New York:
Routledge.
Campbell, Judy A. 2002 Invisible Invaders: Smallpox and Other Diseases in Aboriginal
Australia. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press.
Canfield, Richard L., Charles R. Henderson, Jr., Deborah A. Cory-Slechta, Christopher Cox,
Todd A. Jusko, and Bruce P. Lanphear 2003 Intellectual Impairment in Children with
Blood Lead Concentrations below 10 mg per Deciliter. New England Journal of Medicine
348(16):1517–1526.
Cantwell, Anne-Marie, and Diana diZerega Wall 2001 Unearthing Gotham: The Archaeology
of New York City. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Cheek, Charles D. 1999 An Evaluation of Regional Differences in Colonial English Foodways. In Old and New Worlds. Geoff Egan and Ronald L. Michael, eds. Pp. 349–357.
Oxford: Oxbow.
Cox, Glenda, and Judith Sealy 1997 Investigating Identity and Life Histories: Isotope
Analysis and Historical Documentation of Slave Skeletons Found on the Cape Town
Foreshore, South Africa. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 1(3):207–224.
Crosby, Alfred W. 1986 Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900–
1900. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Deagan, Kathleen 1996 Environmental Archaeology and Historical Archaeology. In Case
Studies in Environmental Archaeology. Elizabeth J. Reitz, Lee A. Newsom and Sylvia J.
Scudder, eds. Pp. 359–376. New York: Plenum.
—— 2003 Colonial Origins and Colonial Transformations in Spanish America. Historical
Archaeology 37(4):3–13.
Deagan, Kathleen A., and Jane Landers 1999 Fort Mosè: Earliest Free African-American Town
in the United States. In “I, Too, Am America”: Archaeological Studies of African-American
Life. Teresa Singleton, ed. Pp. 261–282. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.
Deetz, James J. 1977 In Small Things Forgotten: The Archaeology of Early American Life.
Garden City, NJ: Anchor Press.
deFrance, Susan D. 2003 Diet and Provisioning in the High Andes: A Spanish Colonial
Settlement on the Outskirts of Potosí, Bolivia. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 7(2):99–125.
Descola, Philippe, and Gísli Pálsson, eds. 1996 Nature and Society: Anthropological Perspectives. London: Routledge.
Diamond, Jared 1999 Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. New York:
Norton.
Dobyns, Henry F. 1991 New Native World: Links between Demographic and Cultural
Changes, Columbian Consequences, vol. 3, The Spanish Borderlands in Pan-American
Perspective. David H. Thomas, ed. Pp. 541–559. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution
Press.
Edwards-Ingram, Yvonne D. 1999 The Recent Archaeology of Enslaved Africans and African
Americans. In Old and New Worlds. Geoff Egan and Ronald L. Michael, eds. pp 155–164.
Oxford: Oxbow.
Escobar, Arturo 1999 Steps to an Anti-Essentialist Political Ecology. Current Anthropology
40(1):1–16.
Gale, S. J., and R. J. Haworth 2002 Beyond the Limits of Location: Human Environmental
38
stephen a. mrozowski
Disturbance prior to Official European Contact in Early Colonial Australia. Archaeology
in Oceania 37:123–136.
Geismar, Joan H. 1993 Where is Night Soil? Thoughts on an Urban Privy. Historical Archaeology 27(2):57–70.
Gillespie, William. B., and Michael Farrell 2002 Work Camp Settlement Patterns:
Landscape-Scale Comparisons of Two Mining Camps in Southeastern Arizona. Historical
Archaeology 36(3):59–68.
Goodman, Alan H., and Thomas L. Leatherman, eds. 2001 Building a New Biocultural
Synthesis, Political-Economic Perspectives on Human Biology. Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan Press.
Hall, Martin 1992 Small Things and the Mobile, Conflictual Fusion of Power, Fear, and
Desire. In The Art and Mystery of Historical Archaeology: Essays in Honor of James Deetz.
Anne E. Yentsch and Mary C. Beaudry, eds. Pp. 373–399. Boca Raton: CRC Press.
—— 2000 Archaeology and the Modern World: Colonial Transcripts in South Africa and the
Chesapeake. London: Routledge.
Hamilton, Scott 1996 Over-Hunting and Local Extinctions: Socio-Economic Implications
of Fur Trade Subsistence. In Images of the Recent Past: Readings in Historical Archaeology. Charles E. Orser, ed. Pp. 416–435. Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press.
—— 2000 Dynamics of Social Complexity in Early Nineteenth-Century British Fur-Trade
Posts. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 4(3):217–273.
Haraway, Donna 1991 Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. London:
The Free Associate Press.
Hardesty, Donald L. 1988 The Archaeology of Mining and Miners. Special Publication
Number 6. Ann Arbor: Society for Historical Archaeology.
—— 1998 Power and the Industrial Mining Community in the American West. In Social
Approaches to an Industrial Past: The Anthropology and Archaeology of Mining. A.
Bernard Knapp, Vincent C. Pigott, and Eugenia W. Herbert, eds. Pp. 81–96. London:
Routledge Press.
—— 1999 Historical Archaeology in the Next Millennium: A Forum. Historical Archaeology
33(3):51–58.
—— 2001 Archaeology. In Our Fragile World: Challenges and Opportunities for Sustainable
Development, vol. II. M. K. Tolba, ed. Pp. 1165–1181. Oxford: Eolss Publishers Co.
Ltd.
—— 2003 Mining Rushes and Landscape Learning in the Modern World. In Colonization
of Unfamiliar Landscapes: The Archaeology of Adaptation. M. Rockman and J. Steele,
eds. Pp. 81–95. London: Routledge Press.
Hardesty, Donald L., and Donald D. Fowler 2001 Archaeology and Environmental Changes.
In New Directions in Anthropology and Environment: Intersections. Carol. L. Crumley,
A. E. van Deventer, and J. J. Fletcher, eds. Pp. 72–89. Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press.
Harrison, Rodney 2002 Archaeology and the Colonial Encounter: Kimberly Spearpoints,
Cultural Identity and Masculinity in the North of Australia. Journal of Social Archaeology
2(3):352–377.
Haworth, R. J., S. J. Gale, S. A. Short, and H. Heijnis 1999 Land Use and Lake Sedimentation on the New England Tablelands of New South Wales, Australia. Australian Geographer
30(1):51–73.
Jack, Ian R., and Aedeen Cremin 1994 Australia’s Age of Iron: History and Archaeology.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Janowitz, Meta F. 1993 Indian Corn and Dutch Pots: Seventeenth Century Foodways in
New Amsterdam/New York. Historical Archaeology 27(2):6–24.
environments of history
39
Jarosz, Lucy 2003 A Human Geographer’s Response to Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Case
of Agrarian Development and Change in Madagascar. Antipode 35(4):823–828.
Karskens, Grace 2003 Revisiting the Worldview: That Archaeology of Convict Households
in Sydney’s Rocks Neighborhood. Historical Archaeology 37(1):34–55.
Kealhofer, Lisa 1999 Adding Content to Structure: Integrating Environment and Landscape.
In Old and New Worlds. Geoff Egan and Ronald L. Michael, eds. Pp. 378–389 Oxford:
Oxbow.
Landon, David B. 1996 Feeding Colonial Boston: A Zooarchaeological Study. Historical
Archaeology 30.
Larsen, Clark S. 2002 Bioarchaeology: The Lives and Lifestyles of Past Peoples. Journal of
Archaeological Research 10(2):119–166.
Leone, Mark, Parker B. Potter, and Paul A. Shackel 1987 Toward a Critical Archaeology.
Current Anthropology 28(3):283–302.
Lightfoot, Kent 2003 Russian Colonization: The Implications of Mercantile Colonial Practices in the North Pacific. Historical Archaeology, 37(4):14–28.
Lowe, Donald M. 1995 The Body in Late Capitalist USA. Durham: University of North
Carolina Press.
Mayne, Alan, and Tim Murray 2001 The Archaeology of Urban Landscapes, Explorations
in Slumland. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Mays, Simon 1999 The Study of Human Skeletal Remains from English Post Medieval Sites.
In Old and New Worlds. Geoff Egan and Ronald L. Michael, eds. Pp. 331–341 Oxford:
Oxbow.
McGuire, Randall 2002 A Marxist Archaeology. Clinton Corners: Percheron Press.
McKee, Larry 1988 Plantation Food Supply in Nineteenth Century Tidewater, Virginia.
Ph.D. dissertation, Berkeley, Department of Anthropology.
—— 1999 Food Supply and Plantation Social Order: An Archaeological Perspective. In “I,
Too, Am America”: Archaeological Studies of African-American Life. Teresa Singleton, ed.
Pp. 218–239. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.
Meskell, Lynn 1999 Archaeologies of Social Life. Oxford: Blackwell.
Mires, Peter B. 1994 Contact and Contagion: The Roanoke Colony and Influenza. Historical Archaeology 20:30–38.
Morgan, Edward S. 1971 The First American Boom: Virginia 1618–1630. William & Mary
Quarterly 28(2):169–198.
Moussette, Marcel 2003 An Encounter in the Baroque Age: French and Amerindians in
North America. Historical Archaeology 37(4):29–39.
Mrozowski, Stephen A. 1987 Exploring New England’s Evolving Urban Landscape. In Living
in Cities, Edward Staski, ed. Pp 1–9. Ann Arbor: Society for Historical Archaeology.
—— 1991 Landscapes of Inequality. In The Archaeology of Inequality. Randell H. McGuire
and Robert Paynter, eds. Pp 79–101. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
—— 1996 Nature, Society, and Culture: Theoretical Considerations in Historical Archaeology. In Historical Archaeology and the Study of American Culture. Lu Ann De Cunzo
and Bernard L. Herman, eds. Pp. 447–472. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press.
—— 1999a Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Production of Urban Industrial Space. In
Old and New Worlds. Geoff Egan and Ronald L. Michael, eds. Pp. 136–146. Oxford:
Oxbow.
—— 1999b The Commodification of Nature. International Journal of Historical Archaeology, 3(3):153–166.
—— In press The Archaeology of Class in Urban America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
40
stephen a. mrozowski
Mrozowski, Stephen A., Grace H. Zeising, and Mary C. Beaudry 1996 Living on the Boott:
Historical Archaeology at the Boott Cotton Mills, Lowell, Massachusetts. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.
O’Connor, James 1998 Natural Causes: Essays in Ecological Marxism. New York:
Guilford.
Palmer, Marilyn and Peter Neaverson 1998 Industrial Archaeology Principles and Practice.
London: Routledge.
Paynter, Robert 2000 Historical and Anthropological Archaeology: Forging Alliances. Journal
of Archaeological Research 8(1):1–37.
Perttula, Timothy K. 1991 European Contact and Its Effects on Aboriginal Caddoan Population between A.D. 1520 and A.D. 1680. In Columbian Consequences, vol. 3: The
Spanish Borderlands in Pan-American Perspective. David H. Thomas, ed., Pp. 501–518.
Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Reinhard, Karl J. 1992 Parasitology as an Interpretive Tool in Archaeology. American Antiquity 57(2):231–245.
Reinhard, Karl. J., Stephen A Mrozowski, and Kathleen K. Orloski 1986 Privies, Pollen,
Parasites and Seeds: A Biological Nexus in Historical Archaeology. The MASCA Journal
4(1):31–36.
Reitz, Elizabeth J. 1992 The Spanish Colonial Experience and Domestic Animals. Historical
Archaeology 26(1):84–91.
—— 1994 Zooarchaeological Analysis of a Free African Community: Gracia Real de Santa
Teresa de Mose. Historical Archaeology 28(1):23–40.
Reitz Elizabeth J., and Bonnie G. McEwen 1995 Animals, Environment and the
Spanish Diet at Puerto Real. In Puerto Real: The Archaeology of a Sixteenth-Century
Spanish Town in Hispaniola. Kathleen Deagan, ed. Pp. Gainesville: University of
Florida Press.
Reitz, Elizabeth J., and B. Ruff 1994 Morphometric Data for Cattle from North America and
the Caribbean prior to the 1950s. Journal of Archaeological Science, 21(5):699–713.
Reitz, Elizabeth J., and Margaret C. Scarry 1985 Reconstructing Historic Subsistence with
an Example from Sixteenth-Century Spanish Florida, Society for Historical Archaeology
Special Publication 3. Ann Arbor: Society for Historical Archaeology.
Rogan, Walter J., and James H. Ware 2003 Exposure to Lead in Children – How Low is Low
Enough? New England Journal of Medicine, 348(16):1515–1516.
Rothschild, Nan A. 1989 The Effects of Urbanization on Faunal Diversity: A Comparison
between New York and St. Augustine, Florida, in the Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries.
In Quantifying Diversity in Archaeology. R. D. Leonard and G. T. Jones, eds. Pp. 92–99.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
—— 1990 New York City Neighborhoods: The Eighteenth Century. San Diego: Academic
Press.
Rothschild, Nan A., and Donna Balkwill 1993 The Meaning of Change in Urban Faunal
Deposits. Historical Archaeology, 27(2):71–89.
Scarry, Margaret C., and Elizabeth J. Reitz 1990 Herbs, Fish, Scum, and Vermin: Subsistence
Strategies in Sixteenth-Century Spanish Florida. In Columbian Consequences, vol. 2:
Archaeological and Historical Perspectives on the Spanish Borderlands. David H. Thomas,
ed. Pp. 343–354. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Schávelson, Daniel 1999 The Historical Archaeology of Buenos Aires: A City at the End of
the World. New York: Kluwer.
Schrire, Carmel 1995 Digging Through Darkness: Chronicles of an Archaeologist. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.
environments of history
41
Schuyler, Robert L. 1999 Comments on Historical Archaeology in the Next Millennium: A
Forum. Historical Archaeology, 33(2):66–67.
Scott, Elizabeth M. 1996 Who Ate What? Archaeological Food Remains and Cultural Diversity. In Case Studies in Environmental Archaeology. Elizabeth J. Reitz, Laurie A. Newsom,
and Sylvia J. Scudder, eds. Pp. 339–356, New York, Plenum.
Sealy, Judith C., Alan G. Morris, R. Armstrong, A. Markell, and Carmel Shrire 1993 An
Historic Skeleton from the Slave Lodge at Vergelegen. South African Archaeological
Society Goodwin Series 7, 84–91.
Selevan, Sherry G., Deborah C. Rice, Karen A. Hogan, Susan Y. Euling, Andrea PfahlesHutchens, and James Bethel 2003 Blood Lead Concentration and Delayed Puberty in
Girls. New England Journal of Medicine 348(16):1527–1536.
Shackel, Paul A. 1996 Culture Change and the New Technology. New York: Plenum.
Silliman, Stephen W. 2004 Lost Laborers in Colonial California: Native Americans and the
Archaeology of Rancho Petaluma. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
Sluyter, Andrew 2003 Neo-Environmental Determinism, Intellectual Damage Control, and
Nature/Society Science. Antipode 35(4):813–817.
Soper, Kate 1996 Nature/“Nature”. In Future Natural. George Robertson, Melinda Mash,
Lisa Tickner, Jon Bird, Barry Curtis, and Tim Putnam, eds. Pp. 22–34. London:
Routledge.
Stahle, David W., Malcolm K. Cleveland, Dennis B. Blanton, Matthew D. Therrell, and David
A. Gay 1998 The Jamestown and Lost Colony Droughts. Science 280(S363):564–567.
Teich, Mikulas, Roy Porter, and Bo Gustafsson, eds. 1997 Nature and Society in Historical
Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Trigg, Heather 2004 Food Choice and Social Identity in Early Colonial New Mexico. Journal
of the Southwest 46(2):223–252.
Wallerstein, Immanuel 1974 The Modern World System I: Capitalist Agriculture and
the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century. New York:
Academic.
Wolf, Eric 1982 Europe and the People Without History. Berkeley: University of California
Press.
Zeitlin, Judith F., and Lillian Thomas 1997 Indian Consumers on the Periphery of the
Colonial Market System: Tracing Domestic Economic Behavior in a Tehuantepec Hamlet.
In Approaches to the Historical Archaeology of Mexico, Central and South America. Janine
Gasco, Greg Charles Smith, and Patricia Fournier-Garcia, eds. Pp. 5–16. Los Angeles: The
Institute of Archaeology, University of California.
Chapter 3
Material Culture and Text:
Exploring the Spaces Within
and Between
Patricia Galloway
Introduction
Historical archaeology seems to be the simple task of looking for objects in the
earth in order to find out about the people who left them there. As a discipline
archaeology has nevertheless always been socially situated as an activity of educated
elites, and the historical development of its discourse has accorded it institutional
power (Trigger 2003:67–86). Because the available evidence that historical archaeology uses, both artifactual and textual, is quite variable in its form and content
and always fragmentary at best, archaeologists always have the freedom to define
what counts as evidence and to weigh different kinds of evidence in constructing
their accounts.
It has long been recognized that material and documentary resources represent
independent lines of evidence (Leone and Potter 1988). Andrén (1998) suggests
that they may be related through typologies, identifications, correlations, associations, and contrasts. A sustained debate has taken place over the contributions of
material evidence and textual evidence, both their proportional importance and
which should dominate. Some have used material culture evidence to confirm or
test literary sources; a good example is Schliemann’s excavation of Troy (Schliemann
1875). Others have used textual evidence as commentary on material culture, such
as recent archaeological efforts to trace the route of Hernando de Soto using texts
to identify sites (Hudson 1997).Yet others have sought to use both kinds of evidence
to construct a full and integrated account of lifeways, ethnicities, or even important
events. An example of the latter is the reconstruction of the Custer battle at the
Little Bighorn (Scott and Fox 1987). More recently, however, it has been suggested
that careful attention to dissonances between material and textual evidence about
the past might be recruited to reveal lives and practices that have been historically
invisible heretofore (Hall 1999).
material culture and text
43
My task here is to discuss this foundational fissure in historical archaeology and
to find a way of talking about and even seeing these “spaces between” the two kinds
of evidence. I especially want to discuss some fundamental questions about the
context and processes by virtue of which objects and text become evidence and
interpretation in the practice of historical archaeology. I will suggest that dissonances between the material and textual evidence produced by archaeologists and
historians must first be recognized as arising from the separate production processes
for the two forms of evidence. These processes have not usually been discussed in
the standard or even in the critical discourse about archaeological theory, despite
a recent and very significant exception designed to fill this gap through reflexive
method (Hodder 2000).
In order to make these processes more visible, I will use the conventions of
actor-network theory (ANT), a useful way of talking about knowledge-construction
practices and especially the place in these practices of human relationships with
other humans and with apparatus, objects of study, machines, and codified chunks
of knowledge like theories and practices, all of which are also considered “actors”
(actants) (Latour 1987; Latour and Woolgar 1979). Researchers in ANT represent
the relationships among actors as a network or directed graph portraying actors as
nodes and the relations between them as links. In order to achieve some end (like
“learning” or “research”), privileged “passages” or paths through the network are
developed and eventually become “black-boxed” as a paradigm of “normal science”
(Kuhn 1970), becoming the established relations of social order incorporated into
the habits of scientific practice, taken for granted by scientists, and completely
invisible to a member of the public (or another discipline). Thus the details of
the network of social relations underlying disciplinary practice become obscured,
and since access to humans and objects making up privileged parts of the
network are required for participation in it, non-members find it difficult to
participate or even to understand what is going on. Portraying as actor networks
the work carried out by archaeologists, historians, and historical archaeologists
on the remains left behind by people in the past allows us to make more explicit
both the production of knowledge about the past through constitutive archae­
ological practices and the contributions of different kinds of evidence to that
knowledge.
In general terms, the actor network for historical archaeology consists of four
focal dramatis personae: archaeologists, people of the past, objects, and texts. Each
of these actors can easily be dissected into much greater detail. “Archaeologists,”
for example, may include a broad range of specialists and practices. In addition,
the “objects” and “texts” are themselves the result of various production processes
by both the people being studied and the people doing the studying, as a consequence of which they also become repositories of agency and power. The “people
of the past” are entirely constructed by the archaeological activities of recovering
and grouping objects and texts, and in a real sense they occupy a position similar
to hypotheses and theories.
Ian Hodder (1986) introduced the idea of treating archaeological objects in
context like a critically read text, and postmodern historiographers have done the
44
patricia galloway
same favor for historical documents (e.g., White 1987). We can take this perception
further. Both kinds of evidence – texts and objects – have quite distinct lives during
which they interact with a range of human contexts (networks) and in which they
play different roles and accrue or lose value as they are translated from one network
to another. I would specifically like to construe both kinds of evidence, when
assembled as evidence, as archives or intentionally assembled bodies of material,
since it is vital to understand how the available collections of artifacts and documents were created and curated in order to understand their potential for representing the past as well as for sustaining complex relationships in the present (Derrida
1996; Taylor 1997). Hence I want to distinguish three layers of meaning generation,
represented by the social lives of objects and texts both before and during their
careers as evidence for historical archaeology:
1 creation, use, and deposition of the object or document in its original context
(past lifeworlds and the site-formation and text-formation processes to which
they give rise);
2 discovery, recovery, and deposition of the object or document in the preserving
context (“archivization,” including excavation and curation for objects and collection and archiving for documents);
3 selection of the object or document from the archive(s) by the archaeologist to
create an interpretive context (construction of an interpretation within the present
professional context of the archaeologist).
The interfaces between these contexts are constituted by the translations of objects
and texts from one into another, usually in the order given. In what follows I will
attempt to sketch the flow of objects and documents through these three network
segments (Figure 3.1), reserving to the end of the chapter a case study exploring
their implications in a specific task of archaeological interpretation.
The Social Life of Objects
At creation, objects are always already deeply embedded in the human patterns of
practice that enable subsistence and reproduce the thoughtworld and the lives
of their creators and users. ANT is particularly helpful in attempting to frame the
problem of understanding the social life of things (Appadurai 1986), first because
it actually accords them a social life. All objects of archaeological interest must
have participated at some time with human actors in networks of interactions and
meanings. How may these ideas be applied to archaeological objects and the reconstruction of such past actor networks? Certainly with difficulty, since it is hardly
likely that precise meanings or even functions of archaeological artifacts will ever
be known. It is possible, however, to apply these ideas simply by attempting to
describe the repertoire of objects used in a given setting as a network of interaction
with makers and users, and thereby to approach more precisely at least to defining
different parts of the past network as better or worse understood (Figure 3.2).
act on
act on
act on
conceptualize
conceptualize
Ancient
People
Ancient
People
Texts
seek, recover
Historians
make, use
make, communicate
??=??
seek, recover
Historical
Writing
make, curate,
discard
Artifacts
seek, recover
Figure 3.1 Skeletal actor network for historical archaeology
Imaginary
Environment
Other
people/
Society
Archaeologists
make, use
Archaeological
Writing
observe,
interact
seek,
recover
Observers
of Ancient
People
make
Texts
46
patricia galloway
Archaeological
Writing
write reports for
Scientific
Specialists
assist
Interpretation
make, use
inform
Archaeologists
develop,
revise
Theories
provide
materials
provide
materials
Curators
Archivization
archived with
archived with
Artifacts,
Ecofacts,
etc.
Records of
Excavation
guide,
revised by
make
define
Excavators
use
Tools
Methods
Excavation
plan
Excavation process
recovers
Other
people/
society
act on
recovers
part
of
Artifacts
act on
Activity
areas
Creation
act on
Environment
inform
Imagined
world(s)
inform
inform
reproduces
thoughtworld
make, curate,
discard
Ancient
people
create
about
Enculturation
Figure 3.2 Actor network of object-centered archivization
One well-known obstacle to understanding is the simple incompleteness of our
knowledge of the original network of object creation and use. Objects that are
unlikely to survive in the archaeological record cannot even be known, but even
objects that do survive in archaeological context are formally made into evidence.
Deposition, the sum of the site formation processes that get the object into a context
where it can be found later, is crucial to the discovery of objects in the first place,
material culture and text
47
but interpreting the meaning of deposition itself is a process guided by uniformitarian assumptions based upon spatial patterning and co-occurrence of object types.
Before any formal interpretation takes place, therefore, a complex network of
theory, practice, personnel, and equipment must be mobilized to carry out the
activity black-boxed as “excavation.”
Most archaeological writing proceeds as though the archaeologist were totally
unconstrained in the recovery process, yet such is rarely the case. The process of
site discovery has significant economic constraints that will restrict macrospatial
survey coverage. Access to sites also plays a role; publicly owned land seldom maps
systematically onto site distributions of interest, and private landowners have many
reasons for denying access. Once a site is found, so many issues of practice intervene
in the techniques of excavation that no archaeological theory can be thought to be
“purely” applied. Funding may dictate everything from length of the project to
storage methods to recordation and reporting requirements. Sampling methods
frequently dictate which parts of sites will be excavated and thus constrain what
will be found, yet they are often applied without attention to the historical processes
underlying their analytical procedures. The same is the case with borrowings from
the “allied sciences.”
Within archaeology even its most intimate equipment is borrowed along with its
affordances (as is frequently the case in any science), making archaeological field
practice itself a kind of bricolage with many subcultural varieties. Tools are a case in
point: why has a mason’s pointing trowel been fetishized into an emblem of the
discipline (cf. Flannery 1982)? No special picks, shovels, buckets, or wheelbarrows
are used, either. Perhaps the major items of purpose-developed equipment are
sifting screens and flotation tanks, both designed to recover tiny artifacts and ecofacts from undifferentiated matrix but both most frequently hand-made with local
materials meeting often vaguely defined standards, though their use is theory driven
and may dramatically alter the findings of excavation.
The micropractices of recovery, even down to the kinds of containers used to
convey finds from field to processing lab and especially the methods of labeling
used to ensure that thousands of find groupings can be reassembled as a virtual
site, vary richly from excavation to excavation and influence the ensuing structure
of the data. Training traditions can be traced in field practice where economics does
not intervene, some common examples being sampled squares versus open-area
and arbitrary levels versus natural levels (cf. Tringham and Stevanovic 2000). Excavation as a small-group activity leads to the same interpersonal conflicts familiar to
all workplaces. The good and bad effects of the motivation to find valuable artifacts
are very little examined.
Archaeological recording techniques have their own theoretical construction.
Based first on geological principles of superposition, or stratigraphy, and further
developed to account for human site formation processes, they are dependent upon
care and expertise in surveying, drawing, and increasingly the use of electronic
systems (Harris 1979). Processing of materials, the first step in archivization, must
guarantee that this recording is not lost: most artifacts must be cleaned or washed
and have an indelible label affixed in some way. The sizes and shapes of available
48
patricia galloway
containers and the space available to store them may influence what can be stored
together (or at all). All of this takes place in the social setting of the laboratory
activity, much of which is prey to error-inducing boredom.
There is therefore no simple “archaeological object.” By the time the archaeologist uses an object for analysis, it has already accrued many layers of official metadata
recording the excavated context as it has traversed the archivization network, even
as it has usually failed to acquire metadata explicitly explaining how it was recovered
and handled after recovery. Artifacts are stored away in context-labeled containers,
together with three-dimensional recording of the excavation itself and the architectural “features” uncovered in the excavation and containing or relating to the artifacts. These features are stains in the dirt, different dirt colors in layers, surviving
constructions in stone or other materials. Part of the task with horizontal (“planning”) and vertical (“sectioning”) recording is to distinguish one feature from
another, spatially or through superposition, and this special form of seeing involves
an acquired skill also black-boxed and therefore left unaccountable in daily archaeological practice. Further, distinguishing the presence of features is part of the
interpretive problem, and may not be possible until much later, as pat­terns
begin to emerge in, for example, seemingly unrelated postholes. Yet dynamically
developing hypotheses about what is being found guides daily alterations in the
process of excavation, and this process is all too infrequently recorded adequately
or made available in the resulting reporting.
Archaeological objects are “archivized” when they are removed from the
archaeological context by excavation and transferred into a systematic collection
along with excavation data. Such collections are maintained in two major contexts:
museums or research laboratories generally adjunct to university departments. Both
institutions are fundamental parts of European state formations because they both
function to support specific parts of social reproduction (informal and formal education). They are also complex social environments for knowledge production and
distribution, just like scientific laboratories of all kinds (Kehoe 1998:144–49), where
more value is added to the recovered artifacts. Their very arrangement, dependent
on classification by those who study them, lends value to them, as does every act
of attention paid to them. Since the skillful physical and intellectual manipulation
of archaeological objects confers reciprocal value on those who have those skills,
objects can be said to become fetishized in those environments and under those
manipulations.
Even in the research collection or museum, economic factors may dictate the
discard or de-accessioning of collected materials after analysis, though this practice
is controversial. Very little discussion of the specific problem of responsibility for
archaeological collections has taken place until recently in the USA, where Federal
government concerns over the costs of archaeological curation following upon a
greatly expanded preservation archaeology program that produced enormous
amounts of archaeological materials led to the establishment of regional storage
facilities and a concern with standards of collection management and documentation (Childs and Corcoran 2000). In Europe, better-established antiquities programs (better established perhaps because the descendent communities pay for
material culture and text
49
them?) have nevertheless had to struggle with the important but fragile new electronic means of recording artifactual documentation.
The documentation issue raises the question of how the production of archaeological knowledge about objects comes into being and what reciprocal effects it may
have on the objects. The activities of archaeologists, as Schiffer has observed, “are
formation processes and thus introduce appreciable variability into the archaeological record,” which he conceives of as including the products of archaeological
labor (Schiffer 1987:339). This “variability” becomes an additional dissonance in
the archaeological record. All of the elements of the archaeological production
context shape the making of archaeological knowledge in this way. Although
archaeologists assume that all of them will function with consistent excellence, there
are almost no studies of consistency and competence in the practice of archaeological recovery and analysis (Hodder 2000; Schiffer 1987:361–362).
The Social Life of Texts
Historical texts are comparatively seldom created with posterity in mind, but rather
to accomplish some purpose in a present that they help create: debtors write pleading letters, officials acquit themselves of their duties through reports, literate adults
gossip with their relatives who live at a distance, isolated missionaries record their
observations of their clients in order to justify their success or failure. Recordkeeping is thus not a careless procedure. Especially in the case of colonial enterprises
as well as emerging nation-states, recordkeeping was a crucial component of governmentality (Foucault 1991). Records made up part of a political economy of
property and power that predicated control on an implicit demand for literacy. They
were kept by those whom they advantaged, and orally transmitted records that did
not fit literate concepts of recordkeeping were progressively devalued, such that
their reproduction was abandoned over time or they were not fixed as marks on
paper, and thus were “lost” because construed conventionally as untrustworthy
(Ong 1982; Vansina 1973; cf. Price 1983). Records about a colonized Other written
by outside observers are, as well, obviously biased in their content in ways that make
them rarely usable as they literally stand. It is therefore just as important to try to
reconstruct the original network context of record creation as it is to aim at reconstructing the artifact-creation network – and often just as difficult or impossible
(Figure 3.3).
Nor do historical texts become historical evidence by accident. First they have
to enter the public sphere so that they may become accessible to those who wish
to use them as evidence. Some historical documentation reaches the public sphere
intentionally: it is “published” in some sense in order to do its work, whether actually printed or deposited in what was or subsequently became an official archive
(although such archives are never complete). Many historical texts, however, remain
in private hands for varying lengths of time and may even be discovered in surveys
of private collections, but they are rarely found intentionally unless enough is known
about the possibility of their existence for the researcher to seek them.
50
patricia galloway
Historical
Writing
Interpretation
inform
Theories
make
develop,
revise
Historians
select texts using
Ontologies,
finding aids
becomes
create
about
Theory
use
Archivization
create
Method
Texts
contain
contain
use
use
use
Libraries
Archives
select
deposit and
use records
Publications
Government
recordkeepers
publish
Publishers
select
manuscripts
communicated
to
edited by
Texts
about
make
make,
communicate
Ancient
people
Creation
observe,
interact
Observers
of ancient
people
Figure 3.3 Actor network of document-centered archivization
The “archivization” process for texts seems more familiar than that for artifacts
because it is a fundamental underpinning of literate cultures, but it is important to
understand that it entails just as complex a production process. Archives have collections policies that serve the interests of the private, governmental, or academic
material culture and text
51
institution that supports them, and those often stringent policies impinge on what
will be selected to enter the archive and be preserved at all (Boles and Young 1991;
Taylor 1997). Such policies generally require the preservation of “provenance,” a
record of the context of origin and custodial history of a document. On both the
official and the private side, archives frequently relate to state formation, private
property, and the control of populations. The keeping of archives directly adds value
to them, transmuting the labor expended in the processes of appraisal and selection,
arrangement and description, storage, indexing, access, and preservation. Technologies have changed over time, including mundane shelving and boxing as well
as the far more significant addition of structure and interpretation via classification
and description, which controls the access that will be possible after archivization.
These processes are supposed to make texts into evidence in quite precise technical
ways formalized by legal discourse and governmental structures (MacNeil 2000)
that represent ethnocentric concepts as much as do object-archivization practices.
Moreover, although few documents are chosen for archivization and many more
are lost or destroyed, not nearly enough is known about how surviving archives of
documents were actually created or what kinds of samples they are of the universe
of documents that was once available. The archival theory underlying these activities is more often practice than theory. Further, many archivists doing routine lowlevel work have limited practical training, just as do many diggers on archaeological
sites. There is, if anything, less study of excellence in archival practice than there is
of excellence in archaeological recovery.
Archivists are not the only agents involved in the translation of archived documents into historical evidence. The production practice of historians is brought to
bear through an additional process of selection and reconstruction of chains of
events from fragments sought from numerous sources, taking the next step in
making historical documents, like broken potsherds of testimony, into evidence.
This next step actually consists of the assembly of sortable bits of information culled
from documents and reduced to canonical form. This practice of creating narrative
from documentary testimony is fully as complex as the exercise of the various
aspects of archaeological method in the handling of material objects, and depends
not only upon selection processes from the archive but also upon intertextual relations with the work of other historians and the place of the work of history in a
tradition of practice and in the author’s striving for professional success. Historians
can draw upon the archival record, its documentation, and the previous work of
other historians, but historians have their own constraints: the existence and accessibility of archived texts, their own theories of causation, and even the prevailing
note-taking and ordering technologies that they may use to range their materials
(Galloway 1991:Figure 23.1).
Artifacts and Documents, Taken Together
Artifacts recovered and curated by archaeologists and texts collected and archived
by archivists are both unique. This is true even if the artifact was machine-made or
52
patricia galloway
the text printed. By entering the network of use and deposition, by being recovered
from a unique deposition context, and by undergoing the process of archivization,
artifacts and texts enter history and begin to accrue historical value by their participation in these respective networks. Because they are unique it is possible for
them to be monopolized by the restriction of access. Alternatively, it is possible for
them to be fetishized by being translated into what Latour has called “immutable
mobiles” – widely distributed representations that become metonymic of specific
findings, theories, or other constructs and that thereby become obligatory points
of passage in specific networks of knowledge (Latour 1987). Immutable mobiles,
like published editions of the papers of famous men or catalogs of artifacts from
significant excavations, represent the archivization of data, while histories and site
reports represent its interpretation. Both together can re-enter the process of meaning
construction by being archived in their turn and thereby add further complexity to
the combined network of interpretation (Figure 3.4).
Case Study: Constructing Pictish Texts from Artifacts
As an example of many of the foregoing points, I want to present an unusual case
study in which both artifactual and documentary evidence have been used for
archaeological analysis designed to yield explicit construction of the meaning of
artifactual evidence. Charles Thomas’ (1963) study of the Pictish symbol stones is
a period piece that well demonstrates many of the elements of a historical archaeology actor network in play, especially since at a distance of forty years we have a
chance to observe how the evolution of the network has dealt with Thomas’ work.
The problem of the meaning of the Pictish symbol stones mobilized a network of
researchers, objects, and materials that included:
• an enduring and vexing problem about the origin and dating of the Picts of
northern Scotland and their history;
• various interested groups including art historians, historians, amateur archaeo­
logists, and academic archaeologists;
• a published inventory of the Pictish standing stones and their symbols;
• a categorization of the stones that hovered between spatial and temporal
dimensions;
• a body of texts recording external historical observation of Picts and northern
Scots from Roman, Irish, and Anglo-Saxon observers;
• an emergent archaeology of Dark Age Celtic lands beyond the British Isles;
• an acquaintance with structuralist/semiotic approaches to meaning.
Thomas’ study was an archaeological intervention into what had been a predominantly historical (and art-historical) discourse. As an early work by a relatively
young archaeologist at the University of Edinburgh specializing in Dark Age
Europe, it formed part of a more scientizing approach to archaeological evidence
then beginning to make itself felt against established descriptive studies. It is
inform
inform
Enculturation
inform
Environment
act on
reproduces
thoughtworld
Imagined
world(s)
act on
act on
Ancient
people
make, curate,
discard
Artifacts
part
of
create
inform
guide,
revised by
develop,
revise
Activity
areas
recovers
Excavation process
Excavation
plan
recovers
Methods
use
Excavators
make
Records of
Excavation
Tools
define
Artifacts,
Ecofacts,
etc.
archived with
Curatorial
facility
select
materials
Archaeologists
archived with
select
materials
assist
make, use
about
Theories
Creation
Archivization
Interpretation
Figure 3.4 General actor network of objects and documents in historical archaeology
Other
people/
society
Scientific
Specialists
write reports for
Archaeological
Writing
about
becomes
select
Publishers
publish
contain
Ancient
people
Historians
make
observe,
interact
Texts
communicated
to
Observers
of ancient
people
make
select
manuscripts
Archives
use
Method
contain
create
deposit and
use records
use
Government
recordkeepers
use
Texts
about
Ontologies,
finding aids
select texts using
make,
communicate
edited by
Libraries
use
T h eo r y
create
inform
develop,
revise
Publications
Theories
Historical
Writing
54
patricia galloway
especially interesting as an example here because in it Thomas literally translated
artifacts into texts.
Pictland, already by then long established in historical discourse as Scotland
north of the Antonine Wall, was nevertheless not very well known archaeologically
by 1963. There had been almost no modern excavations in the region apart
from Childe’s (1946) and Piggott’s (1951) excavations of barrows and fortifications, and most of what was known came from reports of visible structures
like brochs, vitrified forts, and reoccupied hillforts. By the early 1960s, excavations
of dwellings and burials were practically nil, apart from Wainwright’s (1963)
Scottish souterrain excavations and Hamilton’s (1956) excavations of brochs at
Jarlshof. There was, however, a significant corpus of known and recorded symbol
stones, upright stone boulders and slabs incised or carved with symbols from a
repertoire that had been described and studied in the 19th century. Their distribution, along with that of place names having the presumed “Pictish” element pit or
pett, was thought to define the regions settled and dominated by the Picts from
A.D. 297 to 843.
Archivization of the Pictish symbol stones
The stones had been “discovered” mostly by amateur historians, antiquarians, and
museum keepers and recorded in detail in a three-volume compendium published
in 1903 by the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland (Early Christian Monuments of
Scotland, henceforth ECMS). The ECMS constituted an obvious “immutable
mobile” with respect to the symbol stones and symbols, erasing the variability in
the original data recovery and making it simultaneously possible and unnecessary
to visit all the stones. At the time of its original publication the list contained 499
stones with details about their size, location, decoration, and other features. From
that time additional stones had been discovered and recorded, so that in 1957 Isabel
Henderson was able to update the list in the Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries
of Scotland (PSAS), adding 23 more examples and correcting some details of the
ECMS compendium. Thus Charles Thomas was able to base his work on a meticulously overhauled database (to which he added 11 new or overlooked examples),
representing more than a hundred years of observation. An additional investment
had been made in the stones’ preservation, as many of them had been moved to
shelter of some kind (often in churches) or gathered in museums, acts that of course
obscured evidence of context while preserving the stones.
This body of data did not come to Thomas without prior analysis and the assembling of external (non-Pictish) textual sources to support and amplify the analysis.
By the time he began work there was also a well-recognized canon of historical
sources that mentioned, described, or offered lists of kings for the Picts. In addition
the original ECMS compendium offered categorizations of the stones and the
symbols found on them. Allen specified three classes of monument on the simple
basis of their content, but believed that the classes also represented a chronological
sequence (Allen and Anderson 1903: I, lxvii):
material culture and text
55
1 Monuments with incised symbols only
2 Monuments with symbols and Celtic ornament carved in relief
3 Monuments with Celtic ornament in relief, but without the symbols (Allen and
Anderson 1903: I, xi)
In addition, Allen grouped the symbols themselves in another tripartite scheme:
1 “purely geometrical and conventional symbols”( Allen and Anderson 1903: I,
xxxv) (including the so-called V-rods and Z-rods);
2 animals (including familiar and fabulous);
3 objects identifiable as to kind and use (including weapons, tools, and household
equipment)
The ECMS volumes already represented a scientizing restraint in their description
and identification of the symbols. Author J. Romilly Allen was not uninterested
in the meanings of the symbols, especially those that appeared most often, but he
cared more about what they were as physical objects than about what they meant.
He clearly suggested both that the occurrence of multiple symbols might be
construed syntactically and that the mirror and comb constituted a “female determinative” (1903: I, xxxvi). He also suggested that the symbol stones had a single
center of origin based on the distribution and presumed chronology of the classes
of stones.
In 1955 a book of essays entitled The Problem of the Picts was published by the
historian F. T. Wainwright to encourage archaeological study of the Picts by
assembling scholarly statements on Pictish history, archaeology, language, and art
by leading academics, cultural resource managers, or museum curators with the
authority of their institutions behind them. This effort reflected a growing interest
in reconstructing the history of the so-called Dark Age period through both
multidisciplinary cooperation and the application of new statistical methods to
archaeology by a profession eager to displace lay and art-historical dominance. The
“problem of the Picts” for which it intended to provide a base for further work was
nothing less than the problem of the Pictish ethnos: who the Picts were, whether
they were Celt or pre-Celt or a mixture, and when they were located where. This
summary volume and the work behind it – which drew on both objects and texts
– immediately inspired and shaped the work of younger scholars.
When Isabel Henderson, then working on a dissertation on the history of
the Picts in the program in anthropology and archaeology at Cambridge, took
up the review of the symbol stones in 1957, she introduced a new piece of documentary evidence for consideration, in an attempt to establish more conclusively
a spatial center for the origin of the symbols. This document was the De Situ
Albanie, the earliest royal survey of Scotland that named traditional regions in
terms of seven pairs of names, probably composed around 1184 from earlier
sources (Anderson 1980:235–243). Henderson’s adoption of the earlier sevenfold
land division of Pictland, already discussed in Problem of the Picts, meant a new
view of the data.
56
patricia galloway
Henderson believed that the stones functioned as boundary markers. She was
less interested in the meanings of the symbols than in their style as an index of time,
based on Stevenson’s (1955) stylistic analysis of the decoration of the crescent
symbol as a model. Her analysis depended upon tacking between stylistic assumptions and map locations, and required that three elements be orchestrated: a largescale Class I–Class II temporal shift, a north–south spatial spread of symbol stone
use, and stylistic development of the symbols over time. She remained convinced
that the repertoire of symbols was so restricted and so consistent that there should
be a single originator and a single center, and she searched the historical literature
to find in Bede and Adamnán a candidate in the sixth-century Pictish king Brude,
son of Maelchon, whose seat was situated near the mouth of the Ness River
(Henderson 1957–58: 55–57).
Enter Thomas bearing Celts
In 1959 Charles Thomas heard Henderson speak on Pictish animal ornament and
was struck by the fact that neither Henderson nor Stevenson had undertaken to
tackle the meaning of the symbols. “Now this was a period when, thanks to Piggott,
Hawkes, Rivet, Feachem and others, the Scottish Iron Age was being not only
codified but to a large extent invented. . . . The Picts were no longer part of an
older lunacy. . . . They were fashionable, exciting, of a fresh Iron Age relevance”
(Thomas 1983:169). The Picts might thus be fitted into the interpretive picture
of cultural movements in northern Europe during the Iron Age constructed on
the basis of a rapidly accumulating archive of artifacts and excavation records
partly stimulated by post-World War II reconstruction and development activities.
In attacking the part of the problem represented by the symbol stones,
Thomas framed it as a problem of meaning that, if solved, could itself provide
a “textual” commentary on the origin and lifeways of the Picts. He accepted
Allen and Anderson’s threefold classification of the stones and Henderson’s
concentration on the first two classes. But the two additional practices of
archaeological typology and linguistic syntactic analysis made it possible for him
to take the same body of data and place it in the “intertextual” context of an
immensely widened artifactual inventory as analyzed in a flourishing archaeological literature, a broader base of textual evidence, and a technology of linguistic
analysis.
Examining the symbols with an explicitly materialist focus, Thomas inventoried
the symbol identifications Allen had offered and identified most of them either as
actual objects or as recognizable motifs from a broader and earlier Dark Age
context, blending native Bronze Age motifs and Iron Age Celtic themes from continental sources. He drew on his work on Scottish Iron Age animal art (Thomas
1961) to propose the hypothesis that the symbols were a manifestation of a Pictish
art created by a ruling caste of first-century Iron Age Celtic invaders. He even
suggested that the stylization of the symbols might have taken place during their
use as tattooed ornament. Many of the elements of this argument – first-century
material culture and text
57
Celtic warrior caste invaders, Iron Age Celtic material repertoire, and even a newly
discovered Scythian tattoo from Pazyryk – also appear in a work published by
Thomas’s senior colleague at Edinburgh, Stuart Piggott, in his 1965 book Ancient
Europe. Piggott’s wide acquaintance with European archaeologists meant that
Thomas had access to the most current findings for his own work. But Thomas
was original in his development of this material. He exploited the new evidence for
tattooing beyond what Piggott did with it. More importantly, he argued that the
language-like “statements” that he believed the monuments expressed supported
an argument for a very specific social organization and memorialization practice
which he drew selectively from historical accounts of both Picts and early Celts –
with hints, he later admitted, from burial memorials of many times and places,
including his own day.
Aside from his few additions to it, Thomas had taken over the ECMS inventory
and Henderson’s corrections to form a database to support not just simple counts,
but language-like co-occurrence relations. He began with simple counting of
the data of Class I, bracketing out spatial and temporal considerations. Class I
monuments might have as few as one or as many as four symbols. Thomas then
found that these simple counts could be reduced to three rule-bound statement
types:
• S-1: single symbol, usually animal;
• S-2: any double combination of animal + object, but object is never mirror or
comb;
• S-3: triple or quadruple of which the first two terms may not be animal/animal,
but any other double combination; triple ends in mirror or mirror and comb;
quadruple ends in mirror and comb.
Thomas proposed that the multiple symbols, many of which he maintained had
been found in proximity to former burial sites, must be memorials to the dead.
F. T. Wainwright (1955:95–96) had already pointed to the frequent occurrence of
symbol stones near burials and suggested that careful excavation of sites with in
situ stones – where the stones could validate the Pictish identity of the burials –
should be carried out. Now Thomas argued additionally that these memorials could
be read off as texts through a simple syntax based on sequential right–left or
top–bottom sequence:
• S-2 and S-3:
– memorial of Object person of Animal group;
– memorial of Object person (noun), qualified by Object (adjective);
– memorial of Object person set up by Object person;
• S-3 elaboration:
– memorial of Object person, qualified by Object or Animal adjective, set up
by Mirror (and Comb) relative;
– memorial of Object person, qualified by adjective, set up by Mirror relative
and another Object person.
58
patricia galloway
The clear importance of the meanings of the symbols within these formulae now
demanded that they be identified if possible. Here Thomas discarded Allen’s
assumption that any symbols were “purely geometrical and conventional.” On the
basis of their co-occurrence with other symbols that rarely occurred alone, Thomas
concluded that two of them, the V-rod and Z-rod, actually represented respectively
a broken arrow and broken spear, and joined another symbol (that Thomas called
a “broken sword”) to provide modifiers indicating the death of an individual
symbolized by another symbol; in effect he had transferred them from Allen’s
“purely geometrical and conventional” category to his “identifiable objects” category.
Thomas had borrowed this assumption from the archaeologically recognized
presence of purposefully broken objects in Celtic Iron Age burials, construed as
“ritually killed” on the basis of historical texts testifying to the practice of sending
the dead to the otherworld with apparently similarly “dead” objects.
Having identified a small repertoire of objects that seemed to be used to annotate
other symbols to indicate death, Thomas turned to the 14 animal symbols and
suggested that the coincidence of their number with the 14 ancient divisions (the
seven pairs indicating the land divisions that had interested Henderson) “does point
to some such link” with political divisions and might perhaps serve as a boundary
mark representing the group label of a ruling lineage (Thomas 1963:70). But
because these divisions were paired, Thomas argued that S-2 animal/animal statements could not be boundary marks but might represent pairings of cult symbols
into what he called “cult scenes.”
It was from the remaining S-2 and S-3 statements that Thomas went on to
integrate the stone texts into a picture of Pictish political structure that incorporated thin historical evidence about ranking (expressed in Latin terms taken
à la carte from a range of early medieval sources – Adamnán, Bede, De Situ
Albanie – but nowhere exhaustive unless compared with direct descriptions of Irish
society of the same era) into the meaning of specific symbols as equivalent to
specific ranks:
rex = double disc (+Z-rod)
regulus = crescent (+V-rod)
primarius cohortis = chariot
magus = snake
equites = personal ornament objects.
Then Thomas argued that virtually all monuments with such statements memorialized an individual of one of these significant male ranks and also indicated who set
up the monument. Thomas noted, as had everyone else, the frequency with which
the mirror or mirror–comb pair appeared, and he accepted their identification as a
female symbol (natural enough when the famous La Tène mirrors that apparently
served as model for the mirror symbol were found buried with females). Their
syntactic appearance “last,” furthest right in a horizontal statement or at the bottom
of a vertical statement, made them fit into his symbolic syntax as the donor of the
monument. He observed that this argument also explained why the female symbol(s)
material culture and text
59
were never found in the initial position, since in the assumed warrior society of the
Picts no women would be so memorialized.
Spaces between objects and documents: Pictish matriliny
With this last observation we come to an interesting and persistently erased thread
of the discussion about the Pictish symbols, virtually ignored in Thomas’s exposition
and suggesting a possible dissonance between documentary and artifactual evidence as interpreted by Thomas: whether they may reflect a matrilineal society
originary to the British Isles and overrun by a patriarchal Iron Age Celtic ruling
class. These discussions had begun very early. Heinrich Zimmer (1894:209–240)
wrote about the Picts to underpin his discussions of Aryan Mutterrecht. The arguments have been revived lately in feminist discussions of the matriarchal origin of
European civilization. Marija Gimbutas claims the Picts as a survival of her matrifocal Goddess-worshipping Old Europe, citing also more recent historical scholarship (Gimbutas 1991:348; Anderson 1980).
The issue is explicitly raised by a text from Bede, according to which the Picts
came first to northern Ireland, where they obtained Irish wives on condition that
whenever they had to choose a king in cases of doubt, they should choose from the
female lineage rather than the male. This notion has been contemptuously rejected
by some historians. Smyth (1984:68; see critique in Sellar 1985) refers to it as the
“matrilinear bogey,” pointing to its having been used to argue for a pre-Celtic language and origin for the Picts, which he basically rejects in favor of Celtic cultural
domination as early as the first century. He thus agrees in this respect with
Thomas’ arguments for the naturalization of first-century Celtic elements in the
Pictish symbols. Whether this specific legend is true or not, many historians believe
that Bede was correct in reporting that the custom was followed by the Picts in his
own time (Miller 1982). Further, historians have long argued that this observation
is borne out by the Pictish king lists, which indicate that Pictish kings were never
succeeded by their sons (Anderson 1980:165–179). Hence any attempt to discuss
social arrangements among the Picts, especially Pictish elites, should really address
this issue of dissonance with patriarchal assumptions raised by significant texts, and
archaeologists have continued to do so (cf. Woolf 1998 and Ross 1999).
But Thomas’ choices, to assert the “naturalness” of a left–right or top-down
sequence in creating his syntax and to assert the first syntactic position as that of
honor and the second as that of support and subservience, excluded other meanings. He was not unaware of matrilineal readings of the historical Pictish evidence,
though he dismissed it saying that “further discussion is pointless unless it assumes
the form of exhaustive analysis by a skilled social anthropologist” (Thomas 1963:87–
88). Further, in this study he in effect created a new and large set of “primary”
texts about the Picts which on his reading iterated an exclusion of women from
power, and he did it by privileging a single “reading” of the stones while deprecating significant texts, substituting objects for texts and erasing the space between
them where arguments for matriliny might be offered.
60
patricia galloway
Thomas’ intervention did not definitively carry the day in dominating the explanation of the Pictish symbols, nor did it radically redefine the “problem of the Picts.”
But it expanded on Allen’s suggestion that their ordering was significant, raised the
issue of the meaning of the symbols, confirmed their strong Celtic content, and
excluded a matrilineal interpretation of Pictish society. The arguments continued
to be taken seriously as a candidate theory, such that in 1984 Thomas was asked
to review the work for yet another summary volume in the light of much additional
archaeological excavation evidence and additional symbol stone finds (Thomas
1984; see also Ritchie 1984).
For Thomas as for his predecessors, the Pictish symbol stones represented hundreds of years of investment as they moved through the network contexts of creation
and site formation (including alteration, reuse, and displacement), archivization (in
many forms of recordation, including full drawings and decomposed individual
drawings of symbols), and many iterations of interpretation (each in its turn joining
the archive) (Figure 3.5). In each of these contexts the stones interacted with
people. In creation (as most agree), they served to memorialize lineage and power,
perhaps to mark territory. In archivization their obvious similarity compelled
collection and comparison, while the evident effort and expense of their making
compelled interest. In interpretation, taking on the temporary masks of assigned
meaning, they stood to proxy for their interpreters’ claims to understanding and
learning. And as those claims were pursued and argued and built into a larger argument about the emergence of ancient Europe, the discourse about them became
too dependent upon specialist knowledge to be indulged in by amateurs.
Conclusions
Alison Wylie’s (2002) careful thinking through the evidentiary claims of both positivist and postpositivist interpretations of archaeological finds has addressed particularly the process of triangulation from many types of evidence and from many
sets of evidence of the same type as a way of avoiding the circularity of both 1)
nomothetic claims that depend upon uniformitarian assumptions and a socially
constructed scientism and 2) ideographic claims that depend upon the hermeneutic circle of situated interpretation. It is just this kind of triangulation, dependent
upon both the written and the artifactual record, that is fundamental to historical
archaeology. But for triangulation to counter to any degree both kinds of circularity, no sort of archaeological evidence can be considered unproblematic and no step
in the construction of evidence may be ignored.
In current historical archaeological practice the spaces within and between the
evidence of object and text are the domain of professionals, and the curated objects
and edited texts themselves are constructed as part of an often impenetrable
academic discourse through which contested spaces can be elided and erased. For
historical archaeologists to recover the past networks of people and objects within
which the meanings of material objects were alive and effective, if that is indeed
possible at all, the accrued values and meanings from their own translation into
inform
inform
Enculturation
inform
Environment
act on
reproduces
thoughtworld
Imagined
world(s)
act on
act on
part
of
Picts
make, curate,
discard
Symbol
stones
create
recovers
inform
Other
European
Dark Age
sites
observe
guide,
revised by
develop,
revise
Pictish
sites
recovers
Excavation process
Excavation
plan
recovers
Methods
use
Excavators
make
Records of
Excavation
Tools
define
Artifacts,
Ecofacts,
etc.
archived with
Curatorial
facility
select
materials
Archaeologists
archived with
select
materials
assist
make, use
about
Antiquarians
make
Records of
observation
Theories
equivalent?
Creation
becomes
published by
Archivization
select materials
using
Interpretation
Figure 3.5 Actor network for Charles Thomas’ Pictish symbol interpretation
Other
people/
society
Scientific
Specialists
write reports for
Archaeological
Writing
becomes
inform
select
Publishers
publish
use
Picts
Historians
make
observe,
interact
Texts
communicated
to
use
Archives
Roman,
Irish, etc.
sources
make
select
manuscripts
deposit and
use records
use
Method
create
Church and
state
recordkeepers
use
Theory
create
Ontologies,
finding aids
select materials
using
make,
communicate
edited by
Libraries
about
develop,
revise
Publications
Theories
Historical
Writing
62
patricia galloway
archival and interpretive contexts of both objects and texts, as well as the processes
through which this happens, should be understood and made visible.
REFERENCES
Allen, J. Romilly, and J. Anderson 1903 The Early Christian Monuments of Scotland, 3 vols.
Edinburgh: Society of Antiquaries of Scotland.
Anderson, Marjorie O. 1980 Kings and Kingship in Early Scotland. Edinburgh: Scottish
Academic Press.
Andrén, Anders 1998 Between Artifacts and Texts: Historical Archaeology in Global Perspective. New York: Plenum Press.
Appadurai, Arjun, ed. 1986 The Social Life of Things. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Boles, Frank, and Julia Marks Young 1991 Archival Appraisal. New York: Neal-Schuman.
Childe, V. G. 1946 Scotland before the Scots. London: Methuen.
Childs, S. Terry, and Eileen Corcoran 2000 Managing Archaeological Collections: Technical
Assistance, http://www.cr.nps.gov/aad/collections/, accessed June 15, 2005. Washington,
DC: Archaeology and Ethnology Program, National Park Service.
Derrida, Jacques 1996 Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression, trans. Eric Prenowitz. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Flannery, Kent 1982 The Golden Marshalltown: A Parable for the Archaeology of the 1980s.
American Anthropologist 84(2):265–278.
Foucault, Michel 1991 Governmentality. In The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality. Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon, and Peter Miller, eds. Pp. 87–104. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Galloway, Patricia 1991 The Archaeology of Ethnohistorical Narrative. In Columbian Consequences, vol. 3: The Spanish Borderlands in Pan-American Perspective. David Hurst
Thomas, ed. Pp. 453–470. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution.
Gimbutas, Marija 1991 The Civilization of the Goddess: The World of Old Europe. New
York: HarperCollins.
Hall, Martin 1999 Subaltern Voices? Finding the Spaces between Things and Words. In
Historical Archaeology: Back from the Edge. Pedro Paulo A. Funari, Martin Hall, and
Siân Jones, eds. Pp. 193–203. London: Routledge.
Hamilton, J. R. C. 1956 Excavations at Jarlshof, Shetland. Edinburgh: HMSO.
Harris, Edward 1979 Principles of Archaeological Stratigraphy. London: Academic Press.
Henderson, Isabel 1957–58 The Origin Centre of the Pictish Symbol Stones. Publications
of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland 91:44–60.
Hodder, Ian 1986 Reading the Past: Current Approaches to Interpretation in Archaeology.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hodder, Ian, ed. 2000 Towards Reflexive Method in Archaeology: The Example at
Çatalhöyük, by Members of the Çatalhöyük Teams. British Institute of Archaeology at
Ankara Monograph 28.
Hudson, Charles 1997 Knights of Spain, Warriors of the Sun: Hernando de Soto and the
South’s Ancient Chiefdoms. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press.
Kehoe, Alice 1998 The Land of Prehistory: A Critical History of American Archaeology
London: Routledge.
material culture and text
63
Kuhn, Thomas 1970 The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.
Latour, Bruno 1987 Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through
Society. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.
Latour, Bruno, and Steven Woolgar 1979 Laboratory Life: The Social Construction of Scientific Facts. London: Sage.
Leone, Mark P., and Parker B. Potter, Jr. 1988 Introduction: Issues in Historical Archaeology.
In The Recovery of Meaning: Historical Archaeology in the Eastern United States.
Mark P. Leone and Parker B. Potter, Jr. eds. Pp. 1–22. Washington, DC: Smithsonian
Institution.
MacNeil, Heather 2000 Trusting Records: Legal, Historical, and Diplomatic Perspectives.
Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Miller, Molly 1982 Matriliny by Treaty: The Pictish Foundation-Legend. In Ireland in Early
Medieval Europe. D. Whitelock, R. McKitterick, and D. Dumville, eds. Pp. 133-64.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ong, Walter 1982 Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. London:
Methuen.
Piggott, Stuart 1951 Excavations in the Broch and Hill-fort of Torwoodlee, Selkirkshire,
1950. Publications of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland lxxxv (1950–51):92–117.
—— 1965 Ancient Europe from the Beginnings of Agriculture to Classical Antiquity:
A Survey. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Price, Richard 1983 First-Time: The Historical Vision of an Afro-American People.
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins.
Renfrew, Colin 1973 Before Civilization: The Radiocarbon Revolution and Prehistoric
Europe. London: Jonathan Cape.
Ritchie, Anna 1984 The Archaeology of the Picts: Some Current Problems. In Pictish Studies:
Settlement, Burial and Art in Dark Age Northern Britain. J. G. P. Friell and W. G. Watson,
eds. Pp. 1–7. B.A.R. British Series 125.
Ross, Alasdair D. 1999 Pictish Matriliny? Northern Studies 34:11–23.
Schiffer, Michael 1987 Formation Processes of the Archaeological Record. Albuquerque:
University of New Mexico Press.
Schliemann, Heinrich 1875 Troy and Its Remains. London.
Scott, Douglas D., and Richard A. Fox, Jr. 1987 Archaeological Insights into The Custer
Battle: An Assessment of the 1984 Field Season. Norman: University of Oklahoma
Press.
Sellar, D. H. 1985 Warlords, Holy Men, and Matrilineal Succession. Innes Review 36:29–
43.
Smyth, Alfred P. 1984 Warlords and Holy Men: Scotland A.D. 80–1000. London: Edward
Arnold.
Stevenson, Robert B. K. 1955 Pictish Art. In The Problem of the Picts. F. T. Wainwright, ed.
Pp. 97–128. London: Nelson.
Taylor, Gary 1997 Cultural Selection: Why Some Achievements Survive the Test of
Time – And Others Don’t. New York: Basic Books.
Thomas, Charles 1961 The Animal Art of the Scottish Iron Age and its Sources. Archaeological Journal 118:14–64.
—— 1963 The Interpretation of the Pictish Symbol Stones. Archaeological Journal 120:31–
97.
—— 1983 Editor’s Introduction. In Research Objectives in British Archaeology. Charles
Thomas, ed. P. vii. London: Council for British Archaeology.
64
patricia galloway
—— 1984 The Pictish Class I Symbol Stones. In Pictish Studies: Settlement, Burial and Art
in Dark Age Northern Britain. J. G. P. Friell and W. G. Watson, eds. Pp. 169–188. B.A.R.
British Series 125.
Trigger, Bruce 2003 Alternative Archaeologies: Nationalist, Colonialist, Imperialist. In Artifacts and Ideas. Bruce Trigger, ed. Pp. 67–86. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers.
Tringham, Ruth, and Mirjana Stevanovic 2000 Different Excavation Styles Create Different
Windows into Çatalhöyük. In Towards Reflexive Method in Archaeology: The Example at
Çatalhöyük. Ian Hodder, ed. Pp. 111–118. British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara
Monograph 28.
Vansina, Jan 1973 Oral Tradition: A Study in Historical Methodology. Harmondsworth:
Penguin.
Wainwright, Frederick T. 1955 Houses and Graves. In The Problem of the Picts. Frederick
T. Wainwright, ed. Pp. 87–96. London: Nelson.
—— 1963 The Souterrains of Southern Pictland. London: RKP.
Wainwright, Frederick T., ed. 1955 The Problem of the Picts. London: Nelson.
White, Hayden 1987 The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins.
Woolf, Alex 1998 Pictish Matriliny: Reconsidered. Innes Review 49:147–167.
Wylie, Alison 2002 Thinking from Things: Essays in the Philosophy of Archaeology. Berkeley:
University of California Press.
Zimmer, Heinrich 1894 Das Mutterrecht der Pikten und seine Bedeutung für die arische
Altertumswissenschaft. Zeitschrift für Savigny Stiftung für Rechstsgeschichte, Band 15.
Weimar: Hermann Böhlan.
Chapter 4
The Place of Space:
Architecture, Landscape, and
Social Life
Elizabeth P. Pauls
In the late 20th century, terms like spatial analysis and landscape archaeology were
widely used by a variety of competing groups within archaeology. Although archaeologists have diverse theoretical perspectives on the essential character of spatial
relationships, those who emphasize space as their key area of inquiry share the goal
of illuminating the past by examining the interactions between people and their
surroundings.
Because many historical archaeologists study space, it is helpful to sort out their
competing claims and the ways these claims developed over time. This chapter
examines the theoretical diversity characterizing historical archaeological studies
of human–spatial relationships. I have used analytical scale as an organizational
rubric for the material, opening with a review of research at the environmental
and regional scales. The discussion moves in turn to social and architectural structures, and finally to individuals and their identities. The chapter closes with thoughts
on the future of spatially-oriented studies in historical archaeology, a discussion
illustrated with examples from my research on Native American architecture and
landscape.
Space, Scale, and Archaeological Theory
While less readily tangible than artifacts or texts, space and spatial relationships
have always played important roles in archaeology. Where an item is found typically
holds as much interest for an archaeologist as the identity of the object itself: an
artifact with no provenience may be an art object or a curiosity, but has lost most
of its value as a source of archaeological information. This is because the archaeologist seeks to understand the action behind the material object as well as the
object itself. How was this artifact made, used, altered, or discarded? Who produced,
gave, received, or used it? Questions like these are of interest to archaeologists
66
elizabeth p. pauls
regardless of the size or portability of the item, and can be asked equally of a teacup,
a house, or a political border.
The relationships between people, material culture, and space may be studied
from a variety of perspectives. Material sourcing studies allow archaeologists to
discern the movement of goods over space. Descriptive studies explore the spatial
relationships of sets of materials: clusters of artifacts define a work area, one or
more rooms define a dwelling, groups of homes define a town, and arrays of fortified towns define trade networks or borders. Historical archaeologists also explore
the role of space in power relations, as “putting someone in their place” is literally
the goal of much domestic, commercial, and civic architecture.
The distinction between space and place is important to many scholars. The difference was perhaps most thoroughly considered by Yi Fu Tuan (1977), a cultural
geographer. In essence, the difference is one of perception: space refers to those
areas that have little meaning for the beholder, while place refers to those areas that
are more or less laden with meaning and memory. Unfortunately, space is also used
freely by scholars to connote the general idea of “surroundings,” a situation that
can be confusing to the uninitiated reader.
Tuan expresses most interest in the phenomenology of space as the term is used
in the second, general sense: how do people experience their surroundings? His
work has been a useful starting point for scholars whose research focuses on the
“capture” of spaces and places throughout history. Many of these scholars argue
that European traditions of landscape painting and Europe’s colonialist endeavors
derive from an inherently acquisitive mentalité that equates seeing with possession
(e.g., Cosgrove and Daniels 1988; Mitchell 1994). Others are more concerned with
the ways spaces and places are abstractly represented, idealized, and physically
constructed (cf. Mitchell 1994). These ideas represent two aspects of the “Western
gaze,” a term invoked when discussing power relations such as those that define
elites (usually men) as “viewers,” and lower status individuals as more properly
“viewed” and even owned (Bender 1999).
Just as space can denote either a set of anonymous surroundings or surroundings
more generally, so landscape can refer to a tradition within oil painting or a category
of spatial phenomena. Landscape was first used as a scholarly term by 19th-century
European geographers. Their imperialist milieu predisposed them to teleological
descriptions of the relationships of individuals, societies, and geographic forms. For
these scholars, landscape was “an integrated web of physical, social, and psychological threads” (Livingstone 1992:267), albeit one which reflected “man’s”
“natural” proclivity toward progress. Landscape research today continues to be
characterized by an analytical continuum in which the physical environment,
societal structures (such as political, economic, class, gender, and religious systems),
and individual experiences exist in a tangled, recursive web. Within archaeology,
landscape analysis denotes a variety of theoretical approaches that consider relationships along this continuum, while spatial analysis tends to denote the specific techniques used to discern these relationships.
Disputes over which segment of the analytical continuum holds explanatory
primacy continue in many disciplines, including historical archaeology. Yet if one
the place of space
67
steps back from specific arguments to view the pattern of debate as a whole, it
becomes clear that the major issue is one of scale: At what locus does the action of
the human experience truly take place? Which scale of analysis holds the most
explanatory power? These questions frame the remainder of this section, though
historical archaeologists agree upon no single answer; instead they study the perception, use, and manipulation of space at all scales.
Environments and Regions
Because their focus of study is the globalization of modernity, including practices
such as colonialism, secularization, capitalism, industrialization, and urbanism,
historical archaeologists tend to draw widely from the work of other scholars
who share interest in a particular period, place, or scale of approach. For instance,
few historical archaeologists work at the broadest level of the spatial research
continuum, global environmental history (see Mrozowski, this volume). However,
many appreciate work that emphasizes the application of environmental sciences
techniques to large regions in order to discern the impacts of “ecological
imperialism” (Crosby 1986). Information flows outward from archaeology as well;
the geographers in Butzer’s (1992) edited volume The Americas Before and After
1492 rely heavily on archaeological data. At the regional level of analysis, a number
of excellent geographic histories describe the processes through which a given set
of surroundings has come to be. Hoskins’ (1955) The Making of the English
Landscape, for instance, walks the reader through 1,000 years of land change in
England. It should be read by all historical archaeologists, as it provides an
unparalleled case against which to compare spatial change in the rest of the
world even as it illuminates the colonial source of much of that change (see
also Lowenthal and Prince 1964). For those interested in the development of
American spatial habits vis-à-vis the colonial enterprise, classic landscape histories
include Jackson’s (1972) American Space: The Centennial Years, Stilgoe’s (1982)
Common Landscape of America, 1580 to 1845, and Meinig’s (1986, 1993) Shaping
of America volumes.
The environmental studies with which historical archaeologists most commonly
engage tend to consider locales rather than regions. Kirch (1992) and Sahlins’
(1992) two-volume investigation provides an outstanding examination of the
changes in the social and physical landscapes of Hawaii’s Anahulu valley during
colonization. The volumes are concerned with the processes of colonial contact,
resistance, and accommodation, and the ways in which differing data sets can be
conjoined and contrasted to illuminate the past. Where Sahlins examines the valley’s
historical ethnography, a data set inherently dominated by colonial-perspective
accounts, Kirch (1992) investigates the historic-period archaeology of indigenous
Hawaiians. As one of the leading researchers on anthropogenic environmental
change in island contexts, Kirch is able to draw from an extensive corpus of
archaeological data including botanical remains, irrigation patterns, and settlement
patterning. Together, the authors achieve a nuanced perspective in which it becomes
68
elizabeth p. pauls
clear that native Hawaiian cultural schema mediated, resisted, and ultimately transformed the entire colonialist enterprise.
Among botanical remains, pollen is becoming more frequently used as an environmental index in historical archaeology, though many scholars believe it is still
under-utilized. For instance, Cummings (1994) uses pollen analysis to explore the
ways that local environments and early American diets co-varied in a particular
West Virginia locale. Mrozowski (1999, this volume) argues that environmental data
have been under-exploited in historical archaeology, noting that the effects of
Jamestown’s early efforts at industrialization are clearly captured in the local pollen
record. Using dendrochronological data, he also argues that at least part of the
colony’s initial weakness arose from its establishment during the worst drought
period in 800 years. This period was followed by “volatile wet and dry periods [that]
continued to characterize the climate of the island for the next 30 years” and which
undoubtedly contributed to the stressful relations between local Native Americans
and the colonizers (Mrozowski 1999:163–164). Notably, major panels convened at
several Society for Historical Archaeology meetings have recommended that the
discipline invest more time and effort in environmental analyses (Deagan 1991,
1988; Hardesty 1999). As Mrozowski (this volume) notes, however, much work
remains to be done in this area.
Social and Architectural Structures
Cultures and cultural structures such as political, economic, class, gender, and
religious systems fall next on the analytical continuum. As with the Western gaze
and its hierarchies of subject and object, each of these systems reflects a perspective
encompassing an oppositional pair. Structuralism explores the tensions inherent in
such dualisms and the themes and particularities that connect each cultural system
to the other; it is a distinct theoretical approach, and should not be confused with
the study of architectural structures (although as I explore below, architectural
analyses may be structuralist in approach).
The first widely read structuralist analysis of spatial organization in the United
States was Jackson’s (1953) essay, “The Westward Moving House,” which describes
the landscape organization, or landscape orders, of the fictional Tinkham family circa
1650, 1850, and 1950. Jackson considers the ways that economic, religious, and
social systems are expressed through the worldview and material culture of each
generation of Tinkhams. He deftly illustrates how the physical form of a house can
embody the cultural ideals of an era and impose order on the physical space in
which the family lives, particularly noting the repetitive way that the order or organizational scheme is reiterated in house, farm, town, and family.
House interiors, exteriors, and clusters were the subject of a great deal of structuralist analysis over the next 40 years. For instance, Griaule (1965), Leone (1973,
1977), and Bourdieu (1973) found that religion, social hierarchy, and domestic
architecture strongly reiterated one another among the Dogon, Mormons, and
Berbers, respectively. Like Jackson, they argue convincingly that architectural forms
the place of space
69
simultaneously reflect and shape the people and cultures that build them; temples,
town plans, houses, and other parts of the built environment are “structuring structures.” Glassie (1975) has a similar interest in exploring the convergence of culture,
society, and self, but approaches it from a somewhat different direction. He conducted an exceedingly fine-grained analysis of early Virginia house forms, measuring rooms and feature placement in hundreds of vernacular houses from the early
colonial era. From these data Glassie discerns an architectural “grammar,” or
regularity in house design, that was surely shared (albeit perhaps at an unconscious
level) by the builder-owners of these homes.
Soon thereafter, Deetz (1977) published In Small Things Forgotten, perhaps the
best written and most widely read structuralist analysis in print. Deetz argues that
a relatively sudden and fundamental change in worldview occurred among British
subjects in the American colonies during the 18th century. An earlier medieval
mindset emphasizing undifferentiated practices and community identity gave way
to a “Georgian Order” characterized by individuality, privacy, separation, and containment. Deetz recounts many material transitions during this period as trunks
give way to bureaus, trenchers to plates, stews to chops, hall-and-parlor houses to
those with central halls, and so on. Winer and Deetz (1990) describe the opposite
shift in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa, where English settlers of the
1820s built houses with Georgian exteriors but hall-and-parlor (“medieval”) interiors in an attempt to revive a nostalgic past.
For those interested in the relationships between people and their surroundings,
Deetz’s analysis provides an almost seamless explanatory web. Yet Johnson (1993,
1996) rejects Deetz’s proposition that the Georgian Order was either sudden or
derived uniquely from the colonial enterprise, noting that its precursors are clearly
apparent in medieval house forms and practices in Britain. He also questions the
narrow dualism inherent in the structuralist mode of explanation, moving beyond
its confines to explore the ways that individuals make meaning in and derive
meaning from their surroundings. Johnson’s concerns about the role of individuals
and the “recovery” of individual experiences build upon Marxist, feminist, and
other forms of analysis that interrogate social or cultural structures through the
lenses of power and resistance. For instance, Leone (1984) considered the ways
that power and control were made manifest when Constitutional signatory and slave
owner William Paca used the rules of perspective to make his formal garden seem
larger than its actual size (see Burke, this volume). Invoking a Marxist perspective
in which all relations include an element of power, Leone surmises that Paca’s motivation was to “master” those around him, notably his womenfolk, servants, and
slaves. Williamson (1999), however, questions whether land owners during this
period would have needed to impress their social underlings; instead, he argues, their
gardens served to establish status and legitimacy among their peers of elite status.
A plethora of studies on the symbolic power of houses, gardens, estates, and
plantations followed Leone’s initial foray into the topic. Two edited volumes specifically pursue the analysis of historic gardens, Earth Patterns: Essays in Landscape
Archaeology (Kelso and Most 1990) and Landscape Archaeology (Yamin and Metheny
1996). While these volumes are good sources of information on historic gardens,
70
elizabeth p. pauls
their titles imply somewhat erroneously that landscape archaeology is synonymous
with garden archaeology. It almost goes without saying that many scholars disagree
with this premise. In Leone and Potter’s (1988) volume exploring “meaning” in
historical archaeology, five essays consider the ways that domestic architecture or
gardens expressed personal and cultural identities (Anderson and Moore 1988;
Deetz 1988; Leone 1988; Orser 1988a; Palkovich 1988). Yentsch and Beaudry’s
(1992) festschrift to Deetz includes four essays devoted to architectural and spatial
analysis (Derry 1992; Kelso 1992; McKee 1992; Upton 1992). Derry’s analysis of
father–daughter inheritance patterns and McKee’s discussion of slave cabins are
notable in addressing the thoughts and actions of women and people of color. Plantations, of course, provide a clearly power-laden venue within which race, gender,
and enslavement interacted (Orser 1988b, 1991; Singleton 1997; Upton 1985).
Most of these examples derive from the American colonial period, but examples
from many historical contexts are available. Johnson’s (1993) close reading of
medieval housing in England has already been mentioned; he has explored themes
of transition, agency, and meaning in the enclosure process and castles as well
(Johnson 1991, 2002). Markell et al.’s (1995) archaeological investigations at
Vergelegen, a massive country estate in South Africa, indicate that the Dutch colonial elite were as concerned with order, symmetry, and control of the landscape as
the Georgians that Deetz (1977) describes. Mrozowski (1999) discusses building
maintenance problems at the Castle at Cape Town, a major fortification that was
designed to create and emplace the Dutch East India Company’s ideas of symmetry and power onto the African landscape; unfortunately for the Company, the
Castle was sited on a piece of property that was physically unsuitable for such a
massive edifice and its walls soon listed. In contrast, however, Schrire (1995) finds
that symmetry, order, and architectural statements were of less interest for common
Dutch soldiers posted in South Africa, at least inasmuch as their living quarters
and rubbish disposal tell the tale.
Individuals, Identities, and Competing Voices
As Jackson’s fictive Tinkhams so aptly demonstrate, the most engaging architectural
analyses draw from both the built environment and the individuals who built and
used them. This brings us to the third scale of analysis shared by those who study
space, the individual. Where American archaeologists frequently allow individuals
to remain underdeveloped vis-à-vis spatial analysis, British archaeologists are fully
engaged in untangling the connections between physical space, the constant negotiation of individual and group identities, and the bodily experiences associated with
specific spaces and activities.
This is not to say that American historical archaeologists avoid the examination
of individuals or phenomenology entirely; some of the most striking examples of
individuated perspectives on the physical experience of landscape arise from
American battlefield archaeology. For instance, Fox (1988) and Scott et al. (1987)
use archaeological evidence to substantiate the claims of Native American warriors
who were involved in the infamous battle against Custer and the Seventh Cavalry.
the place of space
71
Similarly, Laumbach (2001) relates one of the few American landscape studies which
is populated almost entirely by people of color, a battle between the Apache leader
Victorio’s forces and the African-American Ninth Cavalry of the U.S. Army.
Yet British scholars of landscape are prolific in their consideration of individuals
qua landscape, drawing strongly from literary works (predominantly fiction and
memoirs), hermeneutics, and gender, race, and other power-interested analyses.
They also have fewer qualms in reading across the historical–prehistoric time
boundary than their American counterparts. The reasons for this divergence have
yet to be explored in full, though Johnson (n.d.) is preparing a volume on the
subject. Certainly some differences have arisen because American spatial analysis
developed from human ecology while British research in landscape archaeology
grew from Hoskins’ (1955) landscape history approach.
British scholars are at the vanguard of creating nuanced, contingent discussions
interweaving distinct people, places, and times. In the opening paragraphs of an
essay on Stonehenge, Bender sets a powerful and complex agenda:
I want to explore not only the different ways in which, over a period of a thousand
years, those with economic and political power and the necessary cultural capital have
attempted, physically and aesthetically, to appropriate the landscape, but also how
these appropriations have been contested by those engaging with the land in quite
different ways. Elsewhere I have suggested that people’s experience of the land is based
in large measure on the particularity of the social, political, and economic relations
with which they live out their lives, while at the same time their individual actions form
part of the way in which those relations are constructed and changed . . . I am uneasy
about the contemporary theoretical emphasis in which “the cultural” is uncoupled
from the political, and the individual from larger historical structures . . . I want to
retain the coupling while accepting that there is a complex system of interactions rather
then any consistent one-way flow . . . I want, too, to stress the physicality of “living in
the world,” the interlocking habitus of action, belief, experience, engagement. . . . Finally, perhaps unfashionably, I want to retain the notion of a hegemonic discourse
– the imposition by the powerful of particular ways of doing and seeing which often
work to disguise the labor process – and to stress that the strategies involved are not
only riven by internal factions and tensions, but are dependent upon some degree of
acceptance by those “without” power, and must perforce take on board their reactions,
contestations, and subversions. (Bender 1993:246)
Bender’s exploration of Stonehenge as a place and a symbol is one of the first spatially-focused landscape analyses to move beyond academic analysis of the past and
into a consideration of present-day activism associated with archaeological places
(see also Bender 1992). She has been a keen observer of the management controversies surrounding the enclosure of Stonehenge, which was bitterly protested by
the interested public. In such instances, archaeological landscapes are now being
revived as landscapes of confrontation and consequence.
This moves historical archaeology into a relatively new realm of analysis in which
scholars more accustomed to categorizing artifacts must negotiate with others who
have competing claims on the places of the past. This is a growing concern for
archaeologists. For example, two highly controversial cases – the enclosure of
Stonehenge and the unexpected discovery of the African Burial Ground in New
72
elizabeth p. pauls
York City (McDavid and Babson 1997) – proved extremely costly to archaeology
in terms of time, money, and public good will. Although descendent concerns did
not involve challenges to spatial analysis in and of itself in these cases, contestation
over the access, use, study, and interpretation of archaeological spaces has grown
to the point that it is an overriding theme in volumes on landscape archaeology
from the World Archaeological Congress (Ucko and Layton 1999) and landscapes
of conflict from the Society for Historical Archaeology (Shackel 2003).
Australia also has a number of interesting cases in which new voices – sometimes
Aboriginal, sometimes from less-empowered members of the colonial culture – are
incorporated into spatial and landscape analyses. Ireland (2003), for instance, considers the discursive nature of landscape as it anchors, symbolizes, and lately reconstitutes settler and Aboriginal identities in Australia. Aboriginal understandings of
landscape are considered by a wide variety of scholars, including archaeologists like
Smith (1999) and cultural anthropologists like Jackson (1995), whose discussion
of the distress Aboriginal people feel when confronted with geographic reminders
of past events is one of the best descriptions of the fundamental differences between
indigenous and Western worldviews (see also Feld and Basso 1996; Groth and
Bressi 1997). Other scholars are peeling back the layers of valorization that mask
the complexities experienced by Australia’s British convict transportees. Casella
(2001), for example, finds that female prostitutes and pickpockets imprisoned in
Tasmania actively resisted the moral authority expressed through prison architecture
by creating their own social landscapes within the confines of penal institutions.
Indigenous voices are also being heard in the Americas, particularly as scholars
consider the ways landscape helped to perpetuate cultures facing European conquest. Bauer’s (1998) Sacred Landscape of the Inca artfully weaves together textual
data, oral history, archaeology, and an analysis of current practices to examine the
origin and long-term perpetuation of the system of ceques, axis lines connecting and
differentiating Inca geography, which are still actively used in Peru. Focusing even
more on the impact that landscape, archaeology, and landscape archaeology have
on indigenous individuals and cultures, Gulliford’s (2000) Sacred Object and Sacred
Places explores the ways that repatriation of human remains and preservation of
sacred sites are inherently linked in many Native American worldviews.
The historical archaeological study of humans and their surroundings has evolved
greatly from its 19th-century geographic origins to its current configuration as the
study of space, place, architecture, and now landscape. A complete review of work
on this topic would require a volume to itself, and would of course become incomplete instantly because new research is constantly published on the topic. Nonetheless, based upon historical archaeology’s past and current discussions of landscape,
we might speculate on future directions this area of study will take.
Future Developments in the Historical Archaeologies of Landscape
I believe three developments are imminent in historical archaeological studies
exploring humans in space: techniques for spatial analysis and field data recovery
the place of space
73
will co-adapt and become more refined, new voices will be heard during the
archaeological endeavor, and space will either become more central to archaeological research as a category of material culture or will significantly decrease in
disciplinary importance. The paragraphs below elaborate on these themes and are
illustrated with examples from my research in North America.
The first of these trends, co-adaptation of techniques for spatial analysis and
field data recovery, is already well under way. Although this chapter is primarily
dedicated to a discussion of theoretical developments and case studies within the
space–landscape genre, technological changes have also played a large role in the
development of landscape approaches. For instance, geographic information systems
(GIS) enable archaeologists to analyze complex spatial data sets rapidly, thoroughly,
and through visual displays and statistical analyses that allow one to quickly discern
spatial patterning. Once costly and technically complex to operate, GIS software
has become less expensive and easier to use over the past decade. Other techniques
are also becoming more user-friendly and affordable; ground-penetrating radar,
proton magnetometry, resistivity, and other remote sensing technologies are allowing archaeologists to explore subsurface deposits quickly and accurately. While some
historical archaeologists will certainly see such technologies as more burdensome
than helpful, others will undoubtedly exploit them.
New and developing technologies will be particularly important for certain
sectors of historical archaeology. They are especially well adapted to the exploration
of large areas. Satellite imagery may prove increasingly useful for the study of historic-period environmental changes, while the geophysical remote sensing techniques mentioned above are already being used to effect the study of large systems
of space such as Native American villages (Kvamme 2003a, 2003b) and Mexican
ranchos (Silliman et al. 2000). Other archaeologists are adjusting their field methods
in order to use GIS to its best advantage. For instance, I recently completed a GIS
analysis of two Native American dwellings that suggests that more interesting
analytical results are obtained when small excavation units (e.g., 50 ¥ 50 centimeters) are thoroughly screened than through the more typical combination of metersquare units, screening, and piece plotting. The former extracts more reliable data
about activity areas than the latter, which merges data into an analytical unit too
large for optimal spatial analysis and introduces operator bias into the data recovery
process (Pauls 2003).
The second trend one might predict for historical archaeological studies of landscape involves listening to and incorporating new voices during the archaeological
endeavor. To some extent, this too is already under way. Certainly archaeologists
acknowledge that the past was a diverse “place” that included both the privileged
and the less- or dis-enfranchised. The Western gaze presumes a white, elite, male,
heterosexual, physically fit adult perspective, and is being cast aside in favor of views
that look equally and specifically at women, men, and other genders, people of
color, children, elders, and the like (see Voss, this volume). I suggest that the discipline will see more research agendas like the one quoted from Bender above, in
which the many categories that contribute to our individual perspectives are more
thoroughly acknowledged in landscape analyses.
74
elizabeth p. pauls
As with other genres of archaeology, space and landscape studies will also be
increasingly drawn into conversations with modern audiences and descendent
groups. Many archaeologists continue to argue that consultation with such groups
is the only ethical mode of practice within the field (Potter 1994; Watkins 2001;
Wilkie and Bartoy 2000). This once-radical agenda is now a commonplace part of
heritage preservation programming (cf. Fairclough 1999; King 1998; McManamon
and Hatton 2000), though academic archaeologists employ it less frequently. Consultation practices will continue to evolve, particularly as indigenous groups grow
in political power, experience, and wealth. Historical archaeology projects that are
done at the behest of descendent groups and with their research questions in mind
(e.g., to establish land claims) represent a tremendous area of growth for the field.
The spatiality of archaeology – that is, its connection to lands that are ancestral,
public, owned, or contested – will continue to be a critical feature of collaborative
and multivocal research. Archaeology undertaken for such groups demands ethical
care given that analyses may have significant political and economic impacts, that
public archaeologists are inevitably subject to myriad pressures to arrive at the
“best” (e.g., most beneficial) research conclusions, and that archaeology is as
subject to biases as any research endeavor (Wylie 2000).
A regional example serves to illustrate one way that archaeologies of landscape
might inform discussions on territorial claims, government land schemes, and other
public policy decisions. The physical and cultural distance between American’s
mid-continental grasslands and the country’s political and economic elite has made
the region an attractive locus for resource exploitation schemes and the social and
landscape experiments that accompany such projects.
The fur trade was the first externally-generated development scheme in this
region. It reached the northern Plains by 1738, when a French Canadian trading
party visited the Mandan near the Missouri River (Smith 1980). Within 50 to 60
years, several traders had moved into Mandan and Hidatsa villages (Wood and
Thiessen 1985). They remarked upon the material comfort of the local architecture,
and they and the chroniclers who followed them noted obliquely that the regional
landscape focused on rounded built environments (e.g., round homes, encircled
villages) and organic territorial boundaries, travel routes, and way markers (e.g.,
rivers, buttes).
During the early 1800s, steamboat-supplied military and commercial forts were
built to promote trade, and were sited at strategic points keyed to the extant cultural
landscape. Major disruptions to the dominant (Mandan–Hidatsa) regional landscape order did not occur until the late 19th century when federal land surveys and
immigrant settlement took place. The federal township-range system divided the
American West into uniform rectilinear parcels in order to promote land speculation
and economic development, with results we can still observe in the rectangular
form of the region’s states, counties, towns, and fields. A new landscape order was
created as the Cartesian township-range system became reinforced by the rectilinear housing of the region’s EuroAmerican settlers. Where the indigenous order
had emphasized the unique and folklorically-laden nature of each topographic
feature, the EuroAmerican order emphasized the uniformity of the region, the
the place of space
75
interchangeability of particular plots of land, and the potential transience of the
region’s inhabitants.
Despite the “roots” that settlers quickly put into the area (which included creating their own folkloric interpretations of landscape features), outsiders continue to
refer to the Plains as a region of transience and interchangeability. In the 1990s,
two geographers remarked on the dwindling population of the region and its net
consumption of federal tax dollars (Popper and Popper 1999). As a solution to
these issues, they suggested a radical reconfiguration which would have created a
third landscape order organized around free-range buffalo production. Congress
and environmental advocacy groups seriously considered the proposal, which
involved governmental purchase or condemnation of vast swaths of privately owned
land (Margolis 1995). Variations on this theme have been reintroduced by Donlan
et al. (2005), whose “rewilding” concept suggests that the Plains are more suitable
for African wildlife than for their current residents. My point is not to argue whether
these development schemes may in fact offer good uses of the western landscape,
but rather to note that these schemes are disturbingly similar to previous governmental relocation programs that forced tribal and EuroAmerican communities to
move ranches and entire communities to accommodate federally-sponsored development (Lawson 1994; Meyer 1977).
With their expertise in the processes and products of colonialism, historical
archaeologists acknowledge that regardless of specific locality, top-down schemes
that involve radical cultural reorganization frequently overlook crucial issues. In the
realm of landscape, these include proactively and thoroughly testing proposals for
long-term feasibility, maintaining community cohesion during forced relocation,
finding suitable areas for groups to settle, and ensuring reasonable compensation
for land emptied through purchase or seizure. With increasing frequency, those
subject to relocation programs are asking historical archaeologists and others to
provide landscape-oriented documentation in legal battles over property rights. In
turn, these studies of the past can help us to clarify what we need to know to create
viable landscape policy today, in a world where forced migration persists as the
offspring of war, natural disaster, and development.
This observation leads to my third prediction for the future of landscape studies
in historical archaeology: space will either become more central to archaeological
research as a category of “material” culture or will languish and fade as a serious
topic of research (see also Paynter 2000:12–13). A generation or two ago, Ivor Noël
Hume (1964) declared that archaeology was the “handmaiden of history,” useful
to elucidate historians’ interests but not deserving of its own theories, methods, and
questions. Today, spatial exegesis remains too much a handmaiden to studies of
ethnicity, economics, and other mainstream topics rather than a legitimate and
independent focus of study. Landscape forms and meanings are clearly useful as
general grounding mechanisms for studies in this and other disciplines, and particularly for investigations of the materialities and mentalities that underlie cultural
development, maintenance, and change.Yet historical archaeologists in general (and
American archaeologists in particular) are less conversant with the specific techniques and theories underlying the analysis of spatial relations, constructed space,
76
elizabeth p. pauls
and the phenomenology of place than with the techniques and theories associated
with the analysis of consumer goods, subsistence economics, or historical texts.
Are there particular reasons that most historical archaeologists are more familiar
with techniques of ceramic, faunal, market, or textual analysis than with their
analogs in spatial analysis? To some extent this bias reflects the conservatism of
graduate training programs in archaeology. Graduate curricula are slower to change
than archaeological theories, and perhaps we merely need to wait for spatial analysis to “catch up” to these others. However, there are more fundamental and
well-hidden causes for the bias against spatial analysis as well. On one hand,
archaeology’s preference for artifactual analysis simply reflects the portability of
such materials. Obviously one can transport sherds or texts to a classroom or lab
more easily than, say, a house or a plantation complex. Yet one might also consider
the biasing effect of the personal experiences that archaeological students and
professionals bring to the field. We are much more likely to have thrown a pot,
cooked a meal, purchased a mass-produced item, or composed a document than
we are to have constructed a building, dug (or fallen into) a ha-ha, or performed a
pilgrimage. Architectural and other construction projects are no longer vernacular
in the traditional sense: common buildings and landscapes are no longer constructed by their owners-users. Instead, most of the built environment is anonymously produced.
Our lack of personal experience with the manipulation of space probably fosters
our tendency to be “like fish that can’t see water,” oblivious to “the constant support
of complex surroundings” and without adequate “concepts for pondering, discussing, or evaluating . . . cultural environments” (Groth 1997:1). My own experience
again provides a useful illustration. I have participated in or convened discussions
regarding earthlodges, an indigenous form of domestic architecture common
throughout the American Plains, at several professional conferences (Figure 4.1).
At one point a colleague and I puzzled over reasons why the last major publication
on earthlodges was written over seventy years ago (Wilson 1934). An exploration
of the archaeological literature on houses led us to believe that
Archaeologists working with lodges seem to know too little about the considerations
that went into their construction, how they became part of the archaeological record,
what they symbolized, and how they were integrated into the social order. We have a
wealth of manuals for the analysis of pottery, lithics, bone, floral remains, and so forth,
but houses are features, and while techniques for their excavation may be discussed in
field manuals, we have nothing even remotely comparable to these manuals to help
with the analysis and interpretation of lodges. (Roper and Pauls 2005a: xv)
Why had basic descriptive studies of these dwellings been ignored? This seemed
quite odd given the attention to other material classes, though we recognize that as
the largest “artifacts” in the region, lodge analysis did face the portability hurdle
mentioned above.
As we examined possible causes for this omission, we determined that the
regional ubiquity of lodges and their thorough documentation in the historical
record (e.g., Bodmer 1984; Catlin 1973; Ewers 1955) resulted in a sense of such
the place of space
77
Figure 4.1 Exterior of reconstructed earthlodge at Knife River Indian Villages National Historic
Site, Stanton, North Dakota. Photo courtesy of Erik Pauls
familiarity among archaeologists that further investigation was not considered.
Plains archaeologists had “a historic conception of earthlodges and [were] subsuming under this conception any lodges they encountered” (Roper and Pauls 2005b:27).
Indeed “with only a few exceptions, and those more implicit than explicit, Plains
archaeologists never really did get around to precisely specifying the criteria a
structure must possess to be classified as an earthlodge – they just decided that if
it was a house on the Plains, it must be an earthlodge because that is what people
lived in” (Roper and Pauls 2005b:27). In other words, archaeologists had become
like Groth’s fish, unable to see the water (here lodges) surrounding them.
Reversing this erasure of spatial elements and data is perhaps the most important
and most difficult task in landscape archaeology at this time. Although the conquest
of new territories – and thus the erasure of traditional landscapes – was inherent
in the colonial endeavor, spatial elements do often appear familiar. Because they
were frequently overlooked, or simply proved too large to erase, analyses of landscape elements as “artifacts” offer a plentitude of data reflecting the ways that
colonialism, capitalism, modernity, and identity were negotiated. Earthlodges, for
example, are the most stable morphological form in the North American mid-continent; certainly morphological continuity that extended from the 15th to 20th
centuries – predating and surviving colonial conquest – must indicate that they
represented something of importance to the people and cultures that built them.
78
elizabeth p. pauls
Once spatial data become “visible” to the archaeological community, their analysis can be enacted in any of the ways discussed earlier in this chapter. I will suggest
three issues that seem especially susceptible to spatial investigation. First, examinations of disjunctions and syncretisms in the built environment have already provoked interesting analyses of cultural trends (e.g., Winer and Deetz 1990). Second,
given the continuing and active nature of indigenous landscapes and the living
elders and oral histories of many indigenous groups, additional work illuminating
the connections between folklore, natural landmarks, and individual experiences
should be undertaken. Finally, and related to this, forced and voluntary relocations
remain relatively unexplored through historical archaeology, though they provide
almost unique situations in which to observe the ways that relations with the land
are established. When people move to a new locale, how do they reestablish a sense
of place? How do their surroundings reflect and effect changes in power-based
relations within and outside the community? How do people come to feel at home
in the world? What conditions motivate an individual or group to voluntarily relocate, and what conditions predispose them to stay in a difficult locale? Such questions get to the heart of the human experience.
These research directions are suggestions and not a programmatic agenda for
the future of spatial studies in historical archaeology. They illustrate the diversity of
practice that the field can anticipate but are by no means the only productive routes
for future studies of the human–spatial dynamic. In examining spatially oriented
historical archaeology, this chapter has demonstrated the breadth and utility of
landscape studies within historical archaeology. Future scholars will do well to
consider what questions are most productively illuminated by the data available and
to determine where on the continuum of scientific and humanistic practices they
are most likely to find the tools with which they can engage these and other relevant
questions.
REFERENCES
Anderson, Texas B., and Roger G. Moore 1988 Meaning and the Built Environment: A
Symbolic Analysis of a 19th–Century Urban Site. In The Recovery of Meaning: Historical
Archaeology in the Eastern United States. Mark P. Leone and Parker B. Potter, Jr., eds.
Pp. 379–406. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Bauer, Brian S. 1998 The Sacred Landscape of the Inca: The Cusco Ceque System. Austin:
University of Texas Press.
Bender, Barbara 1992 Theorising Landscapes and the Prehistoric Landscapes of Stonehenge.
Man 27(4):735–755.
—— 1993 Stonehenge – Contested Landscapes (Medieval to Present-Day). In Landscapes:
Politics and Perspectives. Barbara Bender, ed. Pp. 245–279. Providence: Berg.
—— 1999 Subverting the Western Gaze: Mapping Alternative Worlds. In The Archaeology
and Anthropology of Landscape. Peter J. Ucko and Robert Layton, eds. Pp. 31–45. New
York: Routledge.
Bodmer, Karl 1984 Karl Bodmer’s America. Lincoln, NE: Joslyn Art Museum.
the place of space
79
Bourdieu, Pierre 1973 The Berber House. In Rules and Meanings. Mary Douglas, ed. Pp.
98–110. Baltimore: Penguin Books.
Butzer, Karl W., ed. 1992 The Americas before and after 1492: Current Geographical
Research. A Special Thematic Issue of the Annals of the Association of American Geographers 82(3):345–568.
Casella, Eleanor Conlin 2001 To Watch or Restrain: Female Convict Prisons in 19th-Century
Tasmania. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 5(1):45–72.
Catlin, George 1973 [1844] Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs, and Conditions
of the North American Indians. New York: Dover Publications.
Cosgrove, Denis, and Stephen Daniels, eds. 1988 The Iconography of Landscape: Essays on
the Symbolic Representation, Design and Use of Past Environments. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Crosby, Alfred W. 1986 Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900–
1900. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Cummings, Linda Scott 1994 Diet and Prehistoric Landscape During the Nineteenth and
Early Twentieth Centuries at Harpers Ferry, West Virginia: A View from the Old Master
Armorer’s Complex. Historical Archaeology 28(4):94–105.
Deagan, Kathleen, A. 1988 Neither History nor Prehistory: The Questions That Count in
Historical Archaeology. Historical Archaeology 22(1):7–12.
—— 1991 Historical Archaeology’s Contributions to Our Understanding of Early America.
In Historical Archaeology in Global Perspective. Lisa Falk, ed. Pp. 97–112. Washington,
DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Deetz, James F. 1977 In Small Things Forgotten: The Archaeology of Early American Life.
New York: Anchor Doubleday.
—— 1988 Material Culture and Worldview in Colonial Anglo-America. In The Recovery
of Meaning: Historical Archaeology in the Eastern United States. Mark P. Leone
and Parker B. Potter, Jr., eds. Pp. 219–233. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution
Press.
Derry, Linda 1992 Fathers and Daughters: Land Ownership, Kinship Structure, and Social
Space in Old Cahawba. In The Art and Mystery of Historical Archaeology: Essays in Honor
of James Deetz. Anne E. Yentsch and Mary C. Beaudry, eds. Pp. 215–228. Boca Raton:
CRC Press.
Donlan, Josh, Harry W. Greene, Joel Berger, Carl E. Bock, Jane H. Bock, David A. Burney,
James A. Estes, Dave Foreman, Paul S. Martin, Gary W. Roemer, Felisa A. Smith, and
Michael E. Soule 2005 Re-wilding North America. Nature 436(18):913–914.
Ewers, John C. 1955 George Catlin, Painter of Indians and the West. Annual Report of the
Smithsonian Institutiton:507–528.
Fairclough, Graham 1999 Protecting Time and Space: Understanding Historic Landscape
Conservation in England. In The Archaeology and Anthropology of Landscape. Peter J.
Ucko and Robert Layton, eds. Pp. 119–134. New York: Routledge.
Feld, Steven, and Keith H. Basso, eds. 1996 Senses of Place. Santa Fe: School of American
Research Press.
Fox, Richard Allan Jr. 1988 Archaeology, History, and Custer’s Last Battle: The Little Big
Horn Reexamined. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
Glassie, Henry 1975 Folk Housing in Middle Virginia: A Structural Analysis of Historic
Artifacts. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press.
Griaule, Marcel 1965 Conversations with Ogotemmeli: An Introduction to Dogon Religious
Ideas. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Groth, Paul 1997 Frameworks for Cultural Landscape Study. In Understanding Ordinary
80
elizabeth p. pauls
Landscapes. Paul Groth and Todd W. Bressi, eds. Pp. 1–24. New Haven: Yale University
Press.
Groth, Paul, and Todd W. Bressi, eds. 1997 Understanding Ordinary Landscapes. New
Haven: Yale University Press.
Gulliford, Andrew 2000 Sacred Objects and Sacred Places: Preserving Tribal Traditions.
Boulder: University Press of Colorado.
Hardesty, Donald L. 1999 Historical Archaeology in the Next Millennium: A Forum. Historical Archaeology 33(2):51–58.
Hoskins, W. G. 1955 The Making of the English Landscape. London: Penguin.
Hume, Ivor Noël 1964 Archaeology: Handmaiden to History. The North Carolina Historical
Review 41(2):214–225.
Ireland, Tracey 2003 “The Absence of Ghosts”: Landscape and Identity in the Archaeology
of Australia’s Settler Culture. Historical Archaeology 37(1):56–72.
Jackson, John Brinckerhoff 1953 The Westward Moving House: Three American Houses and
the People Who Lived in Them. Landscape (Spring):8–21.
—— 1972 American Space: The Centennial Years. New York: Norton.
Jackson, Michael 1995 At Home in the World. Durham: Duke University Press.
Johnson, Matthew H. 1991 Enclosure and Capitalism: The History of a Process. In Processual and Postprocessual Archaeologies: Multiple Ways of Knowing the Past. Robert W.
Preucel, ed. Pp. 159–167. Carbondale: Center for Archaeological Investigations, Southern
Illinois University.
—— 1993 Housing Culture: Traditional Architecture in an English Landscape. Washington,
DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.
—— 1996 An Archaeology of Capitalism. New York: Blackwell.
—— 2002 Behind the Castle Gate: Medieval to Renaissance. London: Routledge.
—— n.d. W. G. Hoskins and the Making of Landscape Archaeology. New York: Blackwell.
Kelso, William M. 1992 Big Things Remembered: Anglo–Virginian Houses, Armorial
Devices, and the Impact of Common Sense. In The Art and Mystery of Historical Archaeology: Essays in Honor of James Deetz. Anne E. Yentsch and Mary C. Beaudry, eds. Pp.
127–145. Boca Raton: CRC Press.
Kelso, William M., and Rachel Most, eds. 1990 Earth Patterns: Essays in Landscape Archaeology. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.
King, Thomas 1998 Cultural Resource Laws and Practice: An Introductory Guide. Walnut
Creek: AltaMira.
Kirch, Partick V. 1992 Anahulu, The Anthropology of History in the Kingdom of Hawaii:
Volume 2, The Archaeology of History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Kvamme, Kenneth L. 2003a Geophysical Surveys as Landscape Archaeology. American
Antiquity 68:435–457.
—— 2003b Multidimensional Prospecting in North American Great Plains Village Sites.
Archaeological Prospection 10:131–142.
Laumbach, Karl W. 2001 Fire Fight at Hembrillo Basin. Archaeology 54(6): 34–39.
Lawson, Michael L. 1994 Dammed Indians: The Pick–Sloan Plan and the Missouri River
Sioux, 1944–1980. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
Leone, Mark P. 1973 Archaeology as the Science of Technology: Mormon Town Plans and
Fences. In Research and Theory in Current Archaeology. Charles Redman, ed. Pp. 125–
150. New York: John Wiley and Sons.
—— 1977 The New Mormon Temple in Washington, D.C. In Historical Archaeology and
the Importance of Material Things. Leland Ferguson, ed. Pp. 43–61. Special Publication
Series: The Society for Historical Archaeology.
the place of space
81
—— 1984 Interpreting Ideology in Historical Archaeology: Using the Rules of Perspective in
the William Paca Garden in Annapolis, Maryland. In Ideology, Power, and Prehistory. Daniel
Miller and Christopher Tilley, eds. Pp. 25–35. New York: Cambridge University Press.
—— 1988 The Georgian Order as the Order of Merchant Capitalism in Annapolis,
Maryland. In The Recovery of Meaning: Historical Archaeology in the Eastern United
States. Mark P. Leone and Parker B. Potter, Jr., eds. Pp. 235–261. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Leone, Mark P., and Parker B. Potter, Jr., eds. 1988 The Recovery of Meaning: Historical
Archaeology in the Eastern United States. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution
Press.
Livingstone, David N. 1992 The Geographical Tradition: Episodes in the History of a Contested Enterprise. Cambridge: Blackwell.
Lowenthal, David, and Hugh C. Prince 1964 The English Landscape. Geographical Review
55:186–222.
Margolis, Jon 1995 The Reopening of the Frontier. In The New York Times Magazine. Pp.
50–57. New York.
Markell, Ann, Martin Hall, and Carmel Schrire 1995 The Historical Archaeology of Vergelegen, an Early Farmstead at the Cape of Good Hope. Historical Archaeology 29(1):10–34.
McDavid, Carol, and David W. Babson, eds. 1997 In the Realm of Politics: Prospects for
Public Participation in African-American and Plantation Archaeology. Historical Archaeology: 31(3).
McKee, Larry 1992 The Ideals and Realities Behind the Design and Use of 19th Century
Virginia Slave Cabins. In The Art and Mystery of Historical Archaeology: Essays in Honor
of James Deetz. Anne E. Yentsch and Mary C. Beaudry, eds. Pp. 195–214. Boca Raton:
CRC Press.
McManamon, Francis P., and Alf Hatton 2000 Cultural Resource Management in Contemporary Society: Perspectives on Managing and Presenting the Past. Vol. 33. New York:
Routledge.
Meinig, D. W. 1986 The Shaping of America: A Geographical Perspective on 500 Years of
American History; Volume 1, Atlantic America, 1492–1800. New Haven: Yale University
Press.
—— 1993 The Shaping of America: A Geographical Perspective on 500 Years of American
History; vol. 2, Continental America, 1800–1867. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Meyer, Roy W. 1977 The Village Indians of the Upper Missouri: The Mandans, Hidatsas,
and Arikaras. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Mitchell, W.J.T., ed. 1994 Landscape and Power. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Mrozowski, Stephen A., 1999 Colonization and the Commodification of Nature. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 3(3):153–166.
Orser, Charles E., Jr. 1988a The Material Basis of the Postbellum Tenant Plantation:
Historical Archaeology in the South Carolina Piedmont. Athens: University of Georgia
Press.
—— 1988b Toward a Theory of Power for Historical Archaeology: Plantations and Space.
In The Recovery of Meaning: Historical Archaeology in the Eastern United States. Mark
P. Leone and Parker B. Potter, Jr., eds. Pp. 313–344. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.
—— 1991 The Continued Pattern of Dominance: Landlord and Tenants on the Postbellum
Cotton Plantation. In The Archaeology of Inequality. Randall H. McGuire and Robert
Paynter, eds. Pp. 40–54. Cambridge: Basil Blackwell.
Palkovich, Ann M. 1988 Asymmetry and Recursive Meanings in the 18th Century: The
82
elizabeth p. pauls
Morris Pound House. In The Recovery of Meaning: Historical Archaeology in the Eastern
United States. Mark P. Leone and Parker B. Potter, Jr., eds. Pp. 293–306. Washington,
DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Pauls, Elizabeth P. 2003 The Menoken GIS: Summary of Findings. In Archaeology at
Menoken Village, a Fortified Late Plains Woodland Community in Central North Dakota.
Steven A. Ahler, ed. Pp. 527–556. Bismarck: prepared by the PaleoCultural Research
Group and submitted to the State Historical Society of North Dakota.
Paynter, Robert 2000 Historical Archaeology and the Post-Columbian World in North
America. Journal of Archaeological Research 8(3):169–217.
Popper, Frank J., and Deborah Popper 1999 The Buffalo Commons: Metaphor as Method.
Geographical Review: 89(4):491–510.
Potter, Jr., Parker B. 1994 Public Archaeology in Annapolis: A Critical Approach to History
in Maryland’s “Ancient City”. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Roper, Donna C., and Elizabeth P. Pauls 2005a Preface. In Plains Earthlodges: Ethnographic
and Archaeological Perspectives. Donna C. Roper and Elizabeth P. Pauls, eds. Tuscaloosa:
University of Alabama Press.
—— 2005b What, Were, and When Is an Earthlodge? In Plains Earthlodges: Ethnographic
and Archaeological Perspectives. Donna C. Roper and Elizabeth P. Pauls, eds. Tuscaloosa:
University of Alabama Press.
Sahlins, Marshall 1992 Anahulu, The Anthropology of History in the Kingdom of Hawaii:
vol. 1, Historical Ethnography. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Schrire, Carmel 1995 Digging through Darkness: Chronicles of an Archaeologist. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.
Scott, Douglas D., Melissa A. Connor, and Dick Harmon 1987 Archaeological Perspectives
on the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
Shackel, Paul A., ed. 2003 Remembering Landscapes of Conflict. Historical Archaeology
37(3).
Silliman, Stephen W., Paul Farnsworth, and Kent G. Lightfoot 2000 Magnetometer Prospecting in Historical Archaeology: Evaluating Survey Options at a 19th-Century Rancho
Site in California. Historical Archaeology 34(2):89–109.
Singleton, Theresa A., ed. 1997 The Archaeology of Slavery and Plantation Life. New York:
Academic Press.
Smith, Claire 1999 Ancestors, Places, and People: Social Landscapes in Aboriginal Australia.
In The Archaeology and Anthropology of Landscape. Peter J. Ucko and Robert Layton,
eds. Pp. 189–205. New York: Routledge.
Smith, G. Hubert 1980 The Explorations of the La Verendryes in the Northern Plains,
1738–43. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Stilgoe, John R. 1982 Common Landscape of America, 1580 to 1845. New Haven: Yale
University Press.
Tuan, Y. F. 1977 Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience. Saint Paul: University of
Minnesota Press.
Ucko, Peter J., and Robert Layton, eds. 1999 The Archaeology and Anthropology of Landscape. New York: Routledge.
Upton, Dell 1985 White and Black Landscapes in Eighteenth-Century Virginia. Places
2(2):59–73.
—— 1992 The City as Material Culture. In The Art and Mystery of Historical Archaeology:
Essays in Honor of James Deetz. Anne E. Yentsch and Mary C. Beaudry, eds. Pp. 51–74.
Boca Raton: CRC Press.
the place of space
83
Watkins, Joe 2001 Indigenous Archaeology: American Indian Values and Scientific Practice.
Walnut Creek: AltaMira.
Wilkie, Laurie A., and Kevin M. Bartoy 2000 A Critical Archaeology Revisited. Current
Anthropology 41(5): 747–777.
Williamson, Tom 1999 Gardens, Legitimation, and Resistance. International Journal of
Historical Archaeology 3(1):37–52.
Wilson, Gilbert L. 1934 The Hidatsa Earthlodge. Bella Weitzner, Ed. Volume 33:340–420:
The American Museum of Natural History, Anthropological Papers.
Winer, Margot, and James Deetz 1990 The Transformation of British Culture in the Eastern
Cape, 1820–1860. Social Dynamics 16(1):55–75.
Wood, W. Raymond, and Thomas D. Thiessen, eds. 1985 Early Fur Trade on the Northern
Plains: Canadian Traders among the Mandan and Hidatsa Indians, 1738–1818. Norman:
University of Oklahoma Press.
Wylie, Alison 2000 Questions of Evidence, Legitimacy, and the (Dis)Union of Science.
American Antiquity 65(2):227–237.
Yamin, Rebecca, and Karen B. Metheny, eds. 1996 Landscape Archaeology. Knoxville:
University of Tennessee Press.
Yentsch, Anne Elizabeth, and Mary C. Beaudry, eds. 1992 The Art and Mystery of Historical Archaeology: Essays in Honor of James Deetz. Boca Raton: CRC Press.
Chapter 5
Critical Archaeology: Politics
Past and Present
Matthew M. Palus, Mark P. Leone,
and Matthew D. Cochran
Introduction
Perhaps the most significant product of the critical tradition that developed in
archaeology in the 1980s is the perception that archaeology is an intervention in
the present (Tilley 1989). Critical approaches to historical archaeology focus on
the structures of power of which historical archaeology and similar scholarship are
a part and see the past as a site of ideological struggle. These approaches all resolve
to consider the subtle action of ideology in the present as well as the past. That
relationship between scholarship on the past and critical skepticism, self-reflection,
or reflexivity in the present – the struggle to expose the ideological content of our
scholarship – initially characterized a critical archaeology. Such critical analysis is
described here as dialectical because the analyst considers knowledge on the one
hand, and the political conditions for knowledge production and the wider economy
for such scholarship on the other, to exist in relation to one another. The tacit
statement made by these approaches is that archaeology is imbricated in political
struggles whether we know it or not, and that the struggles themselves are sometimes
so subtle as to be invisible without very careful consideration and analysis.
However, the reliance on a notion of ideology is most contentious in the reception
of critical theory in historical archaeology. Throughout this essay we refer to ideology, extending a discussion that Heather Burke initiates in this volume. We attempt
to show what this notion means for historical archaeology as it is practiced today,
within a contemporary political economy of scholarship about the past. The nature
of ideology and its action in social life are crucial, in that ideology is not solely a
domain for historical archaeologists to study in the past, but rather is engaged by
historical archaeologists today in many ways. In this essay we adopt a definition of
ideology that Burke describes as sociological, one derived from the writings of Louis
Althusser and eventually manifested through the work of Michel Foucault and many
scholars who pursue his agendas. We propose a strong notion of ideology, under-
critical archaeology
85
standing it to be fundamental to the formation of individuals in modern life, and
in part defining their relations to one another and to their communities. We
see ideology as something that is institutionalized, operating through inscription
and the documentary records that historical archaeologists use so productively
(Matthews et al. 2002:113–119), and we see it naturalizing the action of power as
well as access to it. To wit, historical archaeology lives within institutions; it inscribes
– but can also critique – structures of power that are historical rather than natural
or metaphysical. Regarding the possibility of critique, Hodder asks in Reading the
Past, “By what right or procedures does [critical theory] accord itself a special
theoretical status . . . If the past is ideology, how can we presume to argue that only
certain intellectuals can see through ideology to identify the social reality?” (Hodder
and Hutson 2003:221). Critical theory conveys the procedures for describing ideology as a part of social reality, and critical approaches have become programmatic
for historical archaeologists who study gender, racial, or class-based ideologies that
originated in the past, congealing the categories that we live with today.
Reactions against a strong notion of ideology that were authored by Abercrombie,
Hill, and Turner in The Dominant Ideology Thesis (1984), Scott in Weapons of the
Weak (1985) and Domination and the Arts of Resistance (1990), and Thompson in
The Poverty of Theory (1995) provided ample material for an indictment of critical
theory approaches. While few would question the need for self-reflection and
political awareness, the idea of ideology continues to chafe, with many preferring
to temper the model of ideology initially introduced by Marx with sustained analysis of ideologies that are only partially effective rather than impenetrable. Criticisms of structural Marxism and of structuralism more generally have produced a
diversity of approaches founded in what might be called post-Marxism, and some
of those approaches will be detailed here.
Does a critical archaeology have to be a Marxist archaeology? Pinsky and Wylie
envision a vein of criticism emerging within archaeology, and based on sustained
analysis of archaeological practices and their consequences, a theory-building that
is skeptical and critical. Such a critical archaeology would be internal to the discipline and would derive from reflexive analysis (Pinsky and Wylie 1989a). However,
we suggest that critical archaeology must always assume a central focus on class,
power, and struggle in its interpretations. Thus there are archaeologies premised
in critiques of race and gender as categories without explicit connections to Marxism.
In this essay, however, we will focus on the basis for a critical archaeology within
Marxist thought, specifically that derived from the Frankfurt School philosophers
and those closely associated with them, who provided ideas foundational to critical
archaeology.
Emergence of a Critical Archaeology
Many of the supporters for the New Archaeology expressed a strong concern for
social relevance as processualism gained momentum in North America, and one
theme with particularly strong relevance was the way in which historical archae-
86
matthew m. palus, mark p. leone, and matthew d. cochran
ology uncritically articulated with modern belief systems, including commemoration and the nationalization of historical sites. Russell Handsman expressed this
concern in print (1984; Handsman and Leone 1995), and Alison Wylie consolidated
these positions and contributed her own perspective on the ideological role played
by reconstructions of the past based in part on archaeological evidence (Wylie
1985). Wylie also edited a volume with Valerie Pinsky that allowed many scholars
to assemble critical perspectives on archaeological practice (Pinsky and Wylie
1989b). These works, along with a polemical piece by Leone, Potter, and Shackel
(1987) and research leading to the publication of Potter’s 1994 Public Archaeology
in Annapolis, helped initially to define “critical archaeology,” in which research is
explicitly designed to have political impact. This approach to archaeology was
assembled from and influenced by key readings on ideology, including Louis
Althusser’s “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses” (1971), and also Steve
Barnett’s work with Martin Silverman (1979), as well as selections from the
Frankfurt School philosophers.
Simultaneously, a reaction against processualism appeared in the United
Kingdom that is most often associated with Ian Hodder, who espoused a “critical
hermeneutic” while maintaining skepticism about critical theory approaches growing
out of historical archaeology in the United States, and Michael Shanks and
Christopher Tilley’s Social Theory and Archaeology (1987) and Re-Constructing Archaeology (1991), books that match closely the critical theory approaches in North
America while exceeding them in radicalism. Again concerning relevance, Shanks
and Tilley called for archaeology to be reconsidered and reconstructed as a practice
in the present that is of purpose to the present. The nuance in this argument is in
removing archaeological materials from the context of the past, a move that is
somewhat counterintuitive but also compelling. Archaeology is a political practice,
and the purpose of representing it as an activity that recovers the truth about the
past is a political purpose. As such, archaeologists should understand this and have
a political purpose, and a critical archaeology should contain a contemporary cultural criticism: “Critique breaks with established epistemologies, abstractions and
totalities in the service of present social change. . . . The point of archaeology is not
merely to interpret the past but to change the manner in which the past is interpreted in the service of social reconstruction in the present” (Shanks and Tilley
1987:195). In sum, Shanks and Tilley’s “Black” and “Red” books outlined programs that included thoroughgoing critiques of processual archaeology and also the
hermeneutic approach that Ian Hodder proposed. Shanks and Tilley drew on the
sociological critique of positivism developed by the Frankfurt School, though they
assembled diverse support for their position.
The true test of these theories has been to see them put to use in parts of the
world where historical archaeology is less well established among scholars of
anthropology and history. Distinctive and critical historical archaeologies have been
produced in Latin America, particularly in São Paulo, Brazil by Pedro Funari (2001;
Funari and Zarankin 2002), and Argentine archaeologists Felipa Boado (2001),
Gustavo Politis (2001), Maria Ximena Senatore (1995), and Facundo Gomez
Romero (2002), among others. These researchers have used Foucault’s writings to
critical archaeology
87
understand the movements and histories of power in the context of colonialism in
South America and indicate the future direction of a global historical archaeology
(see Schmidt and Patterson 1995 for additional examples). These archaeologies also
continue a Marxist tradition in scholarship that has had a very different trajectory
from that seen in North America and Europe.
A Marxist Basis for Critical Archaeology
In a sense, critical archaeology balanced the move toward processualism and
countered the influence of the neo-positivist philosophers and systems-theory oriented – though basically materialist – anthropologists that inspired Binford and
the New Archaeology. Likewise, critical theory was initially conceived at the Institute of Social Research, from which emerged the Frankfurt School, to counter a
radical positivism in European philosophy that developed during the 1920s. As
such, critical theory sought to explode the notion of a “science of society” and to
show that positivism was fundamentally inappropriate for social sciences such
as economics, history, or sociology. There are several excellent histories of the
Frankfurt School, including Martin Jay’s The Dialectical Imagination (1996) and
Tom Bottomore’s brief and thorough The Frankfurt School and its Critics (2002).
David Held also offers a detailed synthesis in his Introduction to Critical Theory
(1980). Tom Bottomore says of the formation of the Frankfurt School and its
critical theory:
A pre-eminent place was occupied by the criticism and rejection of positivism/empiricism, and more broadly of any conception of a ‘science of society’. . . . The critique of
positivism (or better, ‘scientism’) then merged into a critical assessment of “scientific
and technological rationality” as a new form of domination, characteristic of . . . the advanced industrial societies of the twentieth century. This was one side of the
Frankfurt School’s growing emphasis upon ideology as a (if not the) major force
sustaining domination, and hence upon the criticism of ideology as a major factor in
the process of emancipation. (2002:23)
The Institute of Social Research was founded in 1923, and saw its most productive
period between 1933 and 1950 when ironically its members – most of them nonpracticing but culturally Jewish – were exiled from Nazi Germany. Max Horkheimer
and Theodor Adorno famously authored their Dialectic of Enlightenment in 1944
while living in Hollywood. The most important works of the Frankfurt School
philosophers are not only diverse but divergent. Adorno, for instance, developed an
analytical method distinguished by skepticism, a “negative dialectics” that pursued
the ideological basis for scientism, but not all members were satisfied with this
approach. Herbert Marcuse elaborated a critical theory of technology that began
as a critique of “machine truths” emerging from within industrialized, authoritarian
countries, and in another project folded psychoanalysis into the liberatory agenda
of Marxism in Eros and Civilization (1974, 1982, 1991). Georg Lukács, who was
not directly associated with the school but was a classmate with Walter Benjamin
88
matthew m. palus, mark p. leone, and matthew d. cochran
and Theodor Adorno under George Simmel and an important theorist nonetheless,
pursued the problem of historical consciousness and the working class (Lukács
1971). Other members of the school include Erich Fromm, and late in life Walter
Benjamin was inducted as well; Benjamin’s work has been incorporated into critical
and influential approaches developed by Susan Buck-Morse (1989), Margaret
Cohen (1993), and anthropologist Michael Taussig (1992, 1993), much of which
is guided by the writings of Benjamin’s biographer and personal friend, Hannah
Arendt.
While there is no monolithic “Frankfurt School” approach, but rather numerous
scholars spanning several generations, one perspective that sustains throughout is
the use of dialectics as an analytical method for understanding and critiquing ideology. The members of the Frankfurt School were most concerned with assembling
a critique of technological/scientific rationalism or instrumentalism and the implementation of this ideology in all areas of life, both social and political. This criticism
involves showing the contradictions of an ideological system. For instance, in Dialectic of Enlightenment Horkheimer and Adorno (1998) wrote on Enlightenment
thought and the persistence of irrationality and other counter-tendencies to rational
government, the classic examples of which being institutionalized racism and antiSemitism. Marquardt introduces dialectical criticism this way: “The dialectician
assumes that the apparent natural world is contradictory, but not because the nonhuman natural world is itself inherently contradictory. People perceive the world
only in terms of structures that have meaning for them” (Marquardt 1992:108). The
role of analysis comes in perceiving the contradictions that appear to be natural but
are not and considering them critically. In other words, analysis is necessary to
overcome the action of ideology, and a critical approach to society is defined by the
analytical rigor required to penetrate ideology and comprehend the contradictory
social reality that it conceals.
For Marx, the working class held a privileged position for perceiving and understanding the contradictions and inequalities in society because these very much
comprised a part of their social reality (Patterson 2003:1–32). In other words, the
proletariat materially felt inequality, and this enabled them to penetrate and expose
legitimating ideologies. However, for structural Marxism and for members of the
Frankfurt School, ideology was not something perpetrated by one class against
another, but something that was unconscious and reproduced unconsciously a
cross generations, as well as across disciplines. Because ideology resembled “deep
structure,” careful scientific analysis was required to approach contradictions or
injustices that had been naturalized or mystified in some other fashion, or, in other
words, contradictions that had become structural. The nature of these contradictions, and the approaches to naturalizing them, were particularistic and thus fell
within the domain of anthropological and archaeological study. Again, Marquardt
states this clearly: “The first moment of dialectical critique is negative and skeptical,
in the sense that the entity bracketed for analysis is analyzed in order to discover
underlying, often hidden contradictions and inconsistencies and to reveal the ways
in which it is not what is first appears to be, or fails to fulfill its own intent or
purpose” (Marquardt 1992:110).
critical archaeology
89
Post-Marxism
Structural Marxism placed an emphasis on strict philosophical principles premised
epistemologically in dialectical materialism and claimed for itself a particularly
advantageous place in the interpretation of culture. However, in the tumultuous
years since the late 1960s, and in the wake of radical cultural, political, and social
changes, Marxism has been thrown for something of a loop. In short, as a result of
these radical changes, Marxism itself has come under considerable attack as an
increasingly out-of-touch and programmatic metanarrative. In this broad critique,
Marxism has been characterized as yet another form of social theory, and perhaps
no different from a myriad of others, that claims knowledge of the one and true
path toward intellectual emancipation. In response, Marxism has been forced once
again to make a claim for its political and social relevance, not through the application of a strict dialectics as was the case in an earlier generation, but rather through
the broadening of its political and philosophical horizons by way of its reinvention
as a form of post-Marxism (Laclau and Mouffe 2001).
Post-Marxism is most easily read as a response to a void left in the wake of the
emergence of post-structuralist social theories that have arisen since the 1970s, and
spelled out as an “attempt to graft recent theoretical developments in poststructuralism, deconstruction, postmodern, and feminism onto Marxism, such that
Marxism can be made relevant to a new cultural climate that is no longer responding to classical Marxist doctrine” (Sim 1998:1). Far from being a homogenous and
bounded social theory, contemporary post-Marxism fits rather neatly into the
precedent set by the Frankfurt School, not only in the diverse theoretical opinions
and academic interests of its loosely affiliated members, but also in its desire to
reevaluate Marxist theory. According to Stuart Sim, post-Marxism “covers a range
of positions, not all of which are necessarily compatible with each other.” And to
this extent, “Post-Marxists can variously want to reject, revitalize, or renegotiate the
terms of their intellectual contract with Marxism” (Sim 1998:1).
While post-Marxism itself is seen as an intellectual movement spawned by turns
in contemporary social theory, it owes an indelible debt to earlier critical Marxist
theories. In fact, the works of a number of Marxist theorists prefigure if not directly
contribute to the intellectual idea of post-Marxism, but due to their relative obscurity, unavailability, or general misunderstanding and disuse were not totally rediscovered and utilized until the 1980s and 1990s. Taken en masse, the appeal of these
earlier works points to both a methodology and an epistemological base that confront orthodox-Marxism’s strict adherence to dialectics, and instead finds much
more of an intellectual companion with Surrealist, Poststructuralist, and Postmodern tendencies toward open and contingent interpretive strategies wrought from
diffuse forms of data.
A penetrating criticism of the “dominant ideology thesis” that underwrites structural Marxism is a central part of post-Marxism and its application to anthropology
and archaeology. As Burke (this volume) indicates, ideology is difficult to define
apart from mind, and in many respects resembles the anthropological notion of
90
matthew m. palus, mark p. leone, and matthew d. cochran
culture. It is easy to project ideology as culture, equate culture with false consciousness, and in doing so assert a privileged position for anthropologists and archaeologists in understanding social reality. Anthropologist James C. Scott attacks the
notion of ideology as not representative of “field conditions” and not reflecting the
diversity of ideologies present in any given situation, the heterotopia, and complex
geographies that actually exist:
The argument for false-consciousness . . . depends on the symbolic alignment of elite
and subordinate class values – that is, on the assumption that the peasantry (proletariat) actually accepts most of the elite vision of the social order. What does mystification mean, if not a group’s assent to the social ideology that justifies its exploitation?
To the extent that an exploited group’s outlook is in substantial symbolic alignment
with elite values, the case for mystification is strengthened; to the extent that it holds
deviant or contradictory values, the case is weakened. (Scott 1985:40)
The criticism of structural Marxism offered by Scott is this: The relationship
between a class and its consciousness involves lived experience, and that is the
source of fugitive, subversive consciousnesses that see a dominant ideology for what
it is and that overcome mystification readily. This corresponds well with objections
to the strong formulation of ideology derived from Althusser raised by Miller
(1989), Beaudry et al. (1991), and McGuire and Paynter (1991): that there are
those who never were subject to ideology, and that rather than working to expose
ideology and its action, we should go to those who have always seen through it to
find our critique. In other words, we should conduct the archaeology of inequality.
Shanks and Tilley, Beaudry et al., and Miller take a view of ideology that is inspired
by the Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci (1971), referring instead to “hegemony” and a diffuse power understood as Foucault theorizes it in various works.
They see control premised on consent rather than mystification, and they see ideological agreement to be partial and fissured, allowing many opportunities for an
intellectual to work against hegemony in specific instances and local settings.
It may appear attractive from our viewpoint to say that subalterns are not subject
to the dominant ideology that would legitimate their domination and exploitation,
but it suggests a balance that may not actually exist in class-based societies of
exploiters and the exploited. There is a presumption of balance in the equation of
domination and resistance, even when the two are not presented as mechanistic,
one automatically responding to the other. For instance, Scott’s interpretation of
ideologies in a Malaysian village shows that the wealthy are expected to be generous
toward the poor beyond the point of what is fair in rent or compensation for work,
and the poor are expected to work hard for the wage they receive. There are goodfaith poor and good-faith rich. According to Scott, each pushes this back and forth,
such that the wealthy attempt to be less generous without losing the appearance of
legitimacy, and the poor risk their reputations by working less and getting away
with more. That balance approaches a state of appealing equilibrium. But what if
things were not in balance, if this assumption were absent from the onset? This is
the sense that inspired Adorno’s negative dialectics and Benjamin’s consideration
of history as a state of siege (Matthews 2002). Even if some excluded themselves
critical archaeology
91
or were excluded from an ideological system via their specific experiences, what if
they were continually losing ground to the overarching discursive formations that
created meaning and knowledge? How would a social scientist address such a
crisis?
What Scott acknowledges (1985:51) and what critics of Althusser and structural
Marxism probably must admit is first, that some social arrangements do attain the
status of “natural facts,” which are irresistible in a practical sense and demonstrate
the true meaning of false-consciousness, and second, that this criticism of structural
Marxism and these appeals to more subject-oriented account or description do not
exempt us from the act of interpretation. Though we can develop an account of
power and the action of power upon individuals, including resistance and struggle
to draw closer to the experience of individuals as-lived, this account does not necessarily correspond to truth except in that immediate sense:
A careful observer must provide an interpretation of such behavior that is more than
just a repetition of the ‘commonsense’ knowledge of participants . . . however partial
or even mistaken the experienced reality of the human agents, it is that experienced
reality that provides the basis for their understanding and their action. (Scott
1985:46)
Scott does not deny that some things become naturalized and pushed beyond
questioning. He argues that the shape and content of class and relationships between
classes are not naturalized, but rather are a field in which ideologies are pushed
to their limits. It is reasonable to say that for Scott, the existence of rich and
poor, landed and landless is naturalized while the relationships between classes
are flexible. This contributes to a redefinition of ideology by Scott into a site of
struggle over ideas rather than a domain beyond consciousness, as Althusser would
describe it.
Turning to the practical application of post-Marxism within historical archaeology, a number of works by contemporary individual scholars and collectives stand
out as particularly relevant. Of note are Barbara Bender’s work at Stonehenge
(1998), Randall McGuire’s and the Ludlow Collective’s work at the site of the
Ludlow massacre in Colorado (Saitta 2004; Walker 1999), Audrey Horning’s study
of Appalachian cabins in the Shenandoah (1999, 2000), and Carol McDavid’s work
at the Levi Jordan plantation (1997, 2000). Directly or indirectly these works
critique orthodox-Marxism’s reliance on the strict application of dialectical praxis
and introduce more diffuse archaeological readings based on contemporary understandings of hegemonic power relations. Conceptually these works may be read as
overt political calls for the democratization of Marxist praxis within archaeology,
whereby archaeologists not only conceive of their projects as political action in the
present, but go so far as to involve the public in the archaeological process as an
active agent in the creation of an archaeological narrative. In short, these works
ultimately bolster post-Marxist critical archaeology’s relevance in a contemporary
political climate that often uses the notion of “democracy” as a guise for the application of imperialist logic.
92
matthew m. palus, mark p. leone, and matthew d. cochran
Challenges in Critical Archaeology: Foucault and Governmentality
We have attempted to present a balanced appraisal of the condition and use of
critical theory up to this point. However, as users and contributors to it, we have
taken a position, which follows. One of the key insights of a critical archaeology has
been to put archaeology into public spaces in new ways and to consider a responsibility to the public as a constituency for archaeology. If critical archaeology was
to be by design an intervention in the present, that intervention has frequently taken
the form of public interpretation and dissemination of results in a very immediate
sense, as well as entering into dialogue with communities (Jameson 1997; Potter
1991, 1992). Thus, McManamon writes of the “many publics for archaeology,”
conjuring the diverse interests in the histories that archaeology can produce
(McManamon 1991, 2000). Frequently it is communities of descendants that are
sought out for these dialogues. Such was the case with McDavid’s research at Levi
Jordon Plantation (1997), which set a standard for articulating historical archaeology with the needs and desires of communities who are enmeshed in our research
by virtue of a close connection with the historic sites and materials under study.
Laurie Wilkie has also developed a critical historical archaeology that draws on
explicit connections to Jürgen Habermas’ theory of communicative action and uses
archaeology as a means to promote active public discourse on heritage as well as
contemporary political issues (2001; Wilkie and Bartoy 2000).
Public archaeology as defined by many scholars working in different communities and nations might be the most widely accepted value to emerge from the move
to a critical archaeology. Most archaeologists working in the United States today
and in many other countries believe that they have some obligation to be public
and educational about their work. The argument behind this belief is that the public
pays for archaeology or otherwise sustains it and is therefore entitled to know about
it, and fairly quickly. The public pays for virtually everything done in most scientific
fields, archaeology or not, and few other sciences state this specific obligation not
simply to produce benefits, but to release results immediately and fully into communities as a matter of good ethical practice. Public archaeology usually means
using some medium to provide direct visual access to the newly found results of
an excavation. The practice has come to mean a momentary public exposure to
the opinions of the local people and an occasional quote from an archaeologist.
Exposure is not sustained and the “lesson in origins” often allows members of an
area, or a people, to see their connection to a historical depth, past event, previous
custom, old neighborhood, or neighbors now forgotten. Usually this produces
comfortable results but little direct understanding of why their health, property
taxes, or public services are in their current condition.
So, while public archaeology has provided substantial exposure for the results of
archaeology, there has been little – almost no – social analysis or commentary. Given
that most archaeologists were taught that archaeology could link past and present,
that aim is seldom fulfilled in public archaeology. There is no development of
consciousness as Lukács would see it: a historical perspective on how our present
critical archaeology
93
circumstances, contradictory and deeply unfair and unequal, were reached. Rather,
past artifacts are displayed as evidence that time capsules exist and that history
can be recovered.
Part of the reason for the concentration on things rather than the analysis of
things, the move which severs the potential for critical content, comes from the
legal control of the archaeological process. Legislation in the United States and
much of the rest of the world that focuses on historic preservation is oriented to
things, not to the connections between people and things. The fundamental assumption behind all this protection is that the thing – a building, archaeological site, or
the artifacts from the ground – communicates something worth knowing directly.
Cultural Resource Management (CRM) legislation does not require explaining the
relationship between past and present. Implicitly, the legislation avoids the topic
and assumes that direct contact with preserved materials itself provides the tie. The
values behind preservation remain under-theorized. The agenda has largely been to
diversify the canon of historic and archaeological sites and to represent a broader
constituency, because – without question – archaeology can do good things for
everybody.
Behind CRM legislation everywhere lies the idea of integrity, which is the
assumption that the tie between past and present, one which Althusser would say
was ideological and Lukács would say was to be subjected to consciousness, is
uninterrupted. Integrity can be determined by built fabric and historical records as
well as archaeology. Because historic integrity changes value – value understood
here to be a word with many meanings – the processes that change value have been
subject to increasing control. Control over the use of buildings, records, and archaeology has followed their new and important role in establishing changing identities
and thus increasing value, or contested senses of value in many different contexts.
Controls developed as archaeology moved out of museums and parks and into
communities. Control over archaeology was once normally exercised by archaeologists, but this is no longer the case. Control over archaeology also involves control
of the integrity of things, lands, buildings, and in a closely related way, heritage, a
people’s past, the history of a place, and even buried ancestors. So, to suppose that
archaeology is as arcane, remote, and irrelevant as its own scientific discourse
sometimes seems, is to misunderstand the level of importance archaeology actually
has come to have among many peoples.
A critical archaeology challenges the given role of archaeology: the received
wisdom is that the past is discovered and most reliably interpreted by professional
preservationists and allied trained scholars. Critical scholarship challenges the
authority of leading authenticators, historians, archivists, and architectural
historians, who have attained this authority over the past fifty years or so. Preservationists in Europe and the United States have used their tools to establish authenticity and integrity as what Foucault might call discursive facts and with these,
changed cities into desirable places for people with means to live. This gentrified core
of the city comes from an unexamined process. Authenticity and integrity became
real because people talked and wrote about them; we opened up this chapter by saying
that archaeology is a part of these discourses (Matthews and Palus in press).
94
matthew m. palus, mark p. leone, and matthew d. cochran
Using Foucault’s term and following Laurajane Smith’s (2004) usage, archaeology has been governmentalized (Smith and Campbell 1998). Archaeology became
too important to be left to private parties, independent (tenured, publishing) scholars, or to a field that generated popular success but hoped publicly for equal access
to historical knowledge. Foucault’s (1994) hypothesis on governmentalization
stresses discourses, or texts on procedures, which describe how to do things. His
famous analyses of procedures involve medicine, psychiatry, and punishment. While
there are many others, his work aims to show how practices, disciplines, or sciences
came into being and exist among us now in such convincingly naturalistic forms
that they appear to have always been headed in this direction.
Such discourses set the rules for how to define and treat medical patients,
the insane, and criminals. Foucault owes much to Althusser in that he sees such
practices as ideology because they are invisible to rational scrutiny. They appear
inevitable and unchallengeable. They appear to have always been evolving to their
current state. Althusser made ideology material, or so real it could have been seen
as directing much of life. Foucault claims that medicine, psychiatry, and prisons
are just as real and that their practices govern many lives in their daily routines. In
this sense, Foucault is within and expands Marxist theory as it is used to understand
daily life.
Foucault argues that discourses form the base of power (Foucault 1991:53–104).
On the surface this is like arguing that writing and publishing form the base of
power, or that laws and philosophy are its base. Certainly Marxists would not agree.
Foucault is more interesting, however. The power of the state comes from the many
and uncoordinated discourses that govern our lives. Foucault does not see the power
of the state as unitary, as coming from a single source, and although he recognizes
classes and class interests, he sees power emanating from attempts to regulate and
discipline. There is, however, nothing systematic about absorbing parts of daily life
into the disciplining process. Routines may intersect but are not systematic.
Routines are absorbed into life because they are made to appear rational, healthy,
or efficient. When absorbed, they are the source of the power to control and are
expressed as diagnoses, crimes, permits, prescriptions, limitations, directions, rules,
etiquettes, minor literacies, or the ability to manage a discourse about something.
They are the ambient aspect of an ideology. In many ways these routines and techniques form the substance of the heritage industry, and concomitantly define the
practices of archaeologists more and more.
Governmentalization occurs when such a discourse becomes official and is regulated by the state. The role of someone reading Foucault sympathetically is to see
that revealing the process of governmentalizing routines is the task of a scholar who
hopes to continue liberal or progressive government. This is both the role of critical
theory, and the role of critical historical studies. Foucault’s work is a vast expansion
of that proposed by Lukács, but is not fundamentally different. The role of a critic
or commentator on power and government is to trace how the discourses that control
our lives have occurred, what they achieve, what details comprise their operations,
and what they do that does not have to be done the way it is currently done.
Through a number of publications, Smith has adapted Foucault’s analysis
to archaeology, particularly the role of archaeology in interpreting the lives of
critical archaeology
95
Australian Aborigines and Native North Americans (Smith 1999, 2000, 2001, 2004;
Smith and Campbell 1998; Smith et al. 2003). The outcome of her analysis is not
surprising, but what is surprising is how she got there. She is the first archaeologist
that we are aware of to use this set of Foucault’s late works. Her argument is that
the state began to govern the use of archaeology on and for native peoples. This is
not a new observation. She means that in the fight between archaeologists and
native people, government agencies intervened as mediators when archaeologists
seemed both intransigent and insensitive to native concerns about how archaeologists worked and thought.
When she discusses the 1980s, the time when the conflict between native people
and archaeologists took on considerable currency, Smith uses Foucault to point out
that archaeology stopped being about knowing, excavating, or collecting, and started
becoming about permits, consulting, and informing native peoples, repatriation,
inventories of museum holdings, and different kinds of curation. Archaeology became
a discourse – and a practice – to be regulated in fundamentally new ways.
Jonathan Friedman (1992) makes a strong case that Native Hawaiians and
Greeks saw and see their historical identity as absolutely central to their very existence. The past was not a secondary concern but rather was a matter that governed
their place in world society. They were more important if they had a worthwhile
past and controlled its creation and telling. Archaeology could not be incidental to
this process. Archaeology could not be callous, indifferent, neutral, clinical, fragmentary, hands-off, or haphazard about historical identity because the identity was
politically real and critical to access to power, a sense of well-being, and being
worthwhile. Jonathan Friedman called heritage a matter of life and death.
The conflict between these two approaches to anything regarding the past is well
known. However, the upshot of the events as analyzed by Smith using Foucault is
the regulation of archaeology by bureaucrats who turn it into a controllable process
of steps, not knowledge. It is governmentalized and judicial, and scholarship becomes
one event in a series of prescriptions or procedures. The process gives recognition
to CRM archaeology because it controls its operations and it also marginalizes
scholarship independent of these governmental structures by giving it no legal place:
no bureaucratic recognition, no standing to participate in now-governmentalized
activities.
If there is an intellectual problem with Foucault in his late essays, it is his slender
description of liberal or progressive government. He does not explain what it is and
he does not make clear how a scholarship on discourses – and scholarship on discourses is the current shape of critical theory – can help preserve and strengthen
it. Nonetheless, it is not difficult to envision the latter process. It can be done by
envisioning archaeology the way Foucault envisions his history of medicine or of
the prison.
Smith argues that in the process of governmentalization neither First People nor
bureaucrats see a difference between CRM archaeology and academic archaeology.
For First Peoples they are equally insensitive to their definitions of the tie between
past and present and for bureaucrats they are both to be regulated through objective processes, that is, content and meaning are irrelevant. Licenses, things, reports,
curation, fees, and budgets matter. Smith, in borrowing from Foucault, forgets that
96
matthew m. palus, mark p. leone, and matthew d. cochran
her own role is Foucault’s. She and archaeology at its best are the commentators
and commentary, respectively, that expose the insidiousness of the process of
absorbing power through governmentalization. She does not defend her independence to mount the critique that she articulates so well and so acutely.
The role of a critical historical archaeology in this circumstance is clear. In a
critical historical archaeology, reacting to this process is central; reversing it, imperative. To do so it is essential to use Foucault’s model in medicalization and incarceration and describe how the process happened. Obviously, it happened in places,
and the particulars of these compose the examples. For us, it is essential to see that
governmentalization is also an effort at stilling scientific and scholarly discourse. As
Shanks and Tilley wrote, “conceiving of archaeology as, in part, an act of sociopolitical intellectual struggle will, no doubt, be denounced as scandalous or denigrated as misrepresenting the true goals of the discipline” (Shanks and Tilley
1987:202). We agree, and see such stilling as conservative and reactionary. For
scholars within critical theory there is a clear direction in archaeology’s potential
for social criticism, protected by academic freedom, enlivened by the best undergraduate and graduate students, and propelled by a theory of modern society that
articulates class. There is a role for scholars in producing consciousness.
Our brief example from Annapolis, Maryland can be generalized. In 1995 the
local historic district ordinance was rewritten to include protection for the archaeology associated with all the properties, private and public, in the historic district
of Annapolis. A historic district is a local legal designation allowed by both state
and federal law, and once created, can offer – through a local ordinance that
resembles zoning – protection in the form of regulations and standards applied to
the buildings and lands inside the area. When this process began in 1969, it was
meant to stop the wholesale destruction of historic buildings for what has since
come to be known, correctly, as urban renewal, gentrification, and development.
Annapolis avoided the destruction of its downtown using historic preservation. The
city is quite different today from Boston, Philadelphia, or even smaller U.S. cities
that were important in the 18th and early 19th centuries in that it appears intact.
However, this intact appearance is as much creation as it is recovery. This difference
is what historical specialists do not want to negotiate because in its arbitrariness
lies the possibility of many people seeing that a historic city is not an elegant survival, but a choice made in public over the past century to take on the look of “the
ancient city.” This set of relationships and appearances is true in many older U.S.
and European cities – indeed in cities around the world.
Newer historic district ordinances protect archaeology concealed beneath the
ground on many properties, including areas not visible from the street, the former
point of view for claiming authority to approve changes to a property via esthetic
architectural review. Changes have to be approved by the city. That protection of
archaeology was defined in Cultural Resource Management terms. There are two
phases: a determination of the need for archaeology done by one set of officials
and then doing the digging, done by a different set of archaeologists. Both are
overseen by public officials. This arrangement too is relatively common around the
world.
critical archaeology
97
The move to control archaeology through the use of government rules often
includes university-based research projects, which relate to these rules ambiguously.
Governmentalization means moving into official hands – bureaucratic hands – the
making and enforcing of the regulations of daily life. Particularly, Smith wonders
why the government can take over a domain. She points out that governmentalization occurs when an independent area of action fails to negotiate and resolve an
area of public dispute. She argues that government takes over in archaeology when
archaeologists themselves cannot resolve a publicly important controversy. Although
not her example, the movement of the fight between Native Americans and
American archaeologists over grave excavation and protection of sacred objects into
the U.S. federal government with the passage of NAGPRA (Native American
Graves Protection and Repatriation Act) fits the case. Here it looks like contending
parties could not resolve the issue, so governmentalization had to occur. The end
result, however, was to paralyze the use of archaeology to deal with questions of
origins. The paralysis brought about by NAGPRA is only beginning to be criticized
(Fine-Dare 2002).
Much of archaeology gets too close to being able to identify the unimportant
from the important independently of the politically powerful preservationists. At
that point private preservationists and independent archaeologists should expect to
be handed over to government for regulation. Because there is substantial intellectual, cultural, and monetary capital within historically designated properties,
harnessing independent scholars can be used as a model for forcing ordinary home­
owners and businesses to abide by the rules for preservation. In fact, the argument
was made in Annapolis that the university had to agree to the ordinance or it would
be unenforceable. The university’s archaeological activities were declared illegal and
fines were threatened. But if the university agreed to be licensed, then others would
follow suit. We had to agree, and were in many ways silenced from 2000 to 2005
as a result.
Can governmentalization still or quell a critical approach? The significant issue
for theory is how does a critical approach remain buoyant while operating in a
class-centered political environment? The answer comes by shifting alliances. A
critical archaeology that exposed the historical origins of modern ideologies that
masked exploitative relations can be done in partnership with African Americans
or many other disfranchised groups to put on display their critique of the society
in which they live. But whenever governmentalization could control, the result
was uncritical. Too often historic preservation is mute, not connected to teaching,
analyzing, discovering, or to examining how current conditions came to be. It appears
to be completely apolitical.
While historic preservation in its governmental form would like to extend its
power over land and buildings in a given city, the rest of the city is normally wary
of giving up such a degree of autonomy. On the other hand, commissions that are
charged with maintaining standards and overseeing the preservation process define
the old, ancient, and worthy, and to protect newer areas of the city is to cover them
with definitions of worth, value, and meaning they may not officially be allowed to
have. Because critical theory sees the process of defining worth as political and not
98
matthew m. palus, mark p. leone, and matthew d. cochran
based in any of the scientistic exercises associated with preservation, it can operate
a critical approach anywhere and can work on the fringes of the city including in
the oldest suburbs.
In Eastport, a neighborhood within the City of Annapolis that was an independent municipality until its annexation in 1951, we have seen a confrontation over
these values. During research conducted by University of Maryland field school
students between 2001 and 2004, Eastport homeowners welcomed archaeology
because it gave historical value to their hitherto undervalued properties. Eastport
was founded following the American Civil War and most of its small, wood-framed
homes were constructed between 1890 and 1920. It is not protected by the historic
preservation zoning that was applied to the core of the city in 1969, but it does
have a special zoning overlay designed to conserve the character of the community
that many residents value. This zoning is currently under revision, a dramatic turn
in the heritage-consciousness of the community. Eastport residents reject the notion
of esthetic review and preservation-by-experts that characterizes historic preservation zoning and procedures in the downtown of Annapolis. Seen by some as a place
less-endowed with history, Eastporters employ parody to relate their community’s
heritage to the historic core of Annapolis, articulating a critique of Annapolis’
aggressive program of preservation and its grand governmentality (Figure 5.1).
Figure 5.1 University of Maryland field school students discuss ongoing excavation in Eastport
with Annapolis Planning and Zoning staff. Photograph by Matthew Palus
critical archaeology
99
Public interpretation during excavations in Eastport allowed us to connect with this
issue very directly, in the context of site tours and also in public meetings.
Because archaeology has been done in Annapolis at least since 1968 and with
African Americans since 1990, archaeology became a possession of the public, both
black and white. Two exhibits of the results of African American archaeology had
been mounted by the Bannaker Douglas Museum, the Annapolis home of the
Maryland Center for African-American History and Culture. Unconnected to
Archaeology in Annapolis, a science teacher in the museum, Maisha Washington,
decided to use model excavations to teach stratigraphic excavation and Afro-centric
archaeology (Figures 5.2 and 5.3). She began in 2001 with 90 students, in 2002
with 60, and in 2003 and 2004 with 24 students, comprising increasingly more
manageable groups. All the children were six to twelve years in age and came from
Annapolis public housing projects. The excavations in carefully prepared sand
boxes lasted three hours per day, three days each week for six weeks. The children
learned to recognize layers, how to use a trowel, and measure and graph in three
dimensions. They were told about the role of archaeology in understanding Egypt,
Africa’s oldest civilization. They were also told that archaeology was a way of
understanding West Africa’s foodways and religions, which were a part of their
cultural inheritance. The hope within this program, which was popular with the
Figure 5.2 Maisha Washington leads students through an excavation exercise themed around
African-American heritage in Annapolis. Photograph by Amelia Chisholm
100
matthew m. palus, mark p. leone, and matthew d. cochran
Figure 5.3 Two students in Maisha Washington’s program. Photogragh by Tom Cuddy
children and their parents, is to produce young African-American professional
archaeologists in a few years. It remains to be seen whether the result is critical or
reproduces the current social order, but it is independent now of the White middleclass structure.
Conclusion
Does a critical archaeology make a difference? Only to some individuals and to
small pockets of people. Unaided by substantial exposure through the media or
opposed by substantial political forces, critical archaeology cannot do so. If critical
theory is described accurately by Althusser, then ideology is both opaque and too
dangerous to pierce. If Habermas and Foucault are right and sustaining the critiques of those subordinated to capitalism’s oppressions is critical to ameliorating
exploitation, then Althusser is incorrect in principle. Where historic preservation
officials want to control change and values, many people reject the labels and processes of zoning and declare themselves historically worthy anyway: they take
history making into their own hands, and throw out governmentalizing, historymaking bureaucrats. Thus, there can be local consciousness, local action, local
definition of the value of the past, and briefly, a break in the official ideology behind
power and the definition of what past is valuable.
critical archaeology
101
REFERENCES
Abercrombie, Nicholas, Stuart Hill, and Bryan S. Turner 1984 The Dominant Ideology
Thesis. London: George Allen & Unwin.
Althusser, Louis 1971 Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses. In Lenin and Philosophy.
Pp. 127–188. New York: Monthly Review Press.
Barnett, Steve, and Martin G. Silverman 1979 Ideology and Everyday Life: Anthropology,
Neomarxist Thought, and the Problem of Ideology and the Social Whole. Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press.
Beaudry, Mary C., Lauren J. Cook, and Stephen A. Mrozowski 1991 Artifacts and Active
Voices: Material Culture as Social Discourse. In The Archaeology of Inequality. Randall
H. McGuire and Robert Paynter, eds. Pp. 150–191. Oxford: Blackwell.
Bender, Barbara 1998 Stonehenge: Making Space. Oxford: Berg.
Boado, Felipe Criado 2001 Problems, Functions and Conditions of Archaeological Knowledge. Journal of Social Archaeology 1(1):126–146.
Bottomore, Tom 2002 The Frankfurt School and Its Critics. Key Sociologists. London:
Routledge.
Buck-Morss, Susan 1989 The Dialectics of Seeing: Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project.
Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Cohen, Margaret 1993 Profane Illumination: Walter Benjamin and the Paris of Surrealist
Revolution. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Fine-Dare, Kathleen S. 2002 Grave Injustice: The American Indian Repatriation Movement
and NAGPRA. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Foucault, Michel 1991 Politics and the Study of Discourse: Questions of Method. Governmentality. In The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality. Graham Burchell,
Colin Gordon, and Peter Miller, eds. Pp. 53–104. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.
—— 1994 The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. New York: Vintage
Books.
Friedman, Jonathan 1992 The Past in the Future: History and the Politics of Identity.
American Anthropologist 94(4):837–859.
Funari, Pedro Paulo A. 2001 Public Archaeology from a Latin American Perspective. Public
Archaeology 1(4):239–243.
Funari, Pedro Paulo A., and A. Zarankin 2002 Social Archaeology of Housing from a Latin
American Perspective. Journal of Social Archaeology 3(1):23–45.
Gramsci, Antonio 1971 Selections from the Prison Notebooks. Translated by Q. Hoare and
G.N. Smith. New York: International Publishers.
Handsman, Russell G. 1984 Historical Archaeology and Capitalism, Subscriptions and
Separations: The Production of Individualism. North American Archaeologist 4(1):63–
86.
Handsman, Russell G., and Mark P. Leone 1995 [1989] Living History and Critical
Archaeology in the Reconstruction of the Past. In Critical Traditions in Contemporary
Archaeology. Valery Pinsky and Alison Wylie, eds. Pp. 117–135. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Held, David 1980 Introduction to Critical Theory: Horkheimer to Habermas. Berkeley:
University of California Press.
Hodder, Ian, and Scott Hutson 2003 Reading the Past: Current Approaches to Interpretation
in Archaeology. Third edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
102
matthew m. palus, mark p. leone, and matthew d. cochran
Horkheimer, Max, and Theodor W. Adorno 1998 Dialectic of Enlightenment. New York:
Continuum.
Horning, Audrey J. 1999 In Search of “Hollow Ethnicity”: Archaeological Explorations of
Rural Mountain Settlement. In Current Perspectives on Ethnicity in Historical
Archaeology. Maria Franklin and Garrett Fesler, eds. Pp. 121–137. Williamsburg: Colonial
Williamsburg Foundation Research Publications.
—— 2000 Archaeological Considerations of “Appalachian” Identity: Community-Based
Archaeology in the Blue Ridge Mountains. In The Archaeology of Communities: A
New World Perspective. Marcelo Canuto and Jason Yaeger, eds. Pp. 210–230. London:
Routledge.
Jameson, John H., Jr., ed. 1997 Presenting Archaeology to the Public: Digging for Truths.
Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press.
Jay, Martin 1996 The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School and the
Institute of Social Research, 1923–1950. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Laclau, Ernesto, and Chantal Mouffe 2001 Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a
Radical Democratic Politics. London: Verso.
Leone, Mark P., Parker B. Potter, Jr., and Paul A. Shackel 1987 Toward a Critical Archaeology. Current Anthropology 28(3):283–302.
Lukács, Georg 1971 History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics. Translated by R. Livingstone. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Marcuse, Herbert 1974 Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud. Boston:
Beacon Press.
—— 1982 Some Social Implications of Modern Technology. In The Essential Frankfurt
School Reader. Andrew Arato and Eike Gebhardt, eds. Pp. 138–162. New York:
Continuum.
—— 1991 One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Societies.
Boston: Beacon Press.
Marquardt, William H. 1992 Dialectical Archaeology. In Archaeological Method and Theory.
Michael B. Schiffer, ed. Pp. 101–140. vol. 4. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
Matthews, Christopher N. 2002 An Archaeology of History and Tradition: Moments of
Danger in the Annapolis Landscape. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers.
Matthews, Christopher N., Mark P. Leone, and Kurt A. Jordan 2002 The Political Economy
of Archaeological Cultures: Marxism and American Historical Archaeology. Journal of
Social Archaeology 2(1):109–134.
Matthews, Christopher N., and Matthew M. Palus In press Archaeologists with Faces:
Heritage and Social Power in Public. In Ethnographies and Archaeologies: Iterations of
“Heritage” and the Archaeological Past. Lena Mortensen and Julie-Hollowell Zimmer,
eds. London: Routledge.
McDavid, Carol 1997 Descendants, Decisions, and Power: The Public Interpretation of the
Archaeology of the Levi Jordan Plantation. Historical Archaeology 31(3):114–131.
—— 2000 Archaeology as Cultural Critique: Pragmatism and the Archaeology of a Southern
United States plantation. In Philosophy and Archaeological Practice: Perspectives for the
21st Century. Cornelius Holtorf and Ha˚kan Karlsson, eds. Pp. 221–239. Göteborg:
Bricoleur Press.
McGuire, Randall H., and Robert Paynter, eds. 1991 The Archaeology of Inequality. Oxford:
Blackwell.
McManamon, Francis P. 1991 The Many Publics for Archaeology. American Antiquity
56:121–130.
critical archaeology
103
—— 2000 Archaeological Messages and Messengers. Public Archaeology 1(1):5–20.
Miller, Daniel 1989 The Limits of Dominance. In Domination and Resistance. Daniel Miller,
Michael Rowlands, and Christopher Tilley, eds. Pp. 63–79. London: Routledge.
Patterson, Thomas C. 2003 Marx’s Ghost: Conversations with Archaeologists. Oxford:
Berg.
Pinsky, Valery, and Alison Wylie 1989a Editor’s Introduction. In Critical Traditions in
Contemporary Archaeology: Essays in the Philosophy, History and Socio-Politics of Archaeology. Valery Pinsky and Alison Wylie, eds. Pp. xi–xiii. Albuquerque: University of New
Mexico Press.
—— 1989b Critical Traditions in Contemporary Archaeology: Essays in the Philosophy,
History and Socio-Politics of Archaeology. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
Politis, Gustavo 2001 On Archaeological Praxis, Gender Bias and Indigenous Peoples in
South America. Journal of Social Archaeology 1(1):90–107.
Potter, Parker B., Jr. 1991 What is the Use of Plantation Archaeology? Historical Archaeology
25(3):94–107.
—— 1992 Critical Archaeology: In the Ground and on the Street. Historical Archaeology
26(3):117–129.
—— 1994 Public Archaeology in Annapolis: A Critical Approach to History in Maryland’s
Ancient City. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Romero, Facundo Gomez 2002 Philosophy and Historical Archaeology: Foucault and a
Singular Technology of Power Development at the Borderlands of Nineteenth-Century
Argentina. Journal of Social Archaeology 2(3):402–429.
Saitta, Dean J. 2004 Labor and Class in the American West. In North American Archaeology.
Timothy R. Pauketat and Diana DiPaolo Loren, eds. Pp. 359–385. London and Malden:
Blackwell.
Schmidt, Peter R., and Thomas C. Patterson, eds. 1995 Making Alternative Histories: The
Practice of Archaeology and History in Non-Western Settings. Santa Fe, NM: School of
American Research Press.
Scott, James C. 1985 Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance.
Princeton: Princeton University Press.
—— 1990 Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts. New Haven: Yale
University Press.
Senatore, María Ximena 1995 Technologías Nativas y Estrategias de Ocupación Española
en la Región del Río de La Plata. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press.
Shanks, Michael, and Christopher Tilley 1987 Social Theory and Archaeology. Cambridge:
Polity Press.
—— 1991 Re-constructing Archaeology: Theory and Practice. Second edition. London:
Routledge.
Sim, Stuart, ed. 1998 Post-Marxism: A Reader. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Smith, Laurajane 1999 The Last Archaeologist? Material Culture and Contested Identities.
Australian Aboriginal Studies 1999(2):25–33.
—— 2000 “Doing Archaeology”: Cultural Heritage Management and its Role in Identifying
the Link Between Archaeological Practice and Theory. International Journal of Heritage
Studies 6(4):309–316.
—— 2001 Archaeology and the Governance of Material Culture: A Case Study from SouthEastern Australia. Norwegian Archaeological Review 34(2):97–105.
—— 2004 Archaeological Theory and the Politics of Cultural Heritage. London:
Routledge.
104
matthew m. palus, mark p. leone, and matthew d. cochran
Smith, Laurajane, and G. Campbell 1998 Governing Material Culture. In Governing
Australia: Studies in Contemporary Rationalities of Government. Mitchell Dean and Barry
Hindess, eds. Pp. 173–191. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Smith, Laurajane, Anna Morgan, and Anita van der Meer 2003 Community-Driven Research
in Cultural Heritage Management: The Waanyi Women’s History Project. International
Journal of Heritage Studies 9(1):65–80.
Taussig, Michael 1992 The Nervous System. New York: Routledge.
—— 1993 Mimesis and Alterity: A Particular History of the Senses. New York: Routledge.
Thompson, E.P. 1995 The Poverty of Theory: or an Orrery of Errors. London: Merlin
Press.
Tilley, Christopher 1989 Archaeology as Socio-Political Action in the Present. In Critical
Traditions in Contemporary Archaeology. Valery Pinsky and Alison Wylie, eds. Pp. 104–
116. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Walker, Mark 1999 The Ludlow Massacre: Labor Struggle and Historical Memory in Southern Colorado. Paper presented at the Commemoration, Conflict and the American
Landscape, College Park, Maryland.
Wilkie, Laurie A. 2001 Communicative Bridges Linking Actors Through Time: Archaeology
and the Construction of Emancipatory Narratives at a Bahamian Plantation. Journal of
Social Archaeology 1(2):225–243.
Wilkie, Laurie A., and Kevin M. Bartoy 2000 A Critical Archaeology Revisited. Current
Anthropology 41(5):747–777.
Wylie, Alison 1985 Putting Shakertown Back Together: Critical Theory in Archaeology.
Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 4:133–147.
Part II
Themes in Interpretation
Chapter 6
Engendered Archaeology:
Men, Women, and Others
Barbara L. Voss
Gender, wrote historian Joan W. Scott, is “a useful category of historical analysis,”
one that can be used to illuminate the lives of women and men and to better understand how gender is used to signify relationships of power (Scott 1986:1067). In
historical archaeology, a focus on gender has transformed the research questions
that archaeologists ask and the methods they use to answer those questions. Research
on gender in historical archaeology is particularly important because written records
are often biased in their representations of men and women. The archaeological
record allows us to understand the history of gender roles and gender relations from
a different perspective than documents alone will allow.
Sex and Gender
The terms used in gender studies can be confusing. Generally, “sex” is now used
to refer specifically to biological differences between males and females. “Gender”
refers to the cultural construction of men’s and women’s roles and identities. The
ways that societies produce culturally gendered men and women out of biological
males and females has been termed the “sex/gender system” (Rubin 1975), a model
developed initially by anthropologists who observed great variability in men’s and
women’s roles across different cultures. By examining how differences between men
and women are created culturally, the sex/gender system provides a framework for
considering how power is used in different cultures to enforce gender norms. The
analytical distinction between biological sex and cultural gender has been especially
important for historians and archaeologists. If gender is culturally constructed, then
it also has a history, and the history of gender roles, symbols, and identities is central
to understanding the social and political organization of any society.
108
barbara l. voss
The sex/gender system is a widely accepted model in the social sciences. However,
one challenge is that the boundary between what is natural (sex) and what is cultural
(gender) is not always clear (Laquer 1990). An alternative model of gender, based
on performance theory, was developed by philosopher Judith Butler (1990, 1993).
Butler argues that neither sex nor gender are stable essences, but are instead continuously produced through gendered performances by social actors. Butler draws
attention to the fact that the line between what is “natural” and what is “cultural”
regarding sex and gender is always produced within social discourse or debate. If
what is “natural” about being a man or a woman is defined culturally, then both sex
and gender are culturally produced.
Butler’s theory of gender performance is both influential and controversial (see
Voss 2000b, 2005). Some archaeologists assert that a performance model of gender
allows them to better investigate how material culture, space, and representations
are used culturally in gender performances. Others argue that Butler down­plays
the importance of the physical body in human experience. Either way, historical
archaeologists have struggled to come to grips with the ways that they can study
gender and sex in the archaeological record.
Gender Archaeology
For much of archaeology’s history, the study of past cultures focused primarily on
the experiences and achievements of men, with little attention paid to the contributions made by women or to historical changes in gender. Many archaeologists also
overlooked the importance of gender as a structuring aspect of many cultures.
Gender archaeology (also often called feminist archaeology and the archaeology of
women) developed through the deliberate efforts of many archaeological researchers to change this bias.
The emergence of gender studies in archaeology is widely attributed to the
publication of “Archaeology and the Study of Gender” (Conkey and Spector 1984).
By the late 1980s, workshops and conferences brought together researchers
interested in integrating archaeology, feminist theory, women’s studies, and the
interpretation of a gendered past. Several publications followed. Some, like
the edited volume Engendering Archaeology (Gero and Conkey 1991), were deliberately limited to studies of the prehistoric past. Others, including a special issue
of Historical Archaeology (Seifert 1991a) and several articles (e.g., Beaudry et al.
1991; Little 1994; Spencer-Wood 1991a; Yentsch 1991), explored how documentary and archaeological evidence could be used together to study gender. Both
prehistoric and historical archaeologists generally share three goals in their studies
of gender:
First, . . . to expose gender bias in all phases of archaeological inquiry . . . then, to
“find” women in archaeological contexts and to identify their participation in gender
relations, gender ideologies, and gender roles; and finally, to problematize underlying
assumptions about gender and difference. (Conkey and Gero 1991:5)
engendered archaeology
109
One important issue is the relationship between gender studies and archaeology.
Feminism, in its broadest definition, refers to the wide variety of cultural, political,
and academic movements that promote change in existing power relations between
men and women (Gilchrist 1999:2). While many feminist projects are conducted
with the primary aim of improving the conditions of women’s lives, others address
the ways that sexism negatively affects men and boys. Not all archaeologists who
study gender identify themselves or their work as feminist (Wylie 1997). However,
archaeological studies that rely on present-day stereotypes of men and women do
not advance knowledge of gender in the past.
Historical archaeology thus requires careful attention to gender bias. First,
researchers must be especially careful not to reproduce their own present-day
assumptions about men, women, and gender in their interpretations of the past.
Second, historical archaeologists face a special challenge in their work with documentary evidence. The authors of historical records were influenced by the gender
conventions of their time and culture, so we must exercise caution in how we employ
written evidence in our archaeological research. Here, the methodologies developed
by feminist historians (e.g., Scott 1988) provide useful tools that can be adapted
and creatively employed by archaeologists.
Case Study: What This Awl Means
What this Awl Means (Spector 1993) is a good example of how the study of gender
has transformed historical archaeology. Spector was among the first historical
archaeologists to use an explicitly feminist approach in her work. She initially
used her research at the Wahpeton Dakota village of Little Rapids in Minnesota
(USA) to test a new methodology called the “Task Differentiation Framework.”
The Task Differentiation Framework uses historical evidence to develop models
of which artifacts, structures, and facilities are likely to have been associated with
men or women in a given culture (Conkey and Spector 1984). Spector planned to
use the Task Differentiation Framework to study how Dakota men and women
responded differently to changes brought about by the 19th-century fur trade,
but she became frustrated by its reliance on gender stereotypes. She shifted to
what she has termed an “empathetic” methodology, a longing to understand what
life was like for people in the past by emphasizing “essences, images, and feelings”
in place of the objective stance that characterizes much archaeological writing
(Spector 1993:1).
Spector began her “empathetic” interpretation by focusing on a single artifact:
a carved awl handle made out of antler with a metal tip attached to it (Figure 6.1).
Earlier archaeological studies focused on the iron tips that were obtained by
the Dakota through the fur trade. Spector argued that these previous studies
assumed that the European-produced metal awl tips were more important
than Indian-produced awl handles, and that the trade relationships between
European and Indian men were more important than the ways that Indian
women used the awls to produce valued beaded and quilled clothes, moccasins,
110
barbara l. voss
Figure 6.1 Awl handle from Little Rapids. Courtesy of Janet Spector. Photograph by Diane
Stolen
and bags. How would archaeological interpretations be different, Spector asked, if
the awl handles were examined with as much scrutiny as the metal awl tips?
Spector (1993) wrote a fictional narrative about the awl using archaeological
evidence and documentary sources. The central character, a young girl named
Mazaokiyewin, is based on the grandmother of several present-day Wahpeton
Dakota Indians who worked alongside Spector on this research:
Mazaokiyewin’s mother and grandmother had taught her to keep a careful record of
her accomplishments, so whenever she finished quilling or beading moccasins, she
remembered to impress a small dot on the fine awl handle . . .
One hot day . . . an elder asked Mazaokiyewin to bring more drinking water. Mazaokiyewin ran down the slope from the village to the spring near the slough . . . She
slipped on the muddy path [and] as she struggled to regain her footing, the leather
strap holding the awl in its case broke, and the small awl dropped to the ground . . .
Later, the loss of the awl saddened Mazaokiyewin and Hazawin [her mother], but they
knew the handle was nearly worn out, and both realized it was more a girl’s tool than
a woman’s . . . It was time to put aside her girl-tools, she knew, but she had intended
to keep this awl. (Spector 1993, excerpted from pages 22–27)
Spector contrasts this interpretation with conventional reports on awls:
engendered archaeology
111
My emphasis would have been on the metal awl tips, not the awl handles, and my
description might have read like this: A total of four metal awls were found during
excavations at Little Rapids. These have been classified on the basis of four attributes . . . All four are made of iron with “offset attachments” conforming most closely
to what Stone has identified as Type I, Variety a. (Spector 1993:31)
Spector’s research illustrates key interventions being made through gender studies
in historical archaeology. First, Spector examined power relations in archaeological
research and included Dakota Indians, state archaeologists, and students in a collaborative team. By writing a fictional story rather than a typical “objective” report,
Spector both humanized the people she studied and relinquished her own authority as a neutral scientist – a writing practice that is increasingly common in historical archaeology (e.g., Praetzellis and Praetzellis 1998; Wilkie 2003). Second,
Spector’s attention to gender generated new interpretations of the artifacts that
archaeologists recover. As historical archaeologists ask research questions about
gender dynamics, many, like Spector, find that previously ignored sets of archaeological data have new interpretive potential. Finally, Spector’s study of the Dakota
village at Little Rapids exemplifies the importance of intersectionality: the ways that
gender is intertwined with race, ethnicity, class, age, sexuality, nationality, and other
vectors of social differentiation. “Past societies,” writes Elizabeth M. Scott, who
worked on the excavations at Little Rapids, “are brought into sharper relief when
viewed through the lens of gender . . . It is no accident, then, that themes of colonization/domination and resistance, of gender, class, and race, and of gender and
sexuality appear.” (Scott 1994:4–5)
Transforming the Past
What this Awl Means is only one example of how a focus on gender is transforming
historical archaeology. This section highlights four key topics where studies of
gender have become central to research in historical archaeology: research on colonization, Victorian America, the African diaspora, and institutions.
Engendered encounters: colonization and culture change
Historical archaeologists started investigating gender through studies of European
colonial sites in the New World. Their research focuses on the gendered dynamics
of intercultural interactions that were generated through colonization. In the 1970s,
Kathleen Deagan initiated a long-term research program aimed at understanding
how gender structured the development of colonial American culture. Her first
investigations were conducted at St. Augustine, a town established in 1565 in
Spanish La Florida. Deagan excavated the María de la Cruz site, a household owned
by a Guale Indian woman who lived there with her husband (a colonial soldier)
and their children (Deagan 1983). The artifacts recovered at the María de la Cruz
112
barbara l. voss
site provided the empirical basis for what Deagan termed the Augustine Pattern,
in which domestic artifacts (which Deagan links with women) have attributes associated with indigenous cultures, and public or high-status artifacts (which Deagan
links with men) are Spanish or European in form. Deagan concludes that:
This pattern of carefully maintaining the ideal of Spanish identification in socially
visible areas while adapting to the local circumstances of the colonial setting in private
and domestic life developed very rapidly . . . Non-European women were a potent force
in this process. (Deagan 2003:8)
Deagan and her colleagues have identified evidence of the Augustine Pattern at
other Spanish settlements throughout the circum-Caribbean region (e.g., Ewen
2000; McEwan 1991). Their central thesis regarding gender – “that Indian women
were the primary agents of acculturation among the largely male colonizing population” (McEwan 1991:56) – has also been adopted by researchers studying the
Russian colonization of western North America (Lightfoot, this volume; Lightfoot
et al. 1998; Martinez 1994).
Crediting indigenous women for their contributions to colonial culture was a
radical departure from previous archaeological research, which had tended to
emphasize the accomplishments and cultural practices of adult European men. Yet
in recent years, some archaeologists have questioned the validity of the Augustine
Pattern. Deagan’s correlation between women with domestic life, and men with
public life, resonates uncomfortably with present-day gender stereotypes. Writing
of households in colonial Ecuador, Jamieson comments, “The assumption that
domestic activities dominated the lives of women both ignores the important role
of the family in Andean colonial economic relations . . . It is important that we do
not underestimate the role of women within this formal economy” (Jamieson
2000:144). Likewise, McEwan (1991), Hoffman (1997), and Trocolli (1992) have
found that in colonial La Florida, native women held political power and worked
as business entrepreneurs, warriors, artisans, and merchants. Indigenous women’s
participation in colonial economies and public politics should caution archaeologists against reducing women’s roles to the “domestic” aspects of daily life.
Separating the spheres? Gender in Victorian America
Archaeologists have also studied Victorian America to investigate the complicated
connections between women and domestic life. In the 19th century, American
gender ideologies shifted dramatically. Throughout the 1700s and into early 1800s,
most households served the dual function of workplace and residence, and women
worked alongside their husbands and other male relatives. However, by the middle
1800s, the economy and the household underwent a structural transformation
through a division of the workplace and the home. These transformations were
linked to the promulgation of a new gender ideology of “separate spheres” (Poovey
1988; Smith-Rosenberg 1985).
engendered archaeology
113
The influential “separate spheres” doctrine had wide-ranging impacts for both
men and women. As the workplace was physically separated from the household
economy, men were charged with participating in the growing public commercial
workplace and assigned primary responsibility for their families’ economic welfare.
Many women no longer participated in production and marketplace activities
but instead were charged with domestic tasks and with shielding children from
the world’s evils. In this context, childrearing and homemaking were imbued with
moral significance – a “cult of domesticity” in which women created a private
sanctuary from the competitive public arena of the market economy (Fitts 2001;
Wall 1994:5–6).
Diana Wall’s studies of 19th-century New York City have brought new insights
into this dramatic cultural transformation. Wall noticed that historians writing about
the “separate spheres” ideology were divided. Some argued that the division of the
home and workplace was caused by economic changes linked to the rise of capitalism and that women were passive victims of these events. Others argued that women
actively contributed to these changes. Wall postulated that archaeological research
might resolve this historical debate: “If we can see evidence of changes in the social
practices that we associate with the development of women’s sphere before this
separation occurred, it would indicate that women (as well as men) actively contributed to the development of women’s sphere and to the enactment of the transformation itself” (Wall 1994:12).
Wall centered her investigation on how family meals were organized and served.
In the late 1700s, family meals were not particularly emphasized in daily life because
most members of the family were together for much of the day anyway. But by the
mid-1800s, the family meal had become ritualized as a daily reunion of household
members who had been separated by work and school during the day (Wall 1994:13).
Wall found that in the early 1800s, middle-class and elite women were transforming
the presentation, content, and service of the family meal. They were selecting ceramics that were more elaborately decorated and expensive than those used in previous
decades, and increasingly purchased dishes in matched sets (Wall 1991). For Wall,
these changes indicate that:
the meal’s focus was no longer on the food alone; it was also on the dishes that served
as symbols in this ritual . . . the mistresses of these families were well on their way to
elaborating dinner and other family meals . . . well before the separation of the home
and workplace . . . Women must be regarded as active agents in the redefinition of
gender.” (Wall 1994:148–149, 151).
Wall’s ceramic analysis demonstrated how archaeologists could contribute to
broader debates about the history of gender. However, Wall’s findings have
been critically evaluated by other archaeologists. Studies of urban working-class
households have found that poorer families, in which men and women often continued to work together at home, also used fine quality, highly decorated tablewares
(Brighton 2001; Karskens 2003). Likewise, some research on rural households has
provided evidence of continuity, rather than change, in gender relations during this
114
barbara l. voss
period (e.g., Nikolai 2003; Rotman and Nassaney 1997). Yentsch (1991) argues
that ceramic dishes not only marked gender roles but also were used to distinguish
between men of different social rank, race, and ethnicity. Wall herself notes that the
patterns she observed in archaeological assemblages from middle-class white households differ markedly from those found in African-American households (Wall
1999:114). These studies point to the importance of examining the intersections of
gender with race, ethnicity, class, and occupation.
Wall’s research demonstrated that some women contributed to changes in gender
ideologies through their daily work as homemakers.Yet throughout the 19th century,
large numbers of women also participated actively in public politics, especially the
fight for women’s suffrage and the temperance, abolitionist, and domestic reform
movements. Spencer-Wood has conducted archaeological surveys of sites related to
domestic reform movements in Boston and Cambridge. She demonstrates that
women had dramatic impacts on the historic use of urban space. These sites also
provide an important record of women’s public activities in Victorian society
(Spencer-Wood 1987, 1991b).
Archaeological studies of brothel sites have also challenged conventional scholarship about gender ideologies of the Victorian era. Brothels were often run as
family businesses; their furnishings and ceramics mirrored the domestic interior of
the Victorian middle-class home (Costello 2000, 2002; Milne and Crabtree 2001).
Donna Seifert has led the development of brothel studies as a distinct subfield of
historical archaeology (e.g., Seifert 1991b; Seifert et al. 2000). Seifert found that
for most Victorian-era women, economic well-being intertwined with sexuality
through marriage, gifts from suitors, on-the-job sexual harassment, and sex for pay.
By comparing archaeological evidence from brothel and non-brothel households
in Washington D.C., Seifert examined the similarities and differences in economic
status between prostitutes and other working-class women. She found that in the
late 19th century, the living conditions of brothel prostitutes were very similar to
people who lived in non-brothel households. However, by the early 1900s, the
relative economic status of prostitutes had increased (Seifert 1994). Other investigations in Los Angeles and the New York Five Points neighborhood found that
prostitutes there also generally enjoyed a substantially higher standard of living
than their working-class neighbors (Costello 2002; Milne and Crabtree 2001).
These archaeological deposits have also yielded evidence of the occupational
hazards of sex work through the recovery of medical paraphernalia and panel
medicine bottles that once contained “cures for venereal disease, conception
preventatives, and pain-numbing tinctures of opium and morphine” (Costello
2000:162).
While the studies outlined above have transformed historical perspectives on
women’s participation in Victorian society, it is also disappointing that almost no
archaeological research has investigated how the “separate spheres” ideology affected
men. During this time period, ideals related to masculinity were radically redefined,
and yet we know little about how men participated in these changes in their daily
lives. Archaeological research on Victorian-era gender roles has demonstrated,
however, that the relationship between a dominant gender ideology and the way it
engendered archaeology
115
is enacted in daily life will be inflected through other aspects of social identification,
especially class, race, ethnicity, occupation, and geographic location.
Black feminism and archaeologies of the African diaspora
The question of how other aspects of identity intersect with gender becomes even
more apparent when we look at feminist archaeological investigations of the African
diaspora. “African diaspora” is a term often used by scholars to refer to Africans
and African-descendent peoples who were dispersed to the Americas and Caribbean
through forced migration and enslavement (Franklin 2001a:89). A growing number
of archaeological investigations of African diaspora communities engage with questions related to gender. Many of these studies have emphasized ways that slavery
specifically affected African women. For example, Delle notes that enslaved women
on Jamaican coffee plantations were generally assigned the most menial, low-skilled
tasks. Further, sexual exploitation and sexual control comprised a part of everyday
reality for many enslaved women (Delle 2000:197). These indignities were by no
means limited to colonial Jamaica. Many feminist historians and archaeologists have
found that Black women historically responded to slavery and to racism by “inventing a different standard of womanhood . . . [that] placed a premium on self-reliance,
strength, and resistance . . . Thus, while enslaved women were expected to labor as
hard as enslaved men, we find in the archaeological record that they still managed
to make significant contributions to their households” (Franklin 2001b:112).
Franklin explores this point further by examining black women’s role in creating
“soul food” as an expression of African-Virginian culture and identity (Franklin
2001a). Both in the slave quarters and in the plantation big houses, AfricanVirginian women were responsible for preparing most meals. Franklin found that
African-Virginian cooks relied heavily on West African cooking methods, using
efficient stewing and ash-cooking techniques to create enjoyable and nutritious
“no-nonsense” meals. The similarity today between “soul food” and white Southern
cuisine can largely be attributed to black women’s influence in plantation
kitchens (Franklin 2001a), a finding that has been substantiated by research at other
African diaspora and plantation sites (e.g., Wilkie 2000).
Gender has also been important in research on African diaspora cosmology.
Wilkie argues that archaeology is critical to these studies because “many of the
material culture items used in spiritual curing and healing are commonly found in
archaeological contexts” (Wilkie 2000:185). For example, after slavery was abolished, African-American women at one site, Oakley Plantation, in Louisiana shifted
from using homemade teas and tinctures to commercially available patent medicines. The patent medicines chosen by Oakley’s residents were compatible with
traditional healing practices, suggesting a substitution in materials but a continuation of traditional cosmology. Wilkie suggests that women may have changed from
the traditional role of medicine-makers to medicine-purchasers in order to spend
more time pursuing wage work to strengthen their families’ economic independence
(Wilkie 2000:179).
116
barbara l. voss
The abuses of slavery and racism had particular effects on motherhood and
childrearing. Wilkie’s in-depth “archaeobiography” of one African-American
midwife, Lucrecia Perryman, found that midwifery was closely tied to African diasporic cosmology and the gendered and sexual ideologies associated with it. The
same objects found in love charms and charms to prevent venereal disease and
conception were also used during labor to emphasize harmony between the sexes
and to bring comfort to the birthing mother. Perryman combined these traditional
materials with patent medicines associated with discourses on scientific mothering
(Wilkie 2003).
Instituting gender
Up to this point, this chapter has focused primarily on investigations of households.
In archaeologies of gender, this micro-scale analysis prevails in part because
“households, regardless of the specific constitution of the resident group, surely
include women” (Conkey and Gero 1991:19) – and, I would add, men and children as well. Yet many researchers have turned to the study of institutions to
examine how architecture, space, and material culture participate in gendered
ideologies and practices on a larger scale. This section outlines the findings of four
recent studies that have focused specifically on questions related to gender in
monastic, prison, industrial, and residential institutions (see also De Cunzo, this
volume).
Gilchrist conducted one of the first archaeological investigations of gender and
institutions. Her research focused on the ways that architecture and space in medieval monasteries in Britain participated in the construction of gendered identities
for male and female members of religious orders (Gilchrist 1994). Central to
Gilchrist’s analysis is the premise that institutional architecture disciplines the body
and thus structures individual experiences of gender and sexuality. The communal
experience and hierarchical organization of institutions thus subordinates personal
identities to collective ones.
Gilchrist synthesized the findings of hundreds of site surveys and excavations at
monastic sites throughout England in order to compare men’s monasteries and
women’s nunneries. She found that divisions and distinctions based on gender
became more rigid from the 15th century onward. After that point, nunneries were
set in more isolated landscape settings than most monasteries, and nunnery architecture took on a distinctly domestic character (Gilchrist 1994:188–190). Late
medieval nunneries were also adorned with different architectural images that
emphasized Marianism and the suffering of Christ, reinforcing vows of celibacy and
the interiority of women’s sexuality (Gilchrist 2000). Overall, the material culture
and architecture of late medieval nunneries created a more isolated and interior
spirituality for nuns relative to monks of the same period. Gilchrist concluded,
“Together, gender and space may change meaning over time . . . Monastic architecture was central to the social construction of difference between medieval religious
men and women” (Gilchrist 1994:151, 192).
engendered archaeology
117
The role of architecture in regulating gender is also a prominent theme in
Casella’s investigation of convict-era Australia (Casella 2000a, 2000b; see also De
Cunzo, this volume). Ross Female Factory – the site of Casella’s research – was a
prison designed to reform convict women and to make them suitable for hire as
domestic servants. Casella used archival studies, topographic survey, and excavation
to reconstruct the locations of the different “classes” (dormitories) that composed
the institution, including the “crime” class, the reformed “hiring” class, and the
solitary confinement cells. Built of solid sandstone blocks, the solitary cells were
used primarily to punish women accused of homosexual relations with other
inmates. Surprisingly, the solidly built solitary cells contained evidence of a thriving
black market economy in the prison. Casella found alcohol bottles and tobacco
pipes – both forbidden items associated with masculine behavior – in large quantities in the floor deposits of the solitary cells, and in lesser quantities in the
under-floor deposits of the Crime Class dormitory. Casella concluded that the
doctrines of femininity and reform espoused through the Factory’s architecture
were subverted by social and sexual networks among the convict women.
Some 19th-century capitalists also used architecture to regulate women’s femininity and sexuality. One good example is the former Boott Cotton Mills in Lowell,
Massachusetts. Incorporated in 1835, the Boott Cotton Mills was constructed as
both factory and company town. The corporation hired “Yankee mill girls” – unmarried young women from New England farms – to serve as the primary labor force
for the mills. The Boott Mills owners and managers adopted an ideology of corporate paternalism, in which the company assumed the role of the male family patriarch. In doing so, it “undertook to create and control the total living environment
for labor” (Beaudry 1989:19; see also Silliman, this volume). The production
process was broken down into small segments, giving the mill girls little control
over their workday activities. The mill girls were required to live in company-owned
boarding houses, each supervised by a “keeper” who enforced company curfews
and rules prohibiting “reading, singing, drinking, meetings, leaving work, and gambling” (Beaudry 1989:20; Mrozowski et al. 1996:4). Like the prisoners at Factory
Ross, the mill girls found ways around the rules; archaeologists found substantial
quantities of tobacco pipes, alcohol bottles, and alcohol-rich patent medicines
(Beaudry et al. 1991:168–169). At Boott Mills, the doctrine of corporate paternalism was inflected not only with gender but also with ethnicity. By the mid-1800s,
the Yankee mill girls were being replaced with Irish and French Canadian immigrant
women and men. At this point, the company relaxed its paternalistic stance, and
within a few decades demolished or sold the company boarding houses (Beaudry
1993; Mrozowski et al. 1996:44–48).
A final example of research on gender and institutions is found in Buchli’s innovative archaeology of the Narkomfin Communal House in Moscow (Buchli 2000)
(Figure 6.2). Built in 1928, the Narkomfin Communal House was designed as a
“grandiose project” to help citizens of the new Soviet Republic transition to socialist life. At that time, prevailing Marxist conceptions argued that the material conditions of daily life would determine social consciousness. The development of
communist society, then, was a revolution that had to be fought on two fronts: “the
118
barbara l. voss
Figure 6.2 The Narkomfin Communal House, Sovremennaia Arkhitektura, 1929, no. 5, p. 158.
Adapted from Buchli 2000:2 with permission
conventional external front of military conflict, fought by male foot soldiers [and]
the internal front in its turn, fought by female foot soldiers at home” (Buchli
2000:24). Women’s oppression was seen as a serious barrier to the formation of
socialist society; the solution was to dismantle the domestic sphere to “raise women
‘above’ and ‘out’ into the public realm of men” (Buchli 2000:26). Communal
houses such as the Narkomfin were designed to accomplish this. The compound,
designed to house 40+ families in a residential block, also included a communal
block that socialized daily life through a group kitchen, dining area, library,
gymnasium, and mechanical laundry.
Buchli examined how the socialist state tried to engineer changes in domestic
practices and how residents adapted to changes in Soviet policies around domestic
life. Only a few years after the Narkomfin Communal House was constructed, the
ideals that it had been designed to realize were repudiated by the new Stalinist
regime. The compound’s occupants were thus inhabiting a built environment that
no longer “fit” the current mandate. Russian women were especially affected. They
were expected to keep their careers while simultaneously performing their loyalty
engendered archaeology
119
to the party through efficient and nurturing housekeeping. The re-privatization of
domestic life and dismantling of communal facilities made life in the Narkomfin
Communal House increasingly challenging. In the late 1950s and 1960s after
Stalin’s death, domestic performance of party loyalty became even more important.
At Narkomfin, a domkom (domestic committee) inspected and policed housekeeping practices. As the “fit” between the Narkomfin’s architecture and its social uses
continued to worsen, the domkom encouraged men, for the first time, to be active
in the domestic sphere by using traditionally masculine carpentry and repair skills
to modify apartments to better meet the new demands being placed on the structure
(Buchli 2000).
The studies summarized above illustrate the importance of archaeological
research on institutions. Gender and sexual identities are mutually produced through
the interactions between the micropowers at work in daily life and the macropowers of the church, the state, and the corporation (after Buchli 2000:3). One particular effect of material culture is that it objectifies – physically embodies – the
social relations that produced it. Some objects, such as tableware ceramic dishes,
can be readily replaced as social ideologies and fashions change; other objects,
like architectural forms, are more durable and persist long after the gendered
ideologies and ideals that shaped their design have been abandoned. Both the Boott
Cotton Mills boarding houses and the Narkomfin Communal House exemplify how
gendered ideologies can become “fossilized” through material culture.
New Directions and Challenges
Just as Spector’s focus on gender transformed her study of the Wahpeton Dakota
Village site, so too has gender-focused archaeology broadly altered archaeological
interpretations of the past. We understand colonization and its effects differently
when women’s participation is taken into account. Apparently trivial matters, such
as the kinds of dishes used on the family table, take on a new significance when
they are connected to social shifts in gender relations. Archaeological research on
gender has also firmly demonstrated that gender identities are dually shaped both
by daily practices and by institutional forces. And, perhaps most importantly, historical archaeological research has brought to the forefront the vital connections
between gender and other aspects of social identity such as race, class, ethnicity,
and occupation. Yet despite these accomplishments, some topics remain woefully
understudied. Some of these are emerging as new arenas of research while others
have yet to be developed substantially.
Engendering men and masculinity
It is unfortunate that men have rarely been the focus of gender studies in archaeology. Archaeologists’ formidable efforts to highlight women’s contributions to past
cultures have unwittingly reinforced the mistaken notion that men’s gender is
120
barbara l. voss
constant and unchanging. With few exceptions, archaeologists have yet to substantively investigate the ways that men are socially constructed as men, or the ways that
ideologies of masculinity are enacted through material culture.
Culture contact archaeology is one subfield where masculinity and men’s roles
have been critically examined to some extent. Deetz (1963:186) used archaeological evidence from Mission La Purísima to identify ways that that indigenous
men’s gender identities were altered as a consequence of colonization. Silliman
found that gender ideologies in Mexican California structured the labor regimes
to which indigenous men and women were subjected; this politicized obsidian
tool production, a practice traditionally associated with native men (Silliman
2001). Harrison (2002) has argued that during colonization, Australian aboriginal
young men increased production of a specific type of stone tool – the Kimberley
spear point – as a way of coming to terms with the new social order. My own
research at El Presidio de San Francisco has examined how masculinist
ideologies of honor and shame influenced the development of colonial architecture
(Voss 2002).
Other archaeological studies have examined the social production of masculinity
in male single-sex institutions. Brashler (1991) and Hardesty (1994) have found
that landscapes of logging and mining industries were structured through both
gender and class. Company owners and managers tended to live in towns with their
wives, children, and servants, while male workers were often spatially segregated in
satellite camps and housed in same-sex bunkhouses. Wilkie, in her investigations at
the site of a wealthy college fraternity on the University of California, Berkeley
campus, examined the ways that fraternal members constructed their identity
through fictive brotherhood (Wilkie 2001). Serving meals on porcelain dishes
decorated with the fraternity crest, for example, reinforced solidarity among the
members. Cross-dressing for plays and skits, a practice documented both historically and archaeologically through the recovery of artifacts related to women’s attire,
created short-term episodes of gender differentiation and reinforced a sense of
shared male identity through parodies of femininity. Other practices created a
“multiple age–gender system [that] relegated brothers into symbolic adults or
children, based on their college class level” (Wilkie 2001:113).
Is age a gender? Children and elders
Wilkie’s excavation at the fraternity site raises the question of how age and gender
are connected. Some feminist archaeologists have argued that gender and age are
mutually embedded: to be a boy, for example, is to be inseparably male and young.
Scott has called specifically for feminist archaeology to expand to include “the status
and identities of children and their relationship to women and men and the power
structure of the family” (Scott 1997:7). Surprisingly, historical archaeologists have
rarely addressed age as a specific aspect of gender identities. One notable exception
is Wilkie’s comparative study of toys recovered from African-American households
engendered archaeology
121
at two plantations in Louisiana; she found that White planters gave toys to the
children of their servants to cultivate “appropriate” gender- and status-related
behavior (Wilkie 1994). Another is Rubertone’s study of grave goods and skeletal
remains from a 17th-century Narragansett cemetery in Rhode Island; she was able
to identify specific age/sex group cohorts, contributing to a more nuanced understanding of “childhood” (Rubertone 2001:140–146).
To my knowledge, no historical archaeological research projects have explicitly
considered elders. The importance of this category and its relation to gender can
be seen in some prehistoric studies; for example, Hollimon has found that postmenopausal Chumash women played important roles in funerals and other rituals
(Hollimon 2000). With the documentary and demographic evidence available to
historic archaeologists, it would seem that the study of aging and its relationship to
gender may be fruitful directions for new research.
Sexuality
“There is another social function of gender to be considered and that is the social
marking of sexually-appropriate partners . . . If the reader accepts this social
function of gender, then an archaeology of gender is an archaeology of sexuality”
(Claassen 1992:4). Yet sexuality is rarely explicitly considered in archaeological
research, and only recently have studies directly addressed topics related to sexuality (Schmidt and Voss 2000). The problem, in large part, is that sexuality is closely
associated with reproduction, which is often perceived to be a natural, biological
function. Even though most sex acts do not lead to reproduction, archaeologists
have resisted examining sexuality as an aspect of daily life that is influenced by
history and culture (Voss and Schmidt 2000). Further, the interplay between gender
and sexuality is a complicated one. Although sexuality and gender are intertwined,
distinguishing sexuality from gender can help clarify cultural practices that otherwise would make little sense. For example, in my research on Spanish-colonial
California, I found that as mission populations increased, priests used architecture
in their attempts to control Native California sexuality. This led to the construction
of distinct architectural forms (monjeríos) to cloister unmarried native girls and
women (Voss 2000a).
Historical archaeologists have been the quickest to study sexuality in their
research. I have already mentioned ways that archaeologists are studying sexual
topics such as prostitution, sexual magic, religious celibacy, and homosexuality.
Other studies have focused on the spatial and material practices associated with
sexual minorities. Davis (2000) examined the site of William Beckford’s Fonthill
Abbey in England to identify homoerotic aesthetic and architectural choices made
by some aristocratic men in the early 19th century, and Rubin (2000) used archaeological survey methodologies to study the geography of gay leathermen in
20th-century San Francisco. An intriguing excavation conducted at Dudley Castle
in England has recovered more direct evidence of sexual acts: ten condoms
were recovered from a garderobe (latrine) dating to 1642–46. Standard sizes and
122
barbara l. voss
fastening devices indicate that condom manufacture by this time was already
a professional, specialized craft. Finds such as this illustrate how sexuality, even
in its most embodied moments, is mediated through material culture (Gaimster
et al. 1996).
Beyond dualism in gender and sexuality
To date, archaeological research on gender and sexuality is marked heavily by dualistic frameworks that emphasize oppositions between men and women. This has led
to a double failure in archaeological interpretations: archaeologists have rarely recognized gender systems that include more than two normative genders, and researchers likewise have rarely attempted to study those who violate gender norms by
adopting transgendered or transsexual identities (Casella’s investigation of the Ross
Female Factory, described above, is a notable exception).
Some archaeologists investigating historic Native American sites have managed
to move past dualistic frameworks of gender by researching non-Western gender
systems. Whelan (1991) analyzed mortuary data from a 19th-century Dakota cemetery in Minnesota to examine evidence of indigenous gender systems. She found
that when artifacts associated with burials were analyzed separately from the biological sex of the skeleton, four gendered groups emerged: adult women, adult
men, juveniles of both sexes, and burials containing artifacts known to have ritual
significance (pipestone pipes, mirrors, and pouches). Most skeletons in this latter
grouping were primarily sexed male but also included one female who appears to
have been “a fully participating member of this gender category, as much as any
of the men” (Whelan 1993:26). Beth P. Prine’s (now Pauls) study of a contact-era
Hidatsa village also explored gender variability through a focus on two-spirit
identities. Two-spirit is a term used to describe Native American identities that
reference both masculine and feminine characteristics. Hidatsa two-spirits, called
miati, were individuals who were identified as male at birth, changed their gender
at adolescence, and married men. Miati were respected as cultural innovators
who played a key role in earthlodge building ceremonies, mediating the tension
between feminine earth and masculine sky by raising the central lodge posts.
Prine’s investigation identified a double-posted earthlodge that might have been a
miati household (Prine 2000).
Closing Thoughts
Throughout this chapter, I have emphasized one fundamental principle: that gen­der
is culturally produced. Gender identities, roles, and ideologies vary across cultural
groups and over time. Most importantly, gender intersects in powerful ways
with other aspects of social difference, including race, ethnicity, and class. Using
archaeological evidence in concert with documentary sources and oral histories,
historical archaeologists have specifically focused on understanding how material
engendered archaeology
123
prac­tices – spatial organization, architecture, material culture, foodways – participate in cultural systems of gender. I have discussed some of the key research
domains where archaeological studies of gender have been most successful: culture
contact studies, Victorian America, the African diaspora, and investigations of institutions. I have also indicated some current challenges. Masculinity, age, and sexuality are currently underrepresented in archaeological investigations of gender, and
gender studies in archaeology have been constrained by dualistic thinking.
The development of gender studies in historical archaeology remains one of the
most significant changes in the discipline during the past 20 years. It has fundamentally altered the ways that archaeologists investigate and interpret the archaeological record. However, taking gender as a useful category of archaeological
analysis does have one hazard: a tendency to isolate the experiences of men, women,
and others in our interpretations of the past. While recognizing difference and division, archaeologists must also consider how the lived experiences of all members
of a social group intertwine. Historical archaeology has a particularly important
role to play in studying the ways that material practices are used to mediate the
tensions between gendered difference and interdependence in social life.
REFERENCES
Beaudry, Mary C. 1989 The Lowell Boott Mills Complex and Its Housing: Material Expressions of Corporate Ideology. Historical Archaeology 23(1):19–32.
—— 1993 Public Aesthetics versus Personal Experience: Worker Health and Well-Being in
19th-Century Lowell, Massachusetts. Historical Archaeology 27(2):90–105.
Beaudry, Mary C., Lauren J. Cook, and Stephen J. Mrozowski 1991 Artifacts and Active
Voices: Material Culture as Social Discourse. In The Archaeology of Inequality. Robert
Paynter and Randall H. McGuire, eds. Pp. 150–191. Oxford: Blackwell.
Brashler, Janet G. 1991 When Daddy Was a Shanty Boy: The Role of Gender in the
Organization of the Logging Industry in Highland West Virginia. Historical Archaeology
25(4):55–68.
Brighton, Stephen A. 2001 Prices that Suit the Times: Shopping for Ceramics at the Five
Points. Historical Archaeology 35(3):16–30.
Buchli, Victor 2000 An Archaeology of Socialism. Oxford: Berg Press.
Butler, Judith 1990 Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York:
Routledge.
—— 1993 Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex”. New York:
Routledge.
Casella, Eleanor Conlin 2000a Bulldaggers and Gentle Ladies: Archaeological Approaches
to Female Homosexuality in Convict Era Australia. In Archaeologies of Sexuality. Robert
A. Schmidt and Barbara L. Voss, eds. Pp. 143–159. London: Routledge.
—— 2000b ‘Doing Trade’: A Sexual Economy of 19th Century Australian Female Convict
Prisons. World Archaeology 32(2):209–221.
Claassen, Cheryl 1992 Questioning Gender: An Introduction. In Exploring Gender through
Archaeology: Selected Papers from the 1991 Boone Conference. Cheryl Claassen, ed. Pp.
1–10. Madison: Prehistory Press.
Conkey, Margaret W., and Joan M. Gero 1991 Tensions, Pluralities, and Engendering
124
barbara l. voss
Archaeology: An Introduction to Women and Prehistory. In Engendering Archaeology:
Women and Prehistory. Joan M. Gero and Margaret W. Conkey, eds. Pp. 3–30. Cambridge,
MA: Basil Blackwell, Inc.
Conkey, Margaret W., and Janet D. Spector 1984 Archaeology and the Study of Gender.
Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory 7:1–32.
Costello, Julia G. 2000 Red Light Voices: An Archaeological Drama of Late Nineteenth
Century Prostitution. In Archaeologies of Sexuality. Robert A. Schmidt and Barbara L.
Voss, eds. Pp. 160–175. London: Routledge.
—— 2002 Life Behind the Red Lights: Prostitution in Los Angeles, 1880–1910. In Restoring
Women’s History through Historic Preservation. G. Dubrow and J. Goodman, eds. Pp.
177–196. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Davis, Whitney 2000 The Site of Sexuality: William Beckford’s Fonthill Abbey, 1780–1824.
In Archaeologies of Sexuality. Robert A. Schmidt and Barbara L. Voss, eds. Pp. 104–113.
London: Routledge.
Deagan, Kathleen 1983 The Mestizo Minority: Archaeological Patterns of Intermarriage. In
Spanish St. Augustine: The Archaeology of a Colonial Creole Community. Kathleen
Deagan, ed. Pp. 99–124. New York: Academic Press.
—— 2003 Colonial Origins and Colonial Transformations in Spanish America. Historical
Archaeology 27(4):3–13.
Deetz, James F. 1963 Archaeological Investigations at La Purisima Mission. UCLA Archaeological Survey Annual Report 5:165–191.
Delle, James A. 2000 Gender, Power, and Space: Negotiating Social Relations under Slavery
on Coffee Plantations in Jamaica, 1790–1834. In Lines that Divide: Historical Archaeologies of Race, Class, and Gender. James A. Delle, Stephen A. Mrozowski, and Robert
Paynter, eds. Pp. 168–201. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press.
Ewen, Charles R. 2000 From Colonist to Creole: Archaeological Patterns of Spanish
Colonization in the New World. Historical Archaeology 34(3):36–45.
Fitts, Robert K. 2001 The Rhetoric of Reform: The Five Points Missions and the Cult of
Domesticity. Historical Archaeology 35(3):115–132.
Franklin, Maria 2001a The Archaeological Dimensions of Soul Food: Interpreting Race,
Culture, and Afro-Virginian Identity. In Race and the Archaeology of Identity. Charles E.
Orser, Jr., ed. Pp. 88–107. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.
—— 2001b A Black Feminist-Inspired Archaeology? Journal of Social Archaeology 1(1):108–
125.
Gaimster, David, et al. 1996 The Archaeology of Private Life: The Dudley Castle Condoms.
Post-Medieval Archaeology 30:129–142.
Gero, Joan M., and Margaret W. Conkey, eds. 1991 Engendering Archaeology: Women and
Prehistory. Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell Inc.
Gilchrist, Roberta 1994 Gender and Material Culture: The Archaeology of Religious Women.
New York: Routledge.
—— 1999 Gender and Archaeology: Contesting the Past. London: Routledge.
—— 2000 Unsexing the Body: The Interior Sexuality of Medieval Religious Women. In
Archaeologies of Sexuality. Robert A. Schmidt and Barbara L. Voss, eds. Pp. 89–103.
London: Routledge.
Hardesty, Donald L. 1994 Class, Gender Strategies, and Material Culture in the Mining
West. In Those of Little Note: Gender, Race, and Class in Historical Archaeology.
Elizabeth M. Scott, ed. Pp. 129–145. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
Harrison, Rodney 2002 Archaeology and the Colonial Encounter: Kimberley Spearpoints,
Cultural Identity and Masculinity in the North of Australia. Journal of Social Archaeology
2(3):352–277.
engendered archaeology
125
Hoffman, Kathleen 1997 Cultural Development in La Florida. Historical Archaeology
31(1):24–35.
Hollimon, Sandra E. 2000 Archaeology of the ‘Aqi: Gender and Sexuality in Prehistoric
Chumash Society. In Archaeologies of Sexuality. Robert A. Schmidt and Barbara L. Voss,
eds. Pp. 179–196. London: Routledge.
Jamieson, Ross W. 2000 Doña Luisa and Her Two Houses. In Lines that Divide: Historical
Archaeologies of Race, Class, and Gender. James A. Delle, Stephen A. Mrozowski, and
Robert Paynter, eds. Pp. 142–167. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press.
Karskens, Grace 2003 Revising the Worldview: The Archaeology of Convict Households in
Sydney’s Rocks Neighborhood. Historical Archaeology 37(1):34–55.
Laquer, Thomas 1990 Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud. Cambridge:
Harvard University Press.
Lightfoot, Kent G., Antoinette Martinez, and Ann M. Schiff 1998 Daily Practice and
Material Culture in Pluralistic Social Settings: An Archaeological Study of Culture Change
and Persistence from Fort Ross, California. American Antiquity 63(2):199–222.
Little, Barbara 1994 “She Was . . . An Example to Her Sex”: Possibilities for a Feminist
Historical Archaeology. In Historical Archaeology of the Chesapeake. Paul A. Shackel and
Barbara Little, ed. Pp. 189–204. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Martinez, Antoinette 1994 Native California Women as Cultural Mediators. Proceedings of
the Society for California Archaeology 7:41–46.
McEwan, Bonnie G. 1991 The Archaeology of Women in the Spanish New World. Historical
Archaeology 25(4):41.
Milne, C., and Pamela J. Crabtree 2001 Prostitutes, a Rabbi, and a Carpenter – Dinner at
the Five Points in the 1830s. Historical Archaeology 35(3):31–48.
Mrozowski, Stephen A., Grace H. Ziesing, and Mary C. Beaudry 1996 Living on the Boott:
Historical Archaeology at the Boott Mills Boardinghouses, Lowell, Massachusetts. Amherst:
University of Massachusetts Press.
Nikolai, Carol A. 2003 Class and Gender in Nineteenth-Century Rural Michigan: The
Merriman-Sharp Hillside Farm. Historical Archaeology 37(4):69–83.
Poovey, Mary 1988 Uneven Developments: The Ideological Work of Gender in MidVictorian England. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Praetzellis, Adrian, and Mary Praetzellis, eds. 1998 Historical Archaeology: Archaeologists
as Storytellers. Vol. 32 (1).
Prine, Elizabeth P. 2000 Searching for Third Genders: Towards a Prehistory of Domestic
Spaces in Middle Missouri Villages. In Archaeologies of Sexuality. Robert A. Schmidt and
Barbara L. Voss, eds. Pp. 197–219. London: Routledge.
Rotman, Deborah L., and Michael S. Nassaney 1997 Glass, Gender, and the Built Environment: Deriving Social Relations from Cultural Landscapes in Southwest Michigan. Historical Archaeology 31(2):42–62.
Rubertone, Patricia E. 2001 Grave Undertakings: An Archaeology of Roger Williams and
the Narragansett Indians. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Rubin, Gayle 1975 The Traffic in Women: Notes on the “Political Economy” of Sex. In
Toward an Anthropology of Women. R. R. Reiter, ed. Pp. 157–210. New York: Monthly
Review.
—— 2000 Sites, Settlements, and Urban Sex: Archaeology and the Study of Gay Leathermen
in San Francisco 1955–1995. In Archaeologies of Sexuality. Robert A. Schmidt and
Barbara L. Voss, eds. Pp. 62–88. London: Routledge.
Schmidt, Robert A., and Barbara L. Voss, eds. 2000 Archaeologies of Sexuality. London:
Routledge.
Scott, Eleanor 1997 Introduction: On the Incompleteness of Archaeological Narratives.
126
barbara l. voss
In Invisible People and Processes: Writing Gender and Childhood into European
Archaeology. J. Moore and Eleanor Scott, eds. Pp. 1–12. London: Leicester University
Press.
Scott, Elizabeth M. 1994 Through the Lens of Gender: Archaeology, Inequality, and Those
“of Little Note”. In Those of Little Note: Gender, Race, and Class in Historical Archaeology. Elizabeth M. Scott, ed. Pp. 3–24. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
Scott, Joan W. 1986 Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis. American Historical
Review 91(5):1035–75.
—— 1988 Gender and the Politics of History. New York: Columbia University Press.
Seifert, Donna J., ed. 1991a Historical Archaeology: Special Issue – Gender in Historical
Archaeology. Vol. 25(4).
—— 1991b Within Site of the White House: The Archaeology of Working Women. Historical
Archaeology 25(4):82–107.
—— 1994 Mrs. Starr’s profession. In Those of Little Note: Gender, Race, and Class in
Historical Archaeology. Elizabeth M. Scott, ed. Pp. 149–173. Tucson: University of Arizona
Press.
Seifert, Donna J., Elizabeth Barthold O’Brien, and Joseph Balicki 2000 Mary Ann Hall’s
First-Class House: The Archaeology of a Capital Brothel. In Archaeologies of Sexuality.
Robert A. Schmidt and Barbara L. Voss, eds. Pp. 117–128. London: Routledge.
Silliman, Stephen W. 2001 Agency, Practical Politics and the Archaeology of Culture Contact.
Journal of Social Archaeology 1(2):190–209.
Smith-Rosenberg, Carroll 1985 Disorderly Conduct: Visions of Gender in Victorian America.
New York: Oxford University Press.
Spector, Janet D. 1993 What This Awl Means: Feminist Archaeology at a Wahpeton Dakota
Village. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press.
Spencer-Wood, Suzanne M. 1987 A Survey of Domestic Reform Movement Sites in Boston
and Cambridge, ca. 1865–1905. Historical Archaeology 21(2):7–36.
—— 1991a Toward a Feminist Historical Archaeology of the Construction of Gender. In
The Archaeology of Gender: Proceedings of the Twenty-Second Annual Conference of the
Archaeological Association of the University of Calgary. Dale Walde and N. D. Willows,
eds. Pp. 234–244.
—— 1991b Toward an Historical Archaeology of Materialist Domestic Reform. In The
Archaeology of Inequality. Robert Paynter and Randall H. McGuire, eds. Pp. 231–286.
Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Trocolli, Ruth 1992 Colonization and Women’s Production – The Timucua of Florida. In
Exploring Gender Through Archaeology: Selected Papers from the 1991 Boone Conference. Cheryl Claassen, ed. Pp. 95–102. Madison: Monographs in World Archaeology No.
11, Prehistory Press.
Voss, Barbara L. 2000a Colonial Sex: Archaeology, Structured Space, and Sexuality in Alta
California’s Spanish-colonial Missions. In Archaeologies of Sexuality. Robert A. Schmidt
and Barbara L. Voss, eds. Pp. 35–61. London: Routledge.
—— 2000b Feminisms, Queer Theories, and the Archaeological Study of Past Sexualities.
World Archaeology 32(2):180–192.
—— 2002 The Archaeology of El Presidio de San Francisco: Culture Contact, Gender, and
Ethnicity in a Spanish-colonial Military Community. Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of
Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley.
—— 2005 Sexual Subjects: Identity and Taxonomy in Archaeological Research. In The
Archaeology of Plural and Changing Identities: Beyond Identification. Eleanor C. Casella
and Chris Fowler, eds. Pp. 55–77. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers.
engendered archaeology
127
Voss, Barbara L., and Robert A. Schmidt 2000 Archaeologies of Sexuality: An Introduction.
In Archaeologies of Sexuality. Robert.A. Schmidt and Barbara L. Voss, eds. Pp. 1–32.
London: Routledge.
Wall, Diana diZerega 1991 Sacred Dinners and Secular Teas. Historical Archaeology 25,
67–81.
—— 1994 The Archaeology of Gender: Separating the Spheres in Urban America. New York:
Plenum Press.
—— 1999 Examining Gender, Class, and Ethnicity in Nineteenth-Century New York City.
Historical Archaeology 33(1):102–117.
Whelan, Mary K. 1991 Gender and Historical Archaeology: Eastern Dakota Patterns in the
19th Century. Historical Archaeology 25:17–32.
—— 1993 Dakota Indian Economics and the Nineteenth-Century Fur Trade. Ethnohistory
40:246–176.
Wilkie, Laurie A. 1994 Childhood in the Quarters: Playtime at Oakley and Riverlake Plantations. Louisiana Folklife XVIII:13–20.
—— 2000 Creating Freedom: Material Culture and African American Identity at Oakley
Plantation. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.
—— 2001 Black Sharecroppers and White Frat Boys: Living Communities and the Appropriation of Their Archaeological Pasts. In Archaeologies of the Contemporary Past. Victor
Buchli and Gavin Lucas, eds. Pp. 108–118. London: Routledge.
—— 2003 The Archaeology of Mothering: An African-American Midwife’s Tale. New York:
Routledge.
Wylie, Alison 1997 The Engendering of Archaeology: Refiguring Feminist Science Studies.
OSIRIS 12:80–99.
Yentsch, Anne 1991 The Symbolic Divisions of Pottery: Sex-Related Attributes of English
and Anglo-American Household Pots. In The Archaeology of Inequality. Robert Paynter
and Randall H. McGuire, eds. Pp. 192–230. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Chapter 7
Ideology and the Material
Culture of Life And Death
Heather Burke
When Mark Leone commented in 1984 that “ideology . . . may very likely be found
amid all those items archaeologists have for so long lumped under labels like . . . style”
(Leone 1984:26), he indicated a direction in which many historical archaeologists
would subsequently travel. For nearly two decades ideology has been a fashionable
analytical concept, and numerous studies have attempted to come to grips with it
through a wide range of material correlates. Ceramics, gravestones, forks, architecture, pattern books, etiquette manuals, music, gardens, and clocks have all proven
to be fertile theoretical ground for the recovery of ideology. Almost all of these
studies have been grounded in the relationship between ideology and capitalism,
and in attempts to focus on the implicit and explicit meanings invested in artifacts
and how these influence, and are in turn influenced by, social behavior.
Unfortunately, there is still sometimes a tendency to view ideology as disconnected from “real” research through the overtly political motives which are usually
ascribed to it. There is also a risk of reducing ideology to an unwieldy dichotomy
between domination and resistance, pigeonholing it in its worst two-dimensional
form. Few historical archaeologists would disagree with the proposition that people
actively shape their material worlds or that historical archaeology must be able to
account for the complexities of human choice in order to be effective. Ideology is
one means of understanding this complexity, with the promise to illuminate both
the dynamics of past social relationships and the densely layered pathways of choice
which have given rise to the present.
Ideology
The way historical archaeologists have approached ideology is part of wider understandings within the social sciences of what ideology is and how it might best be
studied. Unfortunately, no universal theory of ideology exists, and archaeologists
ideology and the material culture of life and death
129
have drawn upon numerous intellectual strands when trying to understand it
as a phenomenon. The main source of confusion lies in the existence of two mainstream traditions for understanding ideology: an epistemological school descending
from Hegel, Marx, and Lukács, which sees ideology in terms of true and false
consciousness; and a sociological school followed by Althusser, Gramsci, and
Giddens which is concerned more with the function of ideology within social life
rather than questions of its reality (Eagleton 1991:3; Larrain 1994:61). Within the
epistemological tradition, ideology is understood to be, at least in part, illusory.
There is therefore a potential to make it disappear if only people can be brought
to understand the true nature of social relations. The sociological tradition challenges this assumption by arguing that ideology is neither so subjective nor so
disconnected from daily life. Within this tradition, Althusser (1994) in particular
argued that ideology was anchored in real material practices and social institutions
rather than a potentially see-through consciousness. As such he envisioned it as
an integral part of people’s everyday experience which they live habitually at an
unconscious level.
Within archaeology, early treatments of ideology tended to view it in terms
derived from the epistemological school. V. Gordon Childe, for instance, drew upon
the traditional Marxist view of ideology as false consciousness. Drawing upon the
equally traditional Marxist view that standards of truth could only be judged
according to the closeness of their fit with empirical data, however (see McGuire
1991:25–29), Childe confined ideology firmly to the realms of myth, ritual, and
religion (Trigger 1989:262–263). For Childe, the ideological sphere was a subjective
rather than an objective reality and therefore could not be inferred with any high
degree of accuracy, unlike supposedly more concrete aspects of human behavior
such as technology.
Even archaeologists with no Marxist leanings were constrained by a similarly
positivist approach to understanding ideology. When identifying three main divisions of artifacts amenable to archaeological study, Lewis Binford (1962) specified
“ideotechnic” in addition to “technomic” and “sociotechnic.” “Ideotechnic” items
were those which reinforced symbolic belief systems, as opposed to technomic
artifacts which related to the range of tasks humans faced when coping with their
environment. For Binford, ideology was one “operational subsystem” that provided
a rationalization for particular social structures and enabled individuals to take their
place as functional participants in society (Binford 1962:24–25). Casting ideology
in such terms, however, also limited it as an analytical category. Taken to its extreme,
ideology could only be defined as “rational” if it functioned in the adaptation of a
society to its environment. Although nothing in the processualist program per se
precluded a detailed study of ideology, Binford encapsulated a generally accepted
understanding of it: reinforcing a greater degree of familiarity between archaeological materials and environmental and technological components at the expense
of the ideological (Kristiansen 1984).
In contrast, many recent historical archaeological studies of ideology fall clearly
within the sociological tradition, concerning themselves with how ideology functions within social life. The vast majority of these studies originate with Mark
130
heather burke
Leone’s ongoing 20-year project in Annapolis, Maryland (see Figure 13.1), which
has always taken the position that ideology is a very powerful social force that can
only be explored through understanding how various taken-for-granted ways of
thinking and behaving disguise the arbitrariness of the social order (Leone 1984:26,
1987, 1988, 1994, 1999; see also Palus et al., this volume).
The existence of alternative epistemological and sociological traditions for understanding ideology has given rise to two potential pitfalls in the archaeological
interpretation of ideology. One diffuses it to such an extent that ideology becomes
synonymous with ideas and therefore loses any real analytical power; the other
caricatures ideology as self-deception, often as part of the domination versus
resistance debate. Both remove it from the arena of serious archaeological study
and highlight a general lack of understanding about what ideology is. In part this
confusion is understandable, as any attempt to distinguish between different senses
of the word raises immediate philosophical problems: Is ideology just another word
for ideas? Is there a standard of accuracy relevant to ideology, or is ideology always
necessarily “false consciousness”? Does ideology require that its constituent beliefs
be clearly articulated, or can it rely on implicit beliefs? Does ideology refer only to
shared beliefs, or is it ever possible to refer to an individual’s ideology? Although
on the surface such questions may seem to lie well outside the scope of archaeological analysis, they tie to the many ways in which people conceptualize their social
world and react to other groups within the local and wider social landscape. As
such, these questions need to be addressed before archaeologists can understand
how best to study ideology as a material phenomenon (Figure 7.1).
Ideology or Ideas?
The word ideology was first used in the late 18th century to describe a “science of
ideas,” and many understandings of the term since then have continued to conflate
these terms. This is the broadest definition as it simply stresses that the ways in
which we think are socially determined. In archaeological terms this renders ide­
ology synonymous with “worldview,” the broadest possible scale at which it is
possible to define a particular way of thinking and behaving. The classic use of
ideology-as-worldview in historical archaeology came from structuralists such as
James Deetz (1977, 1988) and Henry Glassie (1975). Both attempted to link widely
varying sets of archaeological data as expressions of a “Georgian Order,” a mindset
that they saw manifested in diverse ranges of historical artifacts from New England
and Virginia, respectively. As an architectural style, the term Georgian derives from
the three Hanoverian Kings George who ruled England during most of the 18th
and early 19th centuries (1714–1820). Although it thus allies with English architecture, the Georgian Order also associates with buildings in England’s various
colonies, such as the United States and Australia. To refer to a building as Georgian
means to characterize it on the basis of certain principles which govern the manner
of this style: symmetry, appeals to classical roots, plain uniformity, and simple
rectangular shapes. Deetz, however, realized that these Georgian principles might
giddens
1940s-50s
mannheim
1920s-30s
Ideology as a fundamental part
of the construction of knowledge,
that therefore can be linked to
groups, classes or historical periods
lukács
1910s-30s
hegel/marx/engels
Late 19thC-early 20thC
Ideology as false consciousness.
or an inversion of reality
Ideology
as linked to
internal
contradictions
and exploitative
relations
U nr
vs.
nR
ea
lity
gni
tio
Ideology as
a recognised
'cognitive
Ideology as having
pattern'
a functional relationship
to society, but most reliably
as it plays a part in the
adaptation of a society
to its environment
eality
Ideology as
a sign system
e' c
o
gramsci
Ideology as
central to the
maintenance
of hierarchy
and located
with sectoral
interests
Ideology as
part of the
exploitative
relations
between groups
Ideology as an
explanation for
otherwise
inexplicable
phenomena,
such as religion,
ritual, myth
Epistemological tradition seeing ideology in terms of 'true' and 'fals
1950s-60s
Ideology as an inherent feature
of the conduct of social life.
Not to be found in ideological
representations themselves, but
in the social relations that are
sustained through ideology
ic
log
cio
o
S
althusser
eing ideology in terms of its
1960s-80s
Ideology as
a shared
system of
beliefs which
assists in
communication
and interaction
e
tion s
bourdieu
Ideology as
something that
influences the
activities of people
in the past, and
the practice of
archaeology in
the present
radi
al t
1970s-90s
Ideology as a dimension
of symbols involved
in distorted communication
functio
ns in
soci
al
life
1970s-90s
habermas
Ideology as
active social
force
Ideology as the
study of style and
symbol systems
and how these are
implicated in the
maintenance
of inequality
Ideology as
passive social
reflection
Figure 7.1 The development of different analytical approaches to studying ideology in archaeology.
These relate to wider understandings of the concept and its origins and have dramatically altered
the way in which its material correlates are interpreted
132
heather burke
be one aspect of a wider mindset reflecting deeper changes in human understandings of the world (Deetz 1988).
In line with this, Deetz (1977, 1988) documented many interrelated changes in
the ways people built their houses, ate their meals, and buried their dead from the
late 1600s onward. What had once been organic, joint living and working space
within houses became a symmetrical floor plan with individualized and specialized
rooms in the interior. Deetz interpreted the increasing separation of activities and
functions that this implied as a change from a communal living pattern reflecting
older medieval traditions to new ideas of formality, individuality, balance, control,
and order. Eating habits changed in tandem, reflected archaeologically through a
greater range of ceramic types; the appearance of individualized cups, plates, and
bowls; and eventually the appearance of full sets of dishes with formal rules for use,
such as for tea sets. In gravestones, Deetz noted a movement from styles and epitaphs representing the literal commemoration of death to symbols which displaced
this experience through metaphor. Death’s heads gave way to cherubs and urn and
willow motifs, and the materials changed from multi-colored stone to white marble.
For him this not only signaled an intensive withdrawal, but a similar mediation of
the public-to-private trend he noted within architecture and ceramics to signal
increased privacy (Deetz 1988:229).
Deetz and Glassie both used the term ideology to describe this recognized cognitive pattern. By shifting the emphasis away from artifacts with an obvious esoteric
or ritual content, they demonstrated ideology to be a materially accessible phenomenon incorporating a much greater range of artifactual material than previously
considered relevant. At the same time, however, ideology conceived on such a large
scale became a cultural monolith. The main problem of the structuralist paradigm
in archaeology was that, by assuming the existence of a singular mindset, the material correlates of the Georgian Order became analogous to those of an archaeological “culture.” As a definition it did little to separate what might be “ideology”
from what might be religion, philosophy, politics, or culture.
If ideology and ideas are not necessarily synonymous, then how can one distinguish between them? According to the sociological tradition, the solution lies in
recognizing a crucial connection between ideology and power. In any societal structure, not all people have equal power, and their access to various forms of power
can vary across time and particular social contexts. Because such differentials will
always play out in the arena of social relations, an inherent antagonism always
simmers beneath the surface. This can exist around any number of bases: between
economic “classes,” different status groups, men and women, or colonizing and
indigenous societies, for example. This is a Marxist scheme for understanding the
social landscape. In it ideology becomes the social force individuals or groups use
to conceal and divert potential antagonism (cf. Leone 1982:748–749). In this
understanding of ideology, not all beliefs are necessarily ideological, but those that
are will have some purpose beyond simply describing the way a person thinks.
Ideology is seen as central to the reproduction of social order and does not function
as an isolated body of thought (an “idea”), but as an ongoing social process that
continually changes in response to its engagement in the world and the patterning
of relationships between social groups (Therborn 1980:77–78).
ideology and the material culture of life and death
133
Truth or Falsity?
The original understanding of ideology as an illusory condition of existence denotes
an inheritance of Marx, who viewed it as the product of a fundamentally unequal
society attempting to portray itself as cohesive in order to justify the unequal distribution of social and economic power (McLellan 1986:13). This is the origin of
the Marxist concept of “false consciousness”: that a disjunction exists between the
way things are (the “truth” of any social situation) and the way in which we know
them (the way things appear to be). The corollary is that, given sufficient enlightenment, “truth” can be made to correspond to reality. The main problem of such an
approach is that it separates people’s social practices – the mundane ways in which
they live out their day-to-day lives – from their ideas about them. Just as our beliefs
about the world shape our practical interactions with it, so, too, does our daily social
reality shape our larger understandings of ourselves and others.
Both Antonio Gramsci (1971) and Louis Althusser (1977) were influential in
linking ideology to these many practical forms of social reality. Rather than placing
ideology on the side of “error” as opposed to “truth,” they argued it should be
understood as a sociological phenomenon that must help to re-create society’s
structure through everyday social practices if it is to be effective. Gramsci coined
the term “hegemony” to describe the many routine ways in which dominant powers
encourage consensus, a process just as likely to involve popular culture, mass media,
the family, or the church as rhetorical politics. By diffusing the operation of power
through habitual practices linked to the daily operation of society, hegemony is
therefore a process of constructed consent. Althusser built on this foundation to
argue that ideology is a material practice gaining its most potent meanings from
those images, symbols, and concepts that we live at a largely commonsense level
(Eagleton 1991:148–149). Conceiving of ideology in this way is also linked to Pierre
Bourdieu’s notion of habitus, which seeks to describe the ways that human actions
can be regulated and harmonized without being the result of conscious obedience
to rules (Bourdieu 1977; Bourdieu and Eagleton 1994). Habitus describes the
deeply tacit norms and values which shape the way we think about the world,
molding our aspirations and actions through a lifetime of learned behavior. Anthony
Giddens (1979:191) uses the similar concept of “lived experience” to describe how
forms of domination may be sustained in everyday contexts that are deeply embedded both psychologically and historically.
Ideology thus has the potential to affect all members of a group, though perhaps
not in the same manner, and has connections to some minimum perception of
contemporary social reality (cf. Feuer 1975:96). At the same time ideology can still
be understood as a misrepresentation of the world:
“Prince Andrew is more intelligent than a hamster” is . . . probably true, . . . but the
effect of such a pronouncement . . . is . . . likely to be ideological in the sense of helping
to legitimate a dominant power. . . . while such utterances are empirically true, they are
false in some deeper, more fundamental way. . . . [I]deology is no baseless illusion, but
a solid reality, an active material force which must have at least enough cognitive
134
heather burke
content to help organise the practical lives of human beings . . . and many of the
propositions it does advance are actually true. None of this however, need be denied
by those who hold that ideology often or typically involves falsity, distortion and mystification. Even if ideology is largely a matter of “lived relations,” those relations, at
least in certain social conditions, would often seem to involve claims and beliefs which
are untrue. (Eagleton 1991:15–26, emphasis in original)
The classic example of such an approach to ideology within historical archaeology
was Mark Leone’s insightful study of William Paca’s garden in Annapolis, Maryland
(Leone 1984). Leone contended that Paca’s large, carefully designed garden embodied certain principles of order (grafting, transplanting, symmetry, formality, rules
of geometry) and design (perspective through terracing and the gradation of avenues,
appeals to antiquity in statues and architecture) that also expressed wider notions
of space and time (Figure 7.2). These notions, based in Western understandings of
science and rationality as a means to understand the world, also advertised authority and linked to the “quest for a fixed, natural order” (Leone 1984:33). Similar
arguments have been made for the ways in which company towns, corporate
housing, and factory layouts were also expressions of the rational control over time
and space, and thus also became an ideological means to organize the practical lives
of human beings through wider notions of “progress” or “economizing” (e.g.,
Handsman and Leone 1989; McGuire 1991; Mrozowski 1991; Mrozowski and
Beaudry 1990; Wurst 1991).
These studies remind us that ideology may well be misrepresentation, but it is
not pure illusion. Ideology both presents false representations of life and makes
some minimal sense of people’s daily life experience. Ideology may thus include
beliefs which are false or deceptive, but only in the sense of “untrue as to what is
the case,” rather than “not real” (Eagleton 1991:16). It is perfectly possible for
ideology to be false at one level but not at another: true in its empirical content,
for example, but deceptive in its force; or true in its surface meaning but false in
its underlying assumptions (Eagleton 1991:16–17; Plamenatz 1970:31). It is not so
much the content of ideology that matters, as it is the way in which that content
operates in terms of justifying or masking relationships of political, social, or economic power.
A Collective or an Individual Way of Thinking?
If ideology comprises the general process of masking contradiction and reproducing
an unequal or conflicting social form, then it must be ideology in the service of
particular interests. These interests are not necessarily restricted to those of class,
however:
Ideology . . . disguises not just forms of class domination but other forms too such as
racial, gender and colonial repressions. This does not mean that such ideological processes are disconnected from or have no bearing upon particular forms of class
domination – the colonial ideological construction of colonized peoples as inferior
ideology and the material culture of life and death
135
Figure 7.2 William Paca’s Garden, Annapolis, Maryland. Photograph courtesy of Jody Steele
clearly plays an ideological . . . role . . . – but they can be analytically distinguished. . . . [I]deology conceals not merely class antagonisms but also forms of gender, racial
and colonial domination which affect women, ethnic minorities and Third World
peoples. (Larrain 1994:15)
Thus the potential remains for more than one ideology to exist within society, on
any basis through which power and domination are exercised. Unless people set
about destroying or refashioning the general process of concealment in some way,
their accounts of social contradiction will inevitably be constructed within the
bounds of the dominant material relationships.
John Plamenatz’s (1970:17–18) work is crucial in reconciling, on the one hand,
the understanding of ideology as a general process of social incorporation and, on
the other, the obvious need to recognize the autonomy and heterogeneity inherent
136
heather burke
in human society. In so doing he draws a distinction between ideology in a sophisticated and unsophisticated sense. A sophisticated ideology is a “more or less coherent system of explicit beliefs about the world” that may be shared by only a few
members of society, while an unsophisticated ideology consists of the “presuppositions implicit in ordinary ways of thinking and speaking about the . . . world” that
may be shared by all. A sophisticated ideology is not necessarily the vehicle for
making explicit the presuppositions of an unsophisticated one (although it may be),
but if all the members of a community or group are mutually to understand one
another they must share an unsophisticated ideology (Plamenatz 1970:18). If ideology exists at both scales simultaneously, then it is both an emergent property of
groups of people who by shared experience hold similar things to be “true” and
also a formulation of such “truths” into a system of beliefs that some groups of
people desire or insist that others (should) believe.
As such, ideology can only be defined as an individual phenomenon in the sense
that it is the reflexive process of individuals constructing their social identities visà-vis others which generates, and is expressed through, ideology. The study of
ideology is never really directed toward tensions within the individual (but see
Leone 1984:34), but toward how individuals situate themselves within wider,
dynamic, and perhaps continually contentious constructions of social being. The
point is not to reconstruct who individuals were as an end in itself, but to understand how they created their identity in various larger arenas and how the material
facets of their life may have reflected the mobilization of certain social identities,
particularly if those identities involved different constellations of power relations.
Domination or Resistance?
The most common criticism leveled at archaeological accounts of ideology ties
directly into these conflicting scales of ideology. Since Leone’s 1984 study, many
historical archaeologists have argued that “ideology” too often refers to the conscious beliefs and values of the dominant (the “Dominant Ideology Thesis,” see
Abercrombie et al. 1980, 1992) and ignores the responses of those marginalized
groups who are “ruled” in one fashion or another (Johnson 1989, 1991, 1992;
McGuire 1988; Orser 1996; see also McLellan 1986:74). Matthew Johnson had
William Paca’s garden in mind when he argued that “ideology is not a monolithic
entity, ‘duping’ the vast majority of the oppressed in any straightforward or unproblematic fashion. . . . Nowhere does Leone discuss . . . how those who viewed the
garden interpreted it, and how their interpretations differed according to class,
gender, ethnicity, or other interests – in short, their goals as active social agents”
(Johnson 1989:195).
Beaudry et al.’s (1991) “cultural hegemony” approach similarly aimed to address
this problem. Although their target was ideology, they focused on instances of
deliberate, consciously chosen working class resistance:
It [resistance] is visible in the use of medicines more desirable for their alcohol content
than their efficacy in curing illness . . ., in humble aspirations to middle-class status
ideology and the material culture of life and death
137
reflected in the selection and use of household ceramics . . ., and in the deliberate
choices made by working women in buying and wearing less costly imitations of
expensive jewelry and hair ornaments. It is also expressed in the use of white clay pipes
as expressions of class affiliation and even of class pride. (Beaudry et al. 1991:167)
Initially, some of these criticisms went so far as to argue for the existence of subordinate ideologies or “ideologies of resistance” (e.g., Beaudry et al. 1991; Hodder
1993:67–68; McGuire 1992:142; Miller and Tilley 1984:14; Paynter and McGuire
1991:10) as the logical outcome of any situation of domination. Two things emerge
from a consideration of such literature: the consequences of placing resistance into
a dichotomy with domination, and tangential to this, the question of whether or
not resistance can be considered as an ideology.
It is important to bear in mind that resistance as a social process can only ever
exist in a dialectical relationship with domination (Johnson 1999:125); like the
proletariat and private property (Marx and Engels 1844), each maintains the other
in existence. Inevitably, then, essentializing ideology in terms of domination and
resistance will tend to reduce it to a two-dimensional phenomenon, an active/
reactive equation that cannot be made to account for a wide range of human
social behavior. Such essentialism potentially pigeonholes ideology as something
that is too simplistic to be taken seriously – stereotyping it as a conspiracy of the
ruling class, or casting marginalized groups as the “dupes” of an overtly repressive
social system. Instead, following the lines of the sociological tradition, ideology is
something more subtle:
not as if each social class has its own, peculiar corporate “world-view,” one directly
expressive of its material conditions of existence; and ideological dominance then
consists in one of these world-views imposing its stamp on the social formation as a
whole. . . . This version of ideological power . . . drastically simplifies the true unevenness and complexity of the ideological “field.” . . . Ideology, like social class itself, is an
inherently relational phenomenon; it expresses less the way a class lives its conditions
of existence, than the way it lives them in relation to the lived experience of others.
(Eagleton 1994:186, emphasis added)
This idea of ideology as a relational component of lived experience emphasizes the
way that ideology equips people with values and beliefs relevant to their specific
social tasks, but also locates these values within a general process of reproducing
society (Eagleton 1991:221). Ideology is not a conspiracy of the ruling class, but it
nevertheless has a “persistent structuring capacity” (Mullins 1998:18) that, because
it is tied to our “common sense,” promotes shared values for maintaining social
order.
Furthermore, if ideology is a means to conceal social contradiction in order to
prevent it from becoming conflict, then resistance, as some form of conscious negotiation with authority, cannot automatically be classified as an ideology (Larrain
1983:24–28, 89). This conflates ideology, once again, with ideas (i.e., those people
who are resisting certainly have ideas in common about how they should be treated),
but it also treats all ideology as sophisticated ideology. Instead, when considering
resistance, further questions need to be asked. Can resistance itself be part of the
138
heather burke
domination of others (in which case, it may well be ideological)? After all, when
Australian trade unions first sought equal rates of pay for working class men they
did so specifically to exclude cheap labor in the form of Chinese immigrants and
women (Lake 1994:270; see also Johnson 1999:125). How does the engagement
with instances of resistance affect the form and content of ideology? Are there wider,
unsophisticated ideologies effectively hindering, confusing, or diverting other forms
of resistance? As such, analysis becomes focused on the process of constituting
power relations rather than on powerful acts or behaviors themselves.
Is Ideology Always Equated with Class Consciousness?
Ideology may not always equate to group self-awareness. It is entirely possible for
a class or social group to have an ideology (beliefs which are widely held because
they favor interests or express feelings shared by the group’s members) without
themselves being class- or group-conscious (Plamenatz 1970:113–114). In other
words, members of a group may have wants and feelings typical of that group but
may not be organized to promote their interests or act together or even be aware
that they belong to a particular group. William Paca’s application of wider, more
embedded beliefs about the classification and control of the natural world to the
symbolic structuring of his own social world illustrates how the members of a group
can legitimize and consolidate their own interests through expressing shared beliefs
which further those interests. Some aspects of those beliefs, then, were part of the
construction of conscious sophisticated ideology, in that Paca’s identity as an individual and as a member of an elite group was fashioned in a particular way for
particular reasons and was continually created in the patterning of relationships
between his group and other groups. At least some aspects of those same unequal
social relations were so deeply embedded in what Paca considered to be “natural,”
however, that his beliefs were also part of the construction of unsophisticated ideology. When ideology is viewed on this more subtle scale, a different understanding
of the term “dominant” emerges. Rather than an artificial dichotomy between
dominant and subordinate, the patterning of ideology is the mosaic produced by
conflicting scales of sophisticated ideology encompassed by more embedded and
taken-for-granted unsophisticated ideology (see also Meltzer 1981).
When Plamenatz (1970) conceived of the distinction between sophisticated and
unsophisticated ideology, he was thinking in terms of his own contemporary Western
European society. The archaeological analysis of ideology, however, must take it
beyond this to consider other places, times, and contexts. When this occurs and a
truly other “Other” is encountered, unsophisticated ideologies may differ as radically as sophisticated ones. When colonialist societies came into contact with indigenous societies, for example, the unsophisticated ideologies which habitually
structured Western modes of thought were not those which helped indigenous
people to make to sense of their own place in the world. In recognition of this
complexity, recent historical archaeological studies have begun to focus on exploring alternative ways to conceptualize the social dynamics inherent in hierarchical
ideology and the material culture of life and death
139
power systems. Ways of constructing community identity (Beaudry and Mrozowski
2001), building shared aspirations (Pluciennik et al. 2004), providing bases of both
real and apparent accommodations to authority (Delle 1999; Frazer 1999a; Garman
1998), or offering the retention and reinvention of traditional customs and practices
(Brooks 1997; Frazer 1999b; Ruppel et al. 2003; Staski 1998; Upton 1996) have
shifted the focus away from resistance per se. Among other things this has made it
possible to consider overlapping as well as competing sets of interests, both within
and between groups (e.g., Burke 1999; Williamson 1999).
Historical archaeological studies focusing on the responses of those marginalized
groups who are “ruled” in one fashion or another highlight why viewing domination
and resistance as a dichotomy is so problematic. Ideology will always be an expression of the self/other relationships which continually structure people’s understanding of the world. In creating boundaries that define a group to insiders (and thus
also to outsiders), however, ideology cannot be understood as a category of social
difference in itself. There is no fixed group of ideologues, no absolute ideological
artifacts. Searching for archaeological expressions of ideology, therefore, means
searching for social nuance in artifacts and patterns of variability that could be, and
probably are, influenced by many other factors.
Material Culture of Life and Death
Most of the work dealing with ideology in historical archaeology since the early
1980s has come under the rubric of critical theory, which sets out to explore both
how knowledge is conditioned by the social context of the researcher and how such
knowledge might serve the interests and beliefs that comprise this context (Leone
1986; Leone et al. 1987; Wylie 1985; Palus et al., this volume). Stemming directly
from Deetz’s studies and Rhys Isaacs’ (1982) later insight that the Georgian Order,
as a set of social “rules” in transition, might reflect changing social relations between
classes, this work has tended to emphasize the many ways in which people use
material culture in their daily lives to sustain the unequal structures of a capitalist
society, both past and present.
Mark Leone was the first historical archaeologist to use the concept of ideology
as a link between the Georgian mindset and a principle ordering one particular
construction of the human mind – capitalism. For Leone and others, much of what
Deetz and Glassie had attempted was directed at the identification and description
of a range of material changes; Leone tried to grasp the meaning of these changes
and “to go beyond what the Georgian world view is to ask what the Georgian world
view is good for” (Potter 1992:121, also Leone and Potter 1988:214, emphasis in
originals). Initially Leone applied the idea of Georgian to the principles of landscape
gardening (Leone 1984, 1988). Leone saw both the use of symmetry and balance
as control over nature, and perspective as control over space, as expressions of a
“supposedly natural order full of efficiency and rules based on copying nature”
(Leone and Shackel 1987:56). This Cartesian view, while made to appear natural,
was in fact no less arbitrary and artificial than any other cultural construction.
140
heather burke
Leone subsequently expanded this idea to encompass other forms of cultural production, including town plans (Leone 1987, 1994; Leone and Shackel 1990), scientific instruments (Leone 1987; Leone et al. 1998), clocks (Handsman and Leone
1989), and musical instruments, composition, and performance (Leone et al. 1992).
All of these phenomena were linked through common perceptions of segmented
time, space, and sound that grounded the new divisions of Georgian social life in
nature. In so doing, Leone linked Deetz’ perceived cognitive patterns with specific
questions of power and social identity and argued for the ideological role of this
materially signified social mosaic in the construction of a capitalist society.
This new idea of Georgian Order led many historical archaeologists to focus on
the varied material aspects of ordinary behavior being reordered under these new
ways of thought. Paul Shackel (1992, 1993), for instance, applied the idea of selfdiscipline as a means for standardizing behavior through repeated performance to
changes in notions of hygiene manifested through such mundane objects as toothbrushes and chamber pots. He saw new understandings of what constituted the
“individual” being reflected in the proliferation of individually prescribed possessions such as table settings, knives and forks, chairs, and personal grooming items.
Facilitating the construction of personal discipline, the habitual use of such personalized possessions helped to reinforce an individualized and highly structured
society based on personal property (Lucas and Shackel 1994:29). This, in turn,
required the construction of new rules for personal and social behavior. Thus
manuals dictating appropriate dining and social etiquette (Lucas 1994; Shackel
1993), or treatises governing standards of “taste” (Matthews 1998), were as much
artifacts of ideology as the material objects they prescribed. It was not just possession of the objects that signified meaning, but knowing how to use them (Paynter
2001:138).
Archaeologists have long realized that the power relations experienced by people
in life are sometimes enshrined, sometimes concealed, by the status accorded to
people after their deaths (Leone and Silberman 1995:224). It was thus a relatively
small step to argue for similar changing social meanings linked to the nascent order
of capitalism as embedded in particular constructions of social identity expressed
through cemeteries and gravestones (Garman 1994; McGuire 1988, 1991; Tarlow
1999; Wurst 1991). In an analysis of the Broome County cemetery in New York,
McGuire (1991) noted that graves created at the turn of the 19th century were
placed into neat orderly rows with little overall inequality evident between the
monuments. From the mid-1800s onward, however, clear differences in type, size,
and monument design became increasingly apparent. After the turn of the 20th
century, monuments once again became more uniform in size and form. McGuire
interpreted these trends as a movement from the ideological denial of social difference in the early 1800s to an overt legitimation of social inequality that made it
appear “natural” in the late 1800s, and, finally, to an explicit recognition in the
early 20th century of the capitalist ethos of individualism, epitomized in the equally
ideological belief that success was attainable by all (McGuire 1988: 462–464).
All of these studies emphasize that a move from public to private, and a commensurate rise in segmenting behavior and social rules as a means for creating
ideology and the material culture of life and death
141
individual self-discipline, became central elements of ideological behavior under
capitalism (see also Johnson 1992, 1996). This implies that many different realms
of material behavior might be expected to have ideological meaning. Much of the
material archaeologists encounter is the detritus of daily life, but a nuanced sociological understanding of ideology emphasizes that even seemingly trivial objects
may be made meaningful (Hall 1992; Mullins 2001; Reckner and Brighton 1999;
Wall 1994). Furthermore, many of these studies use style as one archaeological
manifestation of ideology, through its role as the material expression of aspects of
contextual identity and the negotiation through this of competitive strategies of
status and power. Identity can be viewed as a central component of ideology and
a crucial aspect in allowing it to make at least minimal sense of people’s daily life
experience. This returns to the argument that ideology is not a “possession” or a
“state of mind,” but an ongoing social process. Power is implicated in the process
of creating social identity by constituting the conditions by which certain constructions of identity come to exist and perhaps persist in the face of others. Ideology
masks the social asymmetry behind these different forms of identity, as well as
masking the spheres of power which reinforce, and are in turn legitimated by, this
pattern.
Where to Go Now?
The insight that “meaning” is not an intrinsic property of artifacts per se, but is
produced in the interaction between people and things (Davidson 1996:11), is
crucial for an archaeological understanding of ideology. Only through people’s
continual interactions with the social and material environments can meanings
become invested in material objects. It is the same for the study of ideology:
Social classes do not manifest ideologies in the way that individuals display a particular style of walking: ideology is, rather, a complex, conflictive field of meaning, in which
some themes will be closely tied to the experience of particular classes, while others
will be more “free-floating,” tugged now this way and now that in the struggle between
contending powers. Ideology is a realm of contestation and negotiation, in which there
is a constant busy traffic: meanings and values are stolen, transformed, appropriated
across the frontiers of different classes and groups, surrendered, repossessed,
reinflected. (Eagleton 1994:187)
Ideology is continually emergent. It is not an entity, but a highly dynamic process
that always changes in response to its engagement in the world and the patterning
of relationships between social groups. In fact, as a process, ideology only exists
within these relationships, but as a product of human behavior it also has a material
dimension, expressed through the layers of meanings given to even seemingly trivial
objects. Historical archaeology, located as it is on the cusp on many complementary
data sources, has enormous potential for exploring the material correlates to this
ideological terrain.
142
heather burke
There has been an evident tension over the past 20 years between wishing to
identify the material remains of individual action as the vehicle for autonomous
choice (subjective “life as it is lived”) and being aware that, unless these choices
lead to revolution, they are still being expressed within the constraints inherent in
maintaining a particular societal form. Whether ideology is approached as a sophisticated ideology by which a dominant group incorporates itself, or as a general,
unsophisticated process of structuring the everyday world, it still has the potential
to teach us about ourselves. It is not so much what a particular artifact signifies
that is at issue, but how that symbolic expression manifests in different situations
and to what ends. For these reasons, some of the most thought-provoking analyses
of ideology ask us to consider the ideological implications of archaeology as a social
practice in the present (e.g., Leone et al. 1987). The archaeological study of ideology is thus also the study of invented traditions (e.g., Byrne 2003; Ireland 2003)
and the ways in which the material persistence of archaeological artifacts into the
present creates new layers of meaning around old materials (Burke 1999). Any such
approach demands the same attention to the intricacies of ideology as to history or
social context, while at the same time resisting a tendency to reify ideology as an
organism in itself. This is one of the main strengths of archaeology, and one of
the few contributions it can make to the analysis of ideology – contributing to the
understanding of the material character of the production of a social order.
REFERENCES
Abercrombie, Nicholas, Stephen Hill, and Bryan S. Turner 1980 The Dominant Ideology
Thesis. London: George Allen and Unwin.
Abercrombie, Nicholas, Stephen Hill, and Bryan S. Turner, eds. 1992 Dominant Ideologies.
London: Routledge.
Althusser Louis 1977 Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays. London: New Left Books.
—— 1994 Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes Towards an Investigation) In
Mapping Ideology. Slavoj Zizek, ed. Pp. 100–140. London: Verso.
Beaudry, Mary C., and Stephen A. Mrozowski 2001 Cultural Space and Worker Identity in
the Company City: Nineteenth-Century Lowell, Massachusetts. In The Archaeology of
Urban Landscapes: Explorations in Slumland. Alan Mayne and Tim Murray, eds. Pp.
118–131. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Beaudry, Mary, Lauren Cook, and Stephen Mrozowski 1991 Artifacts and Active Voices:
Material Culture as Social Discourse. In The Archaeology of Inequality. Randall H.
McGuire and Robert Paynter, eds. Pp. 150–191. London: Basil Blackwell.
Binford, Lewis R. 1962 Archaeology as Anthropology. American Antiquity 28(2):217–225.
Bourdieu, Pierre 1977 Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Bourdieu, Pierre, and Terry Eagleton 1994 Doxa and Common Life: An Interview. In
Mapping Ideology. Slavoj Zizek, ed. Pp. 265–277. London: Verso.
Brooks, Alasdair 1997 Beyond the Fringe: Transfer-Printed Ceramics and the Internationalisation of Celtic Myth. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 1(1):39–55.
ideology and the material culture of life and death
143
Burke, Heather 1999 Meaning and Ideology in Historical Archaeology. New York: Plenum
Press.
Byrne, Denis 2003 Nervous Landscapes: Race and Space in Australia. Journal of Social
Archaeology 3(2):169–193.
Davidson, Iain 1996 The Power of Pictures. In Beyond Art: Pleistocene Image and Symbol.
Margaret Conkey, Olga Soffer, and D. Stratmann, eds. Pp. 125–159: California Academy
of Sciences.
Delle, James 1999 “A Good and Easy Speculation”: Spatial Conflict, Collusion and Resistance in Late Sixteenth-Century Munster, Ireland. International Journal of Historical
Archaeology 3(1):11–35.
Deetz, James 1977 In Small Things Forgotten. New York: Doubleday, Anchor Books.
—— 1988 Material Culture and Worldview in Colonial Anglo-America. In The Recovery
of Meaning. Historical Archaeology in the Eastern United States. Mark P. Leone
and Parker B. Potter, Jr., eds. Pp. 219–233. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution
Press.
Eagleton, Terry 1991 Ideology. An Introduction. London: Verso.
—— 1994 Ideology and its Vicissitudes. In Mapping Ideology. Slavoj Zizek, ed. Pp. 179–226.
London: Verso.
Feuer, L. 1975 Ideology and the Ideologists. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Frazer, Bill 1999a Reconceptualizing Resistance in the Historical Archaeology of the British
Isles: An Editorial. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 3(1):1–10.
—— 1999b Common Recollections: Resisting Enclosure “by Agreement” in SeventeenthCentury England. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 3(2):75–99.
Garman, James 1994 Viewing the Color Line through the Material Culture of Death.
Historical Archaeology 28(3):74–93.
—— 1998 Rethinking “Resistant Accommodation”: Toward an Archaeology of AfricanAmerican Lives in Southern New England, 1638–1800. International Journal of Historical
Archaeology 2(2):133–160.
Giddens, Anthony 1979 Central Problems in Social Theory: Action, Structure, and Contradiction in Social Analysis. London: Macmillan.
Glassie, Henry 1975 Folk Housing in Middle Virginia. Knoxville: University of Tennessee
Press.
Gramsci, Antonio 1971 Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci. London:
Lawrence and Wishart.
Hall, Martin 1992 Small Things and the Mobile, Conflictual Fusion of Power, Fear and
Desire. In The Art and Mystery of Historical Archaeology. Essays in Honor of James Deetz.
Anne Yentsch and Mary Beaudry, eds. Pp. 373–400. Boca Raton: CRC Press.
Handsman, Russell G., and Mark P. Leone 1989 Living History and Critical Archaeology
in the Reconstruction of the Past. In Critical Traditions in Contemporary Archaeology.
Essays in the Philosophy, History and Socio-Politics of Archaeology. Valerie Pinsky and
Alison Wylie, eds. Pp. 117–135. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hodder, Ian 1993 Reading the Past. Current Approaches to Interpretation in Archaeology.
Second edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ireland, Tracy 2003 “The Absence of Ghosts”: Landscape and Identity in the Archaeology
of Australia’s Settler Culture. Historical Archaeology 37(1):56–72.
Isaacs, Rhys 1982 The Transformation of Virginia, 1740–1790. Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press.
Johnson, Matthew H. 1989 Conceptions of Agency in Archaeological Interpretation. Journal
of Anthropological Archaeology 8:189–211.
144
heather burke
—— 1991 Enclosure and Capitalism: The History of a Process. In Processual and Post­
processual Archaeologies: Multiple Ways of Knowing the Past. Robert W. Preucel, ed.
Pp. 159–167. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.
—— 1992 Meanings of Polite Architecture in Sixteenth-Century England. Historical Archaeology 26: 45–56.
—— 1996 An Archaeology of Capitalism. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.
—— 1999 Commentary: Mute Passive Objects? International Journal of Historical Archaeology 3(2):123–129.
Kristiansen, Kristian 1984 Ideology and Material Culture: An Archaeological Perspective.
In Marxist Perspectives in Archaeology. Matthew Spriggs, ed. Pp. 72–100. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Lake, Marilyn 1994 The Politics of Respectability: Identifying the Masculinist Context. In
Pastiche 1. Reflections on Nineteenth-Century Australia. Penny Russell and Richard
White, eds. Pp. 263–281. Sydney: Allen and Unwin.
Larrain, Jorge 1983 Marxism and Ideology. London: Macmillan Press.
—— 1994 Ideology and Cultural Identity. Modernity and the Third World Presence.
Cambridge: Polity Press.
Leone, Mark P. 1982 Some Opinions about Recovering Mind. American Antiquity 47(4):
742–760.
—— 1984 Interpreting Ideology in Historical Archaeology: The William Paca Garden in
Annapolis, Maryland. In Ideology, Power and Prehistory. Daniel Miller and Christopher
Tilley, eds. Pp. 25–36. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
—— 1986 Symbolic, Structural and Critical Archaeology. In American Archaeology Past and
Future. A Celebration of the Society for American Archaeology 1935–1985. David J.
Meltzer, Don D. Fowler, and Jeremy A. Sabloff, eds. Pp. 415–438. Washington, DC:
Smithsonian Institution Press.
—— 1987 Rule by Ostentation: The Relationship between Space and Sight in 18th-Century
Landscape Architecture in the Chesapeake Region of Maryland. In Method and Theory
for Activity Area Research. An Ethnoarchaeological Approach. Susan Kent, ed. Pp. 604–
633. New York: Columbia University Press.
—— 1988 The Georgian Order as the Order of Merchant Capitalism in Annapolis, Maryland.
In The Recovery of Meaning. Historical Archaeology in the Eastern United States. Mark
P. Leone and Parker B. Potter, Jr., eds. Pp. 235–261. Washington, DC: Smithsonian
Institution Press.
—— 1994 The Archaeology of Ideology. Archaeological Work in Annapolis since 1981. In
Historical Archaeology of the Chesapeake. Paul Shackel and Barbara J. Little, eds. Pp.
219–230. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.
—— 1999 Ceramics from Annapolis, Maryland: A Measure of Time Routines and Work
Discipline. In Historical Archaeologies of Capitalism. Mark P. Leone and Parker Potter,
Jr., eds. Pp. 195–216. New York: Kluwer/Plenum.
Leone, Mark P., and Parker B. Potter, Jr. 1988 The Archaeology of the Georgian Worldview
and the 18th-Century Beginnings of Modernity. In The Recovery of Meaning. Historical
Archaeology in the Eastern United States. Mark P. Leone and Parker B. Potter, Jr., eds.
Pp. 211–217. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Leone, Mark P., and Paul Shackel 1987 Forks, Clocks and Power. In Mirror and Metaphor.
Material and Social Constructions of Reality. Daniel W. Ingersoll, Jr. and Gordon
Bronitsky, eds. Pp. 46–62. University Press of America.
—— 1990 Plane and Solid Geometry in Colonial Gardens in Annapolis, Maryland. In Earth
ideology and the material culture of life and death
145
Patterns: Essays in Landscape Architecture. W. Kelso and R. Most, eds. Pp. 153–167.
Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.
Leone, Mark P., and Neil Asher Silberman 1995 Invisible America. Unearthing Our Hidden
History. New York: Henry Holt and Company.
Leone, Mark P., Parker Potter B. Jr., and Paul A. Shackel 1987 Toward a Critical Archaeology. Current Anthropology 28(3):283–302.
Leone, Mark P., Elizabeth Kryder-Reid, and Janice Bailey-Goldschmidt 1992 The Rationalization of Sound in Mid-Eighteenth Century Annapolis, Maryland. In The Art and Mystery
of Historical Archaeology. Essays in Honor of James Deetz. Anne Yentsch and Mary
Beaudry, eds. Pp. 229–245. Boca Raton: CRC Press.
Leone, Mark P., Jennifer Stabler, and Anna-Marie Burlaga 1998 A Street Plan for Hierarchy
in Annapolis: An Analysis of State Circle as a Geometric Form. In Annapolis Pasts:
Historical Archaeology in Annapolis, Maryland. Paul Shackel, Paul Mullins, and Mark
Warner, eds. Pp. 291–306. Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press.
Lucas, Michael T. 1994 A la Russe, à la Pell-Mell, or à la Practical: Ideology and Compromise
at the Late-Nineteenth Century Dinner Table. Historical Archaeology 28(4):80–93.
Lucas, Michael T., and Paul Shackel 1994 Changing Social and Material Routine in
Nineteenth-Century Harper’s Ferry. Historical Archaeology 28(4):27–36.
Marx, Karl, and Frederick Engels, The Holy Family, Sept.–Nov. 1844. Reprinted 1975 in
MECW, vol. 4. Pp. 35–36. Moscow: Progress Publishers.
Matthews, Christopher 1998 Part of a “Polished Society”: Style and Ideology in Annapolis’
Georgian Architecture. In Annapolis Pasts: Historical Archaeology in Annapolis,
Maryland. Paul Shackel, Paul Mullins, and Mark Warner, eds. Pp. 244–267. Knoxville:
The University of Tennessee Press.
McGuire, Randall 1988 Dialogues with the Dead. Ideology and the Cemetery. In The
Recovery of Meaning. Historical Archaeology in the Eastern United States. Mark P. Leone
and Parker B. Potter, Jr., eds. Pp. 435–480. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution
Press.
—— 1991 Building Power in the Cultural Landscape of Broome County, New York, 1880
to 1940. In The Archaeology of Inequality. Randall H. McGuire and Robert Paynter, eds.
Pp. 102–124. London: Basil Blackwell.
—— 1992 A Marxist Archaeology. San Diego: Academic Press.
McLellan, David 1986 Ideology. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.
Meltzer, David 1981 Ideology and Material Culture. In Modern Material Culture: The
Archaeology of Us. Richard A. Gould and Michael B. Schiffer, eds. Pp. 113–125. New
York: Academic Press.
Miller, Daniel, and Christopher Tilley 1984 Ideology, Power and Prehistory: An Introduction. In Ideology, Power and Prehistory. Daniel Miller and Christopher Tilley, eds. Pp.
1–15. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Mrozowski, Stephen 1991 Landscapes of Inequality. In The Archaeology of Inequality.
Randall H. McGuire and Robert Paynter, eds. Pp. 79–101. London: Basil Blackwell.
Mrozowski, Stephen, and Mary Beaudry 1990 Archaeology and the Landscape of Corporate
Ideology. In Earth Patterns: Essays in Landscape Archaeology. William M. Kelso, ed. Pp.
189–208. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia.
Mullins, Paul 1998 Expanding Archaeological Discourse: Ideology, Metaphor and Critical
Theory in Historical Archaeology. In Annapolis Pasts: Historical Archaeology in Annapolis, Maryland. Paul Shackel, Paul Mullins, and Mark Warner, eds. Pp. 7–34. Knoxville:
The University of Tennessee Press.
146
heather burke
—— 2001 Racializing the Parlour: Race and Victorian Bric-a-Brac Consumption. In Race
and the Archaeology of Identity. Charles E. Orser, ed. Pp. 158–176. Salt Lake City:
University of Utah Press.
Orser, Charles E. 1996 A Historical Archaeology of the Modern World. New York: Plenum
Press.
Paynter, Robert 2001 The Cult of Whiteness in Western New England. In Race and the
Archaeology of Identity. Charles E. Orser, ed. Pp. 125–142. Salt Lake City: University of
Utah Press.
Paynter, Robert, and Randall H. McGuire 1991 The Archaeology of Inequality: Material
Culture, Domination and Resistance. In The Archaeology of Inequality. Randall H.
McGuire and Robert Paynter, eds. Pp. 1–27. London: Basil Blackwell.
Plamenatz, John 1970 Ideology. London: Macmillan.
Pluciennik, Mark, Antoon Mientjes, and Enrico Giannitrapani 2004 Archaeologies of
Aspiration: Historical Archaeology in Rural Central Sicily. International Journal of
Historical Archaeology 8(1):27–65.
Potter, Parker B. 1992 Critical Archaeology: In the Ground and on the Street. Historical
Archaeology 26:117–129.
Reckner, Paul E., and Stephen A. Brighton 1999 “Free from All Vicious Habits”: Archaeological Perspectives on Class Conflict and the Rhetoric of Temperance. Historical Archaeology 33:63–86.
Ruppel, Timothy, Jessica Neuwirth, Mark Leone, and Gladys-Marie Fry 2003 Hidden in
View: African Spiritual Spaces in North American Landscapes. Antiquity 77(296):321–
335.
Shackel, Paul A. 1992 Modern Discipline: Its Historical Context in the Colonial Chesapeake.
Historical Archaeology 26:73–84.
—— 1993 Personal Discipline and Material Culture. An Archaeology of Annapolis,
Maryland, 1695–1870. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press.
Staski, Edward 1998 Change and Inertia on the Frontier: Archaeology at the Paraje de
San Diego, Camino Real, in Southern New Mexico. International Journal of Historical
Archaeology 2(1):21–44.
Tarlow, Sarah 1999 Bereavement and Commemoration. The Archaeology of Mortality.
Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.
Therborn, Goran 1980 The Ideology of Power and the Power of Ideology. London: NLB.
Trigger, Bruce 1989 A History of Archaeological Thought. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge
University Press.
Upton, Dell 1996 Ethnicity, Authenticity and Invented Traditions. Historical Archaeology
30(2):1–7.
Wall, Diana diZerega 1994 The Archaeology of Gender: Separating the Spheres in Urban
America. New York: Plenum.
Williamson, Tom 1999 Gardens, Legitimation and Resistance. International Journal of
Historical Archaeology 3(1):37–52.
Wurst, LouAnn 1991 Employees Must Be of Moral and Temperate Habits: Rural and Urban
Elite Ideologies. In The Archaeology of Inequality. Randall H. McGuire and Robert
Paynter, eds. Pp. 125–149. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Wylie, Alison 1985 Putting Shakertown Back Together: Critical Theory in Archaeology.
Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 4:133–147.
Chapter 8
Struggling with Labor, Working
with Identities
Stephen W. Silliman
Introduction
Labor occupies a central place in historical archaeology. The significance of labor
in archaeology stretches beyond a notion of labor as work or energy expenditure,
beyond the kind of social labor acknowledged as the basis of human relations, and
beyond the recognition that people labor at anything and everything that they do.
The labor that occupies the attention of historical archaeologists is the labor that
is colonized, enforced, controlled, exploited, indebted, hierarchical, unequally
distributed, often rigidly structured, and simultaneously global and local. Such
labor forms the crux of colonialism, mercantilism, capitalism, and class. This type
of labor stands as a hallmark of the expansion of the European world economy
from the 15th through the 21st century. It bound together, while simultaneously
dividing, local communities, bodily and mechanized producers, regional markets,
and worldwide consumers. These relationships cannot be captured solely in globalized or macroscale terms, but they must be recognized for their prevalence in past
lived experiences and their power in contemporary politics. Whether indigenous
Americans or Australians in European colonial settlements, artisans employed in
far-flung European colonies and towns, enslaved Africans and African Americans
on New World plantations, colonized African workers in Dutch and British South
Africa, convict laborers in Australia, indentured servants in North America, industrial workers in Europe and the United States, or immigrant miners in the United
States, these individuals and their experiences form the crux of many historical
archaeological research projects.
The explicit goal of this chapter is to summarize the state of labor studies in
historical archaeology through both case studies and theory. Shackel (2004) has
recently undertaken a similar task, but only for industrial settings. Since labor serves
148
stephen w. silliman
as a guiding theme, the cases draw upon a number of geographic and time periods
but with a noticeable focus on the United States as a matter of convenience. The
hope is to convey the rich possibilities of studying labor through historical archaeology with the otherwise relatively infrequent attempts to do so, compared to other
topics covered in this volume. This larger goal necessitates that I accomplish a less
obvious objective in the presentation of this chapter: dismantling the artificial divide
between the archaeology of “culture contact” (traditionally focused on Native
Americans and other indigenous people confronted with European settlement) and
the historical archaeologies of colonial towns, African and Chinese diasporas, industrialization, and urban city landscapes. Referring to indigenous-European interactions as “contact” has tended to distance that genre of historical archaeology from
other studies that focus on colonialism and post-colonialism (Silliman 2005). In
North America, this has unfortunately resulted in little scholarly exchange about
more overarching topics such as labor between historical archaeologists who work
on Native American, African, Chinese, and European populations. For example,
most historical scholarship on labor has focused on industrial contexts, work camps,
and plantation slavery, but other researchers have identified a growing need to
incorporate into this the study of indigenous people involved in colonial and postcolonial labor relations (Albers 1995; Bassett 1994; Cassell 2003; Littlefield and
Knack 1995; Silliman 2001, 2004a). This chapter takes additional steps toward
mending that disjuncture.
Labor as Concept, Labor as Process
Attempts to study labor must articulate with the theoretical legacies of Karl Marx,
some of which emphasize the economic and structural aspects of labor, while
others emphasize the social relations and alienation of labor and its products (see
Giddens 1971 for summary). However, due to space constraints, this chapter has
to forego a detailed consideration of Marx’s work on labor, capital, and alienation,
and instead focus on those who have used it (or not) in the practice of historical
archaeology. Traditionally, anthropologists, archaeologists, historians, and others
have considered labor as primarily an economic phenomenon. Many adherents of
the World Systems perspective of Wallerstein (1974, 1980) conceive of labor as a
commodity on the periphery, or colonized areas, to be controlled and exploited by
the core, or colonizing, nation. Yet, this type of approach downplays the social
relations that comprise a labor system, reduces elements of labor (such as discipline
and colonization) to only economic terms, and dehumanizes and denies agency
for those who perform such labor. In particular, the framework and its relatives do
not deal well with the fact that labor is a site of social struggle (McGuire and
Reckner 2002; Saitta 2004; Shackel 2004). Labor also must be considered as a
component of more than just obvious “working” environments (e.g., factories,
mills, mines); it also held great significance in colonial institutions with other stated
or assumed purposes. For example, Spanish missionary efforts in the American
Southeast, Southwest, and West Coast expounded more than religious doctrine
struggling with labor, working with identities
149
and sought more than Catholic converts; they actively recruited laborers from the
Native American populations among whom they settled (Lightfoot 2004; Milanich
1999; Silliman 2001). Missionary padres upheld work and discipline as mechanisms of religious conversion since, according to them, idle minds and hands
awaited temptation by the Devil, an ideology that conveniently supplied a labor
force for colonial operations.
To study labor in historical archaeology does not require depicting or considering laborers of the past as simply victims of colonialism, capitalism, industrialization, and macroeconomic patterns. Instead, focusing on labor allows archaeologists
to see the ways that administrators, overseers, capitalists, managers, and supervisors
structured and often imposed labor and the ways that those laboring accommodated, resisted, made use of, and lived through labor situations. Labor marks a
shared, yet multiply interpreted, experience which lends itself well to considerations
of class, gender, agency, and identity. At the same time, labor fits well into a relational model (Wurst, this volume; Wurst and McGuire 1999). That is, one does not
have a set of labor relations in the “modern world” without workers, overseers, and
owners, all of whom are constituted in that relation. This view reveals the complexity of labor for those participating in it. Some chose it for social mobility and economic well-being, some endured it for survival, some could see few other choices
in a rapidly changing world, and some sought to band together for improvement
of working conditions; other individuals cultivated, imposed, employed, conscripted,
legislated, or enslaved it.
Finally, labor must also be considered in its materiality and social context. At
one level, this means that archaeologists must focus on social history and lived
lives rather than, as Shackel (2004:46) recently agreed, disguise or lose them in
specialized studies that focus only on the machines and products of industry. Considering only technology, production, waste products, and consumer goods in
industrial historical archaeology avoids the larger social questions of labor and
people that made these material aspects happen. Casella (2005:9–11) argues that
this requires industrial archaeologists to turn their attention to “social workers”
– that is, people who labored and lived on factory floors, in city streets, and in
their homes. At another level, historical archaeologists have to ask what they might
learn from material culture by utilizing a labor framework that they would not
have considered otherwise. A recent study of Iñupiat workers in the whaling and
fur industry of the Arctic in the late 19th century illustrates this nicely (Cassell
2003). Not approaching the lithic endscrapers recovered at the whaling station
from a labor perspective would have missed the significance of how these stone
tools related to industry and colonialism rather than simply to notions of Native
cultural continuity or traditional practice. “The endscrapers were still endscrapers
in and of themselves, but these particular chert endscrapers from Kelly’s station
were new tools for new laborers engaged in new work in a new age” (Cassell
2003:163). Similar labor-oriented studies in California document how the items
usually thought to indicate indigenous cultural patterns (e.g., metal tools versus
stone tools) simultaneously frame out the materiality of labor relations (Silliman
2001, 2004a).
150
stephen w. silliman
Identity, Race, and Gender
Many historical archaeological studies of disenfranchised, colonized, non-white
people of the past 500 years center on individuals caught up in labor regimes and
work requirements. Yet, historical archaeologists frequently end up focusing primarily on the laborers themselves rather than also on the processes and relations of
labor that surrounded them. Archaeologists miss the social context in which
individuals work and live if labor is not considered simultaneously with respect to
identity, race, and gender.
Archaeologists who focus on labor regularly confront the question of what kind
of identities might be expressed by workers. Will people use the common experience
as a working class to forge an identity or a consciousness that manifests in their
lived, material lives? Will this social identity focus on local communities, or will it
unite laborers across geographical and perhaps temporal spaces? Will laborers rely
on their ethnic or cultural heritage as personal and community anchors rather than
absorb their lives of work into their expressions or struggles with identity? Do these
perceptions of identity vary between men and women, workers and capitalists,
indigenous people and colonial overseers? The answers to these are not a singular
“yes” or “no.” In fact, the lack of concrete global answers bespeaks the complexities
inherent in the different local times, places, contexts, and social agents that historical archaeologists study.
A few examples will illustrate. In the middle of the 20th century, the multiethnic,
largely immigrant mining settlement of Reipetown, Nevada (see Figure 14.1),
revealed a community structured not by ethnicity but by laborer resistance to
the class structures of other, more “mature” mining towns (Hardesty 1998:92). The
same hypothesized “class consciousness” informs the archaeological research at
the Ludlow Tent Colony in Colorado (see Figure 14.1), the site of the 1913–14
Colorado Coal Field War which witnessed striking miners and their families pitted
against managers, capitalists, armed detectives, and the national guard in the
context of a tent colony (Figure 8.1). Here, researchers attempt to tease out whether
class consciousness arose among the striking miners and families as a result of male
working conditions that overshadowed the otherwise ethnic divisions in their home
life, or whether this consciousness arose in men sharing experiences in mine work
and women sharing home conditions, regardless of ethnicity (McGuire and Reckner
2002:51–52). In addition, the research at Lowell, Massachusetts (see Figure 13.1),
on 19th-century industrial textile mills and their workers suggests also that people
adhered to a kind of “working class culture” that did not dwell on ethnic distinctions (Mrozowski et al. 1996).
On the other hand, Native Alaskans and California Indians who lived and
labored at the 19th-century Russian Colony of Ross in California left no material
evidence suggesting that they bonded together as a class of workers (see Figure
14.1). Instead, Native Alaskans and Californians focused more on their own
cultural practices, drawn from their disparate homelands, as they negotiated
household and community spaces (Lightfoot et al. 1998). Apache workers on 20th-
struggling with labor, working with identities
151
Figure 8.1 Cellar under tent burned by the Colorado National Guard, killing women and children,
Ludlow Colony, 1914 (Denver Public Library, Western History Collection, X-60482)
century construction crews in the American Southwest did not seem to forge a
“class consciousness” with their fellow non-Indian workers. Rather, they articulated
male wage labor with female household maintenance to retain a distinctly “Apache”
identity (Bassett 1994). Although Australian Aborigines and white settler Australians co-participated in the pastoral industry of 19th- and 20th-century Australia,
indigenous workers did not seem to form strong “class” bonds with their white
co-workers. They retained distinctly Aboriginal practices and identities and were
then ironically and systematically excluded from the history of pastoralism
(Harrison 2004). Various Mi’kmaq indigenous communities in eastern Canada
entered into the wage labor workforce in the 19th and 20th centuries as a means
of survival, but instead of becoming fully proletarianized, as Prins (1995) describes
it, the nature of reserve lands and migrant labor served to protect tribal communities and to help create a sense of Mi’kmaq nationhood. Finally, Native Americans
in Michigan were sent to Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding schools between the
1890s and early 1930s to be socialized and trained as members of the capitalist
U.S. workforce, but rather than forming a class consciousness alongside fellow
non-Indian workers, these individuals retained a distinct sense of Indian identity
(Littlefield 1995).
Discourse about race plays a critical role in the negotiations between ethnic/
cultural identities and worker/class identities. That is, people sharing the same
152
stephen w. silliman
working conditions seem less likely to share a class-based identity when people are
simultaneously racialized into other social and (presumed) biological categories.
Australian pastoralists cannot congeal into a unified laboring class when they are
thought to be composed of “black” and “white” Australians (Harrison 2004).
African Americans freed from enslavement in the 19th and 20th centuries and
working the same jobs as Euro-Americans in the United States did not form class
bonds with their white co-workers since racial discourse and violence intervened
(Milne 2002; Mullins 1999; Shackel 2004), nor did industrial slaves in the 19thcentury eastern U.S. (Shackel and Larsen 2000). Workers from many ethnic backgrounds such as Mexico, Ireland, Croatia, Finland, and China did not form class
bonds (and therefore successful unions) in late 19th- and early 20th-century Arizona
copper mines as a result of racial discourses and practices (Sheridan 1998). This
racial discourse arose not only internally out of different ethnic groups competing
for jobs, but also externally out of copper companies’ attempts to de-unify the
workforce, depress wages, and avoid union strikes (Sheridan 1998:176–179).
As much as race infuses laborer experiences and organization, considerations of
gendered labor are paramount to questions about identity (see Voss, this volume).
Not only does gender impact and reformulate industrial and colonial work spaces,
but the role of gendered agents in negotiating labor must be appreciated. Archaeologists have used the insight that work spaces, and some associated home spaces,
weigh heavily toward particular genders as a result of labor relations outside the
home. Studies of gendered “work camps” fall into this category (e.g., Paterson
2003; Veltre and McCartney 2002), but others have revealed that what many think
to be single-gendered camps are not at all so. In the Australian colonial goldfields,
archaeological and documentary evidence point to the presence of women and
children in worker sites traditionally assumed to be all-male, indicating household
struggles to balance the mobility required of miners with the individual desires to
engage with notions of Victorian domesticity (Lawrence 1998:48–55).
The implications fan outward into other realms of gender. For one, prostitution,
or sex work, deserves careful attention as a form of gendered labor, as demonstrated
by the work of several historical archaeologists (Costello 2000; Hardesty 1994;
Seifert 1991; Seifert et al. 2000; Simmons 1998). In quite another way, labor questions can reveal new perspectives on gender. For example, Yamin (2002) has argued
that the recovery of many children’s toys in the Five Points neighborhood of 19thcentury New York City (see Figure 13.1) indicates that parents were investing in
their children as children and not simply as workers. In early 20th-century construction camps for the Roosevelt Dam in Arizona, Apache men who participated in
wage labor for road construction, quarrying, masonry, and other tasks provided
economic stability to families, while Apache women maintained households that
adhered to more “traditional” notions of family and cultural space (Bassett 1994:64–
74). This undermined the attempts by the U.S. government to break Native American cultural practices on reservations through work projects. Finally, attention to
gendered labor among enslaved Africans on Jamaican coffee plantations has revealed
the harsh realities of spatial and sexual control and the requirements not only to
perform labor but to reproduce laborers (Delle 2000:178–187).
struggling with labor, working with identities
153
Agency and Resistance
Complementing the value of gender, race, and identity for offering unique perspectives on labor are notions of social agency. A focus on agency insures that labor is
not seen as only a “top-down” phenomenon where workers simply fall victim to
institutional violence and social control or buy into capitalist ideologies about consumerism or lives of work. But notions of agency can be mis-applied if archaeologists do not keep the structural and systemic nature of labor in mind when
interpreting the lives and experiences of agents. In other words, the alternative does
not involve conceiving of workers as entirely “free” agents who have the autonomy,
opportunity, or resources to fully resist or direct the labor relations in which they
maneuver. Instead, agents can be studied in how they negotiate the rules, resources,
constraints, and opportunities of labor relations that surround them.
A classic case of the interface between agency and labor is the Boott Cotton
Mills complex in Lowell, Massachusetts (see Figure 13.1) (Beaudry et al. 1991;
Mrozowski et al. 1996). In their study of a boardinghouse, tenement house, and
agent’s house, the researchers made a number of insightful discoveries regarding
workers and labor relations in this industrial complex. They found relatively few
artifacts and minimal environmental data that suggested beautification projects or
healthy hygiene among the workers, but they did find evidence of laborers trying
to improve their lot and to assert their preferences amidst a general lack of “free
time” (Mrozowski et al. 1996). Archaeologists found “costume” jewelry to adorn
bodies, plastic combs for lice and women’s hair, and buttons of black glass and
porcelain, all of which looked pricier than they actually were. They discovered localbrand alcohol bottles despite the company regulations and temperance movement
that prohibited them, but these items were hidden or discarded in crawlspaces,
sheds, and privies to escape detection. Not everyone agrees with these interpretations, arguing that the Lowell archaeologists have overplayed worker resistance and
heroism (Orser 1996), but Beaudry and Mrozowski (2001) have recently defended
their cogent position regarding the working class at Lowell as visible through backyard lots of worker housing and their struggles to maintain dignity and assert
preferences and identities in the context of industrial capitalism.
Other studies have attempted to demonstrate the visibility of agency and struggles between workers and managers in a variety of U.S. industrial settings. Nassaney
and Abel (1993) suggest that discarded artifacts from a New England cutlery along
a riverbank may indicate worker dissatisfaction with an imposed factory system.
Mrozowski et al. (1996) discovered archaeologically that workers at Lowell’s textile
mills circumvented management’s prohibitions of alcohol. Shackel (1996, 2000)
has argued that the shift from craft to wage labor for armory workers in mid-19thcentury Harpers Ferry, West Virginia (see Figure 13.1), resulted in worker resistance. Some men and women, discontent with the imposition of wage labor and its
associated disconnect between labor and capital, may have expressed their dissatisfaction in the ceramics that they bought and used (Shackel 2000:241–242).
Whether or not women were protesting the wage labor situation imposed upon their
154
stephen w. silliman
male family members, they may have avoided more fashionable and current ceramic
wares to harken back to an earlier time – craft labor – when they could exert more
control over their labor. Shackel (1993) also found that workers consumed some
of the final product of a brewery – that is, beer – and then hid the evidence of their
subversion.
In Australia, a growing literature considers the impacts of colonial ranching labor
on Aboriginal people. This research demonstrates that the history of colonial labor
and pastoralism is actually a “shared” history between Aboriginal people and European settlers (Harrison 2002, 2004). Harrison (2004:32–33) has documented how
Aboriginal people worked in the 19th-century pastoral economy with some autonomy, freedom to conduct their indigenous cultural practices, and the opportunity
to travel long distances to visit family. He also traces these labor trends well into
the 20th century through oral histories, wages books, and archaeological landscapes
and charts the ways that Aboriginal people negotiated an economic and social
terrain that contained the harsh realities of racism, discrimination, and coercion
(Harrison 2004:44–51, 88–111). In similar ways, Paterson (2003) has noted that a
dual consideration of labor and agency reveals that “post-contact” pastoral work
camps can be understood in terms of gender, age, and power differentials.
Although most recent archaeological studies of plantations of the American
South have rightfully focused on Africans and African Americans as laborers in the
plantation economy, Heath (1999) has expanded that vision to include free, white
artisans on Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello in 19th-century Virginia (see Figure
13.1). Labor was a critical node of interaction and the negotiation of agency since
these artisans had confrontations with Jefferson over alcohol, absenteeism, theft,
and competition. In her analysis of material culture, space, and work, Heath (1999)
found that these artisans had houses with raised floorboards for walk-in cellars and
prominent stone construction that spoke to higher status on the plantation than
their enslaved African counterparts, but these were juxtaposed with “unvaried and
worn ceramics, limited faunal remains indicative of a relatively monotonous meat
diet, and a quantity of salvaged industrial materials and tools” (Heath 1999:208).
Even more revealing is that these artisans had work spaces outside of their home
quarters, yet they introduced the material culture of their plantation labor tasks
into the household. “The line between being at work and at home appears to have
been blurred for men on the early 19th-century plantation. For the women, of
course, the terms were often synonymous” (Heath 1999:210). This suggests that
free artisans may have forged their identities as artisans in the household as on the
broader plantation through the use of otherwise non-domestic tools.
A similar study has been conducted on a 19th-century Mexican-California
rancho in northern California, but with different results. In my excavations of
Native American worker living areas on Rancho Petaluma, an enormous haciendastyle operation north of San Francisco Bay operating between 1834 and the early
1850s (Figure 8.2, see Figure 14.1), I found that indigenous men and women
working on the rancho, for reasons ranging from outright capture to indebtedness
to alliance building, had interfaced with labor in different manners (Silliman 2004b).
Through the interplay of textual and artifactual information, I could discern that
adult men, who spent quite a bit of time herding and butchering livestock and
struggling with labor, working with identities
155
Figure 8.2 Petaluma Adobe quadrangle, Rancho Petaluma, northern California. Photograph by
Stephen Silliman
plowing fields, introduced little of their work tools into household material culture.
This was somewhat surprising given the prominence of Indian vaqueros, or cowboys,
in all of Spanish and Mexican California. On the other hand, adult Native women
brought needles, scissors, and other sewing items into the home, all of which would
have stemmed directly from their tasks in and around the Petaluma Adobe residential and working area under the management of resident settlers (Silliman
2004a:188–197). Rather than a simplistic notion of “culture contact,” ideas about
colonial labor better clarified the negotiation of gender and social identity in this
19th-century setting.
Lived Experiences in the Home and Workplace
When archaeologists and historians peer into the shadows of near and distant pasts
in the “modern world,” they immediately confront the problem of labor. The lives
of people outside of the small circle of elite who supervised, delegated, and owned
typically involved work. This was true whether one’s ancestry was Native American,
African, Chinese, or immigrant European; whether one lived in the eastern United
States, western North America, New World plantations, desert Australia, South
Africa, or Latin America; and whether one toiled in mines, cotton fields, livestock
156
stephen w. silliman
ranches, construction projects, or prostitution. Interpreting these lives requires not
just a requisite focus on labor relations as a workplace issue, but also an emphasis
on the ways that labor relations implicated residential spaces, people’s home lives,
and their off-work hours. A number of studies have considered these issues, and I
sample a few here.
The American West has offered a rich area for considering labor in historical
archaeology, ranging from the earliest Hispanic missions and ranchos of the late
18th and first half of the 19th centuries, to the gold mining camps of the mid-19th
century, to the public works projects and industrial mines in the 20th century.
Unquestionably, the archaeology of mining and work camps in the American West
has tackled the labor issue thus far in the most thorough manner. A special issue
of the journal, Historical Archaeology (2002), delved into this topic with the theme,
“Communities Defined by Work: Life in Western Work Camps.” In the various
articles contained therein, archaeologists highlighted a number of key elements in
an archaeology of labor. Van Bueren (2002b) noted that life in early 20th-century
work camps revolved around labor, but found that off-work activities maintained a
critical place in worker’s lives. This took place despite the scientific management of
work efficiency that established hierarchical labor tasks and pay as well as orderly
rows of tents and houses (Van Bueren 2002a, 2002b). Outside of the strict management realm, Baxter (2002) found that California’s oil fields during this same period
witnessed an intentional segregation of laboring and living spaces by workers
because they could. Other analyses have revealed how labor relations impacted the
daily lives of coal miners in Colorado during the early decades of the 20th century,
including managerial control of housing, medical facilities, food, entertainment, and
actual entry into the residential community (McGuire and Reckner 2002:50).
An important feature used to distinguish laboring contexts in the American West
hinges on industrial (particularly mining) technology and its associated labor.
Archaeologists and other scholars have identified non-industrial and corporate
industrial contexts and have outlined their impacts on gender, class, space, and
human lives (Hardesty 1994). In particular, 20th-century “model” and “satellite”
mining towns have been considered from the perspective of power (Hardesty 1998).
The shift from local operations with often Native workers to “large-scale, heavily
capitalized, corporate industrial ventures” resulted in a shift from more egalitarian
to more paternalistic and class-based social settings (Van Bueren 2002a:2–3). The
implications ramify to more than just broader household or community patterns;
they also impact gender. For example, Hardesty (1994:133–134) found that
non-industrial mining sites had women working as prostitutes who owned their
own businesses, but that the influx of corporate ideology resulted in working
class women occupying wage-labor position for pimps and not owning their own
businesses.
Aside from these later developments in capitalism and industrialism, an archaeology of labor finds it way into the early colonial periods of western North America.
Russian settlements in California (Lightfoot 2004, this volume) and the Arctic
(Crowell 1997; Veltre and McCartney 2002) have begun to be approached with an
eye toward labor relations and their articulation with gender and agency. The labor
struggling with labor, working with identities
157
question takes on great salience given that Russians conscripted laborers from
Native Alaskan populations to use them as seal and sea otter hunters from Alaska
to California. While Veltre and McCartney (2002) pursued the labor issue only to
the point of recognizing the archaeological sites under study as male-only, workerseparated housing in Alaska, Lightfoot (2004) has moved toward deeper considerations of labor policies and practices in colonial California.
The comparative study of Russian settlements and Spanish missions in colonial
California (Lightfoot 2004) and archaeological studies of labor in California’s missions (Silliman 2001) and ranchos (Silliman 2004a) have revealed what might be
gained from a focus on colonial labor for cultural change and continuity in Native
lives. For instance, Lightfoot (2004:186–188) has demonstrated the impacts
that Russian and Spanish labor regimes had on California Indian people. The
similarities, such as exploitation of inexpensive Native labor, and differences, such
as more freedom to leave, less provisioning, and no training in skilled crafts by the
Russians, provide important clues as to how Native social agents maneuvered this
colonial terrain and to how historical archaeologists can track them in the material
and documentary record. Studying California’s ranchos with a similar perspective
has demonstrated how labor impacted the ways that Native Americans participated
in the colonial world, the nature of subsistence and social pursuits, and the
organization of daily life and scheduling (Silliman 2004a).
As the above examples allude, relations and structures of labor impact the
social space in which people lived and worked. Other examples from outside
the American West help to round out the picture. In colonial New England in the
northeastern U.S., house architecture speaks to the issue of labor, as the construction of “outhuts, lean-tos, ells, and wings commonly referred to as ‘appendages’ to
house backsides” related directly to the service structure of the house (Larick
1999:76–77; see also Garman [1998:152] for negotiations over living and work
spaces by enslaved Africans). In these changing forms, archaeologists can trace the
ways that labor was conceptualized and implemented by those requiring it and those
performing it. Nineteenth-century industrial sites in Massachusetts such as Boott
Cotton Mills in Lowell (Mrozowski et al. 1996) and the Russell Cutlery Factory
in Turner’s Falls (Nassaney and Abel 2000) reveal the persistent efforts by managers and capitalist owners to structure not only their workers’ employment spaces
but also their domestic spaces. That is, social control and surveillance extended far
beyond the walls of the official “work” space. However, archaeological research has
shown the ways that workers often resisted or reinterpreted the “designed” space
as their own “used” space. In a parallel fashion, 19th- and 20th-century haciendas
in Latin America utilized space to manifest power, control, and social division along
the lines of labor, as illustrated by archaeologists working at Hacienda Tabi in
Yucatan, Mexico (see Figure 11.1), who found differences in housing structure,
permanence, and placement based on labor roles (Meyers and Carlson 1999).
An important context for considering the implications of labor for lived experience is the plantation slavery system of the Americas. Although most plantation
archaeologists focus primarily on questions of culture, race, gender, and power,
others have begun to articulate these issues with the labor that permeated many
158
stephen w. silliman
facets of life for enslaved Africans. Such a recognition is critical since labor provided
the grounding feature of plantation slavery, its very raison d’être. “Archaeologists
should remember that slaves were at plantations to work. . . . [T]he primary function of slaves was to perform labor” (Orser 1990:115). This does not have to be a
call for an economic approach but rather a recognition of the importance of labor
relations in social life and lived experience. Several scholars of the plantation have
focused on the organization of labor, in particular the task- and gang-system of
labor, the distinctions between house and field slaves, and both of their impacts on
slave autonomy and social control.
The task system was common along the coastal rice and sea island cotton plantations of the American South (Reitz et al. 1985:165; Young 1997:42). In this
system, enslaved people were given specific duties to complete or individual plots
of land to tend, and upon completion of the assigned task, the slaves were allowed
free time (Berlin and Morgan 1993:14–15; Reitz et al. 1985:166). Often, enslaved
workers completed these tasks with minimal to no supervision (Young 1997:43).
In the gang system that predominated in tobacco, sugar, coffee, and short-staple
cotton plantations, enslaved Africans and African Americans worked in teams for
a specific period of time, usually dawn to dusk, to complete any number of assigned
tasks (Delle 2000:179; Reitz et al. 1985:166; Young 1997:42–43). Generally, supervision was close, group composition carefully designed, and labor often segregated
by sex or age (Berlin and Morgan 1993:14; Delle 2000:180).
Some have suggested that task systems led to increased autonomy; to more free
time to hunt, fish, cultivate, and raise poultry; and to increased incentive for
enslaved people to sell handicrafts, hire out their own labor, or commit theft (Adams
and Boling 1989:94; Moore 1985:154; Singleton 1985:292–293). These conclusions rely on the reduced schedules for time-intensive labor. Dissenters have argued
that the task system did not promote more leisure as it required additional hours
of food procurement (Reidy 1993:140), nor did it entail less labor (Berlin and
Morgan 1993:15). The gang system has been viewed as a mechanism often employed
by planters to exert more pressure and control over slaves (Miller 1993:165; Reidy
1993:149), while the task system has been viewed as a technique to promote certain
levels of production and thus labor and social discipline without the need for strict
domination (Tomich 1993:238).
Focusing on African-American labor in studies of post-emancipation contexts in
the Americas offers additional insights. Several archaeological and historical projects have revealed that despite the demise of slavery and its associated required
labor duties imposed upon people of African descent in the latter half of the 19th
century, the social and political climate worked to insure the continuation of
African-American labor for an ever-expanding capitalism. That is, legal equality did
not translate directly to economic or political equality. Archaeologists have demonstrated this in the rural hamlet of Peterboro, New York (see Figure 13.1), where the
African-American Russell family worked for the Euro-American couple of Gerrit
and Ann Smith in the mid-1800s (Wurst 2002:166–167); at the famous Five Points
neighborhood in New York City (see Figure 13.1) where the process of “gradual
emancipation” insured that freed blacks would continue to labor until undergoing
struggling with labor, working with identities
159
notable racial violence as white immigrants vied for their jobs in the first half of the
19th century (Milne 2002:133-137); and at various industrial sites in the American
South where white Southerners sought to disenfranchise African Americans from
work opportunities (Shackel 2004:50–51). Research in Jamaica has shown how
London-based missionary societies taught discipline to freed Africans to instill a
desire to work diligently and how small lot sizes and proximity to plantations for
ex-slaves served to confine them to the labor world they had legally “escaped” (Delle
2001:187–188).
To complement studies of material lives, archaeologists investigating the impacts
of labor and the lived experiences of laborers have begun to trace the biological
impacts of colonial and industrial labor. Industrial settings are known for their often
dangerous working conditions, health risks, and environmental degradation, all of
which have come under the purview of historical archaeologists in recent years. As
Shackel (2004:52) notes: “It is important that these issues are made part of the
story of industry and labor.” Mrozowski (this volume) similarly demonstrates that
these biological features of historical archaeology deserve serious attention. Two
projects that have highlighted these issues in detail are the Boott Mills excavation
in Lowell, Massachusetts, and the Harpers Ferry sites in West Virginia, both located
in the eastern United States (see Figure 13.1). For Lowell, historical archaeologists
have been able to reveal the presence of parasites in privies associated with worker
housing (Beaudry et al. 1991) and the proximity of privies to water sources prior
to the company installation of water closets (Mrozowski et al. 1996). Both aspects
reflect the difficult health conditions faced by industrial workers in the late 19th
century. Similarly for Harpers Ferry, archaeologists have identified problems with
parasites and sanitation (Ford 1994; Reinhard 1994).
In quite a different way, Larsen and his colleagues have investigated the impacts
of colonial labor on Native American groups in Spanish-controlled La Florida of
the American Southeast in the 16th and 17th centuries (Larsen et al. 1996, 2001).
Using bioarchaeological studies of excavated human remains associated with
mission and colonial sites, these scholars have identified the physical impacts of
labor on the bodies of Native people incorporated into colonial work regimes. For
example, they discovered an increase in skeletal robusticity and an earlier onset
of osteoarthritis in mission populations when compared to pre-mission times,
both of which seem to signal heightened physical pressure from required labor
duties. Men showed more impacts from heavy, repetitive labor, but both men and
women revealed heightened arthritic conditions (Larsen et al. 1996:115–117). As
a rough complement, a recent study of four enslaved African Jamaican burials
has also revealed some of the biological hazards of labor (Armstrong and
Fleischman 2003).
Labor Struggles, Class, and the Present
The notion of struggle, whether individual or collective, remains one of the defining
elements of the historical archaeology of labor. The most common way for histori-
160
stephen w. silliman
cal archaeologists to engage with the topic of labor is through the notion of class.
Because class has undergone in-depth treatment elsewhere (see Wurst 1999, this
volume) and would require extended discussions of Marx, I forego a detailed discussion here except to note its significance for an archaeology of labor. By focusing
on labor as a critical nexus in social and material production, historical archaeologists can heed the warnings about our disciplinary tendency to overemphasize
consumption, consumerism, and boundless choice (Wurst and McGuire 1999).
Labor comprises aspects of both opportunity and constraint. Similarly, labor is the
seat of production, and it involves social relations, individual agents, material
culture, and corporeal bodies. By focusing on laboring experiences, particularly
those in industrial contexts of the last century, archaeologists can develop new
strains of critically engaged and political archaeology that resonate with concerns
of the present (Saitta 2004).
The explicit use of historical archaeology to politically engage the present draws
largely on the rich literature in critical theory and its specific manifestation as
critical archaeology (see Palus et al., this volume). A labor project with outspoken
proponents of this vision is the Ludlow archaeological project, centered on the
careful study – and boost to public memory – of the events and people involved in
the Colorado Coal Field War in 1913–14 (Ludlow Collective 2001; McGuire and
Reckner 2002; Saitta 2004). The Ludlow strike and ensuing massacre is often considered one of the most important strikes and cases of outright industrial violence
in 1910s America. As a result, the project couples the rigors of an archaeological
search for an accurate history with a stated desire to draw in the public, to resonate
with working class interests, and to change the nature of heritage and remembrance
regarding the early decades of the 20th century. “[W]e remind citizens that the
workplace rights we enjoy and tend to take for granted today were won via struggle
and paid for in blood” (Saitta 2004:380).
Using the Colorado Coal Field War, McGuire and Reckner (2002) point out
that the idea of a free-agent cowboy “Old West” marked by socioeconomic status
rather than class continues to haunt public history. They emphasize the requisite
rethinking that comes with a shift from calling the West a frontier, an untamed space
at the edge of an expanding settled area, to calling it an internal periphery, an
intentionally underdeveloped arena that provides labor and goods for the “core”
(McGuire and Recker 2002:47). Acknowledging the latter requires a focus on labor
relations in a structured economy founded on wage labor. Like Wurst (1999, this
volume), they argue for a view of class as a relational structure that binds together,
while it simultaneously creates, workers, managers, and employers.
Redressing the paucity of studies that focus on working class people in various
industrial settings across North America comprises only one necessary step. Additional attention to labor is required to understand past and present Native Americans as a particular group in that working class environment. The role of Native
American wage labor in the United States economy, like that of union strikes and
industrial companies, has been a relatively squelched topic in archaeology, history,
and public memory (Albers 1995; Campbell 2002; Littlefield and Knack 1995).
Just as significantly, attention to any form of Native labor, whether wage or not,
struggling with labor, working with identities
161
has not been a priority for archaeologists and their historically minded colleagues
(for exceptions, see Cassell 2003; Lightfoot 2004; Silliman 2001, 2004a). Labor
offers one way that many Native communities have forged their cultural continuity
and identities, but this labor is widely misunderstood by scholars and public alike.
The misunderstanding grows, in part, from the inability of many to “see” Native
American labor because of the dual standard applied to it. As Albers notes, “when
Native Americans manufacture dream-catchers, even on an assemblyline, their
ethnic identity is validated. When they rebuild an engine block . . . as a wage laborer
in a commercial garage, their ethnic identity is denied” (Albers 1995:248). Unlike
many other people engaged in working class activities, Native Americans have had
to, and still do, articulate their labor in a much broader nationwide discourse about
their “authenticity.” Historical archaeologists are poised to play a key role in that
discourse.
Conclusion
By its very nature of engaging with questions of the “modern world,” historical
archaeology has to come to grips with the realities of labor. If we want to understand
the lived experiences, identities, agencies, and struggles of people in the past who
were caught up in colonialism, capitalism, industrialism, and racism, then labor
must be at the forefront of our studies. Labor does not trump the importance of
studying gender, identity, race, sexuality, or class, but it adds a necessary element
that intertwines with those topics in illuminating ways. Can we talk about gender
in the homes of textile mill workers without considering their working lives? Can
we discuss Native American cultural practices in colonial settlements without
understanding the labor regime that engaged them regularly in their bodies, relationships, and material culture? Can we ask questions about racism and oppression
on slave plantations without knowing the nature of labor that underwrote the enterprise and that occupied many of their waking hours? This chapter has attempted
to answer these in the negative.
To focus on labor does not require that historical archaeologists adhere to a
single theoretical perspective. Although the topic of labor typically falls under
theories based on Marxist analyses of class and capitalism, it need not reside only
in those arenas. Some of the studies summarized in this chapter do engage with
Marxist-inspired perspectives on social and economic relations or on critical theory
approaches to the present, but others focus on theories of practice, agency, and
identity. Marxist perspectives on labor often resonate with strongly capitalist situations like industry and worker strikes, but they may not work as well when considering the cultural negotiations of Native Americans and other indigenous people
who struggled with colonial labor regimes. We must keep in mind that labor is a
multiply experienced relation and a multiply relational experience – it is not always
about only class or capitalism; it can also be about bodies, gender, and identity. For
this reason, historical archaeologists need to remain open to many theoretical
possibilities, provided that these are well grounded in the realities of past lives, the
162
stephen w. silliman
present conditions surrounding archaeological research, and the future possibilities
of political impact.
References
Adams, William Hampton, and Sarah Jane Boling 1989 Status and Ceramics for Planters
and Slaves on Three Georgia Coastal Plantations. Historical Archaeology 23(4):69–96.
Albers, Patricia C. 1995 From Legend to Land to Labor: Changing Perspectives on Native
American Work. In Native Americans and Wage Labor: Ethnohistorical Perspectives. Alice
Littlefield and Martha C. Knack, eds. Pp. 245–273. Norman: University of Oklahoma
Press.
Armstrong, Douglas V., and Mark L. Fleischman 2003 House-Yard Burials of Enslaved
Laborers in Eighteenth-Century Jamaica. International Journal of Historical Archaeology
7(1):33–65.
Bassett, Everett 1994 “We Took Care of Each Other Like Families Were Meant to”: Gender,
Social Organization, and Wage Labor among the Apache. In Those of Little Note. Elizabeth
M. Scott, ed. Pp. 55–79. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
Baxter, R. Scott 2002 Industrial and Domestic Landscapes of a California Oil Field.
Historical Archaeology 36(3):18–27.
Beaudry, Mary C., and Stephen A. Mrozowski 2001 Cultural Space and Worker Identity
in the Company City: Nineteenth-Century Lowell, Massachusetts. In The Archaeology
of Urban Landscapes: Explorations in Slumland. Alan Mayne and Tim Murray, eds.
Pp. 118–131. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Beaudry, Mary C., Lauren J. Cook, and Stephen A. Mrozowski 1991 Artifacts as Active
Voices: Material Culture as Social Discourse. In The Archaeology of Inequality. Randall
H. McGuire and Robert Paynter, eds. Pp. 150–191. New York: Basil Blackwell.
Berlin, Ira, and Philip D. Morgan 1993 Labor and the Shaping of Slave Life in the Americas.
In Cultivation and Culture: Labor and the Shaping of Black Life in the Americas. Ira
Berlin and Philip D. Morgan, eds. Pp. 1–45. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia.
Campbell, Robert B. 2002 Newlands, Old Lands: Native American Labor, Agrarian Ideology,
and the Progressive-Era State in the Making of the Newlands Reclamation Project,
1902–1926. Pacific Historical Review 71(2):203–238.
Casella, Eleanor Conlin 2005 “Social Workers”: New Directions in Industrial Archaeology.
In Industrial Archaeology: Future Directions. Eleanor Conlin Casella and James Symonds,
eds. Pp. 3–31. New York: Springer.
Cassell, Mark S. 2003 Flint and foxes: Chert Scrapers and the Fur Industry in LateNineteenth- and Early-Twentieth-Century North Alaska. In Stone Tool Traditions in
the Contact Era. Charles R. Cobb, ed. Pp. 151–164. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama
Press.
Costello, Julia G. 2000 Red Light Voices: An Archaeological Drama of Late NineteenthCentury Prostitution. In Archaeologies of Sexuality. Robert A. Schmidt and Barbara L.
Voss, eds. Pp. 160–178. London: Routledge.
Crowell, Aron 1997 Archaeology and the Capitalist World System: A Study from Russian
America. New York: Plenum Publishing.
Delle, James 2000 Gender, Power, and Space: Negotiating Social Relations under Slavery
on Coffee Plantations in Jamaica, 1790–1834. In Lines that Divide: Historical
struggling with labor, working with identities
163
Archaeologies of Race, Class, and Gender. James A. Delle, Stephen A. Mrozowski, and
Robert Paynter, eds. Pp. 168–201. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press.
Delle, James 2001 Race, Missionaries, and the Struggle to Free Jamaica. In Race and the
Archaeology of Identity. Charles E. Orser, Jr., ed. Pp. 177–195. Salt Lake City: University
of Utah Press.
Ford, Benjamin 1994 The Health and Sanitation of Postbellum Harpers Ferry. Historical
Archaeology 28(4):49–61.
Garman, James C. 1998 Rethinking “Resistant Accommodation”: Toward an Archaeology
of African-American Lives in Southern New England, 1638–1800. International Journal
of Historical Archaeology 2(2):133–160.
Giddens, Anthony 1971 Capitalism and Modern Social Theory: An Analysis of the Writings
of Marx, Durkheim, and Max Weber. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hardesty, Donald L. 1994 Class, Gender Strategies, and Material Culture in the Mining
West. In Those of Little Note. Elizabeth M. Scott, ed. Pp. 129–145. Tucson: University of
Arizona Press.
—— 1998 Power and the Industrial Mining Community in the American West. In Social
Approaches to an Industrial Past: The Archaeology and Anthropology of Mining. A.
Bernard Knapp, Vincent C. Pigott, and Eugenia W. Herbert, eds. Pp. 81–96. London:
Routledge.
Harrison, Rodney 2002 Shared Histories and the Archaeology of the Pastoral Industry in
Australia. In After Captain Cook: The Archaeology of the Recent Indigenous Past
in Australia. Rodney Harrison and Christine Williamson, eds. Pp. 37–58. Walnut Creek,
CA: AltaMira Press.
—— 2004 Shared Landscapes: Archaeologies of Attachment to the Heritage of the Pastoral
Industry in NSW. Hurstville, New South Wales: Studies in the Cultural Construction of
Open Space 3, NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service.
Heath, Barbara 1999 “Your Humble Servant”: Free Artisans in the Monticello Community.
In “I, Too, Am America”: Archaeological Studies of African-American Life. Theresa A.
Singleton, ed. Pp. 193–217. Charlottesville and London: University Press of Virginia.
Knack, Martha C., and Alice Littlefield 1995 Native American Labor: Retrieving History,
Rethinking Theory. In Native Americans and Wage Labor: Ethnohistorical Perspectives.
Alice Littlefield and Martha C. Knack, eds. Pp. 3–44. Norman: University of Oklahoma
Press.
Larick, Roy 1999 Toward the Architecture of Household Service in New England, 1650–
1850. In The Social Dynamics of Technology: Practice, Politics, and World Views. MarciaAnne Dobres and Christopher R. Hoffman, eds. Pp. 71–99. Washington, DC: Smithsonian
Institution Press.
Larsen, Clark Spencer, Christopher B. Ruff, and Mark C. Griffin 1996 Implications of
Changing Biomechanical and Nutritional Environments for Activity and Lifeways in the
Eastern Spanish Borderlands. In Bioarchaeology of Native American Adaptation in the
Spanish Borderlands. Brenda J. Baker and Lisa Kealhofer, eds. Pp. 95–125. Gainesville:
University Press of Florida.
Larsen, Clark S., Mark C. Griffin, Dale L. Hutchinson, Vergil E. Noble, L. Norr, R. F. Pastor,
Christopher B. Ruff, K. F. Russell, Margaret J. Schoeninger, M. Schultz, S. W. Simpson,
and M. F. Teaford 2001 Frontiers of Contact: Bioarchaeology of Spanish Florida. Journal
of World Prehistory 15(1):69—123.
Lawrence, Susan 1998 Gender and Community Structure on Australian Colonial Goldfields.
In Social Approaches to an Industrial Past: The Archaeology and Anthropology of Mining.
164
stephen w. silliman
A. Bernard Knapp, Vincent C. Pigott, and Eugenia W. Herbert, eds. Pp. 39–58. London:
Routledge.
Lightfoot, Kent G. 2004 Indians, Missionaries, and Merchants: The Legacy of Colonial
Encounters on the California Frontiers. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Lightfoot, Kent G., Antoinette Martinez, and Ann Schiff 1998 Daily Practice and Material
Culture in Pluralistic Social Settings: An Archaeological Study of Culture Change and
Persistence from Fort Ross, California. American Antiquity 63(2):199–222.
Littlefield, Alice 1995 Indian Education and the World of Work in Michigan, 1893–1933. In
Native Americans and Wage Labor: Ethnohistorical Perspectives. Alice Littlefield and
Martha C. Knack, eds. Pp. 100–121. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
Littlefield, Alice, and Knack, Martha C., eds. 1995 Native Americans and Wage Labor:
Ethnohistorical Perspectives. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
Ludlow Collective 2001 Archaeology of the Colorado Coal Field War, 1913–1914. In
Archaeologies of the Contemporary Past. Victor Buchli and Gavin Lucas, eds. Pp. 94–107.
London: Routledge.
McGuire, Randall H., and Paul Reckner 2002 The Unromantic West: Labor, Capital, and
Struggle. Historical Archaeology 36(3):44–58.
Meyers, Allan D., and David L. Carlson 2002 Peonage, Power Relations, and the Built
Environment at Hacienda Tabi, Yucatan, Mexico. International Journal of Historical
Archaeology 6(4):225–252.
Milanich, Jerald 1999 Laboring in the Fields of the Lord: Spanish Missions and Southeastern Indians. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Miller, Steven F. 1993 Plantation Labor Organization and Slave Life on the Cotton Frontier:
The Alabama-Mississippi Black Belt, 1815–1840. In Cultivation and Culture: Labor and
the Shaping of Slave Life in the Americas. Ira Berlin and Philip D. Morgan, eds. Pp.
155–169. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia.
Milne, Claudia 2002 On the Grounds of the Fresh Water Pond: The Free-Black Community
at Five Points, 1810–1834. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 6(2):127–
142.
Moore, Sue Mullins 1985 Social and Economic Status on the Coastal Plantation: An
Archaeological Perspective. In The Archaeology of Slavery and Plantation Life. Theresa A.
Singleton, ed. Pp. 141–160. Orlando: Academic Press.
Mrozowski, Stephen A., Grace H. Ziesing, and Mary C. Beaudry 1996 Living on the Boott:
Historical Archaeology at the Boott Mills Boardinghouses, Lowell, Massachusetts. Amherst:
University of Massachusetts Press.
Mullins, Paul 1999 Race and Affluence: An Archaeology of African America and Consumer
Culture. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishing.
Nassaney, Michael, and Marjorie R. Abel 1993 The Political and Social Contexts of Cutlery
Production in the Connecticut Valley. Dialectical Anthropology 18:247–289.
—— 2000 Urban Spaces, Labor Organization, and Social Control: Lessons From New
England’s Nineteenth-Century Cutlery Industry. In Lines that Divide: Historical Archaeologies of Race, Class, and Gender. James A. Delle, Stephen A. Mrozowski, and Robert
Paynter, eds. Pp. 239–275. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press.
Orser, Charles E., Jr. 1990 Archaeological Approaches to New World Plantation Slavery. In
Archaeological Method and Theory, Volume 2. Michael B. Schiffer, ed. Pp. 111–154.
Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
—— 1996 A Historical Archaeology of the Modern World. New York: Plenum Publishers.
Paterson, Alistair 2003 The Texture of Agency: An Example of Culture-Contact in Central
Australia. Archaeology in Oceania 38:52–65.
struggling with labor, working with identities
165
Prins, Harald E. L. 1995 Tribal Network and Migrant Labor: Mi’kmaq Indians as Seasonal
Workers in Aroostook’s Potato Fields, 1870–1980. In Native Americans and Wage Labor:
Ethnohistorical Perspectives. Alice Littlefield and Martha C. Knack, eds. Pp. 45–65.
Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
Reidy, Joseph P. 1993 Obligation and Right: Patterns of Labor, Subsistence, and Exchange
in the Cotton Belt of Georgia, 1790–1860. In Cultivation and Culture: Labor and the
Shaping of Slave Life in the Americas. Ira Berlin and Philip D. Morgan, eds. Pp. 138–154.
Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia.
Reinhard, K. J. 1994 Sanitation and Parasitism of Postbellum Harpers Ferry. Historical
Archaeology 28(4):63–67.
Reitz, Elizabeth J., Tyson Gibbs, and Ted A. Rathbun 1985 Archaeological Evidence for
Subsistence on Coastal Plantations. In The Archaeology of Slavery and Plantation Life.
Theresa A. Singleton, ed. Pp. 163–191. New York: Academic Press.
Saitta, Dean J. 2004 Labor and Class in the American West. In North American Archaeology.
Timothy R. Pauketat and Diana DiPaolo Loren, ed. Pp. 359–385. London and Malden,
MA: Blackwell.
Seifert, Donna J. 1991 Within Site of the White House: The Archaeology of Working Women.
Historical Archaeology 25(4):82–108.
Seifert, Donna J., Elizabeth Barthold O’Brien, and Joseph Balicki 2000 Mary Ann Hall’s
First-Class House: The Archaeology of a Capital Brothel. In Archaeologies of Sexuality.
Robert A. Schmidt and Barbara L. Voss, eds. Pp. 117–128. London: Routledge.
Shackel, Paul A. 1993 Prospects for an Archaeology of the People without History. In
Interdisciplinary Investigations of Domestic Life in Government Block B: Perspectives on
Harpers Ferry’s Armory and Commercial District. Paul A. Shackel, ed. Pp. 18.1–18.22.
Washington, DC: Occasional Report No. 6, U.S. Department of the Interior, National
Park Service.
—— 1996 Culture Change and the New Technology: An Archaeology of the Early American
Industrial Era. New York: Plenum.
—— 2000 Craft to Wage Labor: Agency and Resistance in American Historical Archaeology.
In Agency in Archaeology. Marcia-Anne Dobres and John Robb, eds. Pp. 232–246. London:
Routledge.
—— 2004 Labor’s Heritage: Remembering the American Industrial Landscape. Historical
Archaeology 38(4):44–58.
Shackel, Paul A., and David L. Larsen 2000 Labor, Racism, and the Built Environment in
Early Industrial Harper’s Ferry. In Lines that Divide: Historical Archaeologies of Race,
Class, and Gender. James A. Delle, Stephen A. Mrozowski, and Robert Paynter, eds. Pp.
22–39. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press.
Sheridan, Thomas E. 1998 Silver Shackles and Copper Collars: Race, Class, and Labor in
the Arizona Mining Industry from the Eighteenth Century until World War II. In Social
Approaches to an Industrial Past: The Archaeology and Anthropology of Mining. A.
Bernard Knapp, Vincent C. Pigott, and Eugenia W. Herbert, eds. Pp. 174–187. London:
Routledge.
Silliman, Stephen W. 2001 Theoretical Perspectives on Labor and Colonialism: Reconsidering the California Missions. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 20(4):379–407
—— 2004a Lost Laborers in Colonial California: Native Americans and the Archaeology of
Rancho Petaluma. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
—— 2004b Missions Aborted: California Indian Life on Nineteenth-Century Ranchos,
1834–1848. Boletín: The Journal of the California Mission Studies Association 21(1):3–
22.
166
stephen w. silliman
—— 2005 Culture Contact or Colonialism? Challenges in the Archaeology of Native North
America. American Antiquity 70(1):55–74.
Simmons, Alexy 1998 Bedroom Politics: Ladies of the Night and Men of the Day. In Social
Approaches to an Industrial Past: The Archaeology and Anthropology of Mining. A.
Bernard Knapp, Vincent C. Pigott, and Eugenia W. Herbert, eds. Pp. 59–80. London:
Routledge.
Singleton, Theresa A. 1985 Archaeological Implications for Changing Labor Conditions. In
The Archaeology of Slavery and Plantation Life. Theresa A. Singleton, ed. Pp. 291–304.
New York: Academic Press.
Tomich, Dale 1993 Une Petite Guinée: Provision Ground and Plantation in Martinique,
1830–1848. In Cultivation and Culture: Labor and the Shaping of Slave Life in the
Americas. Ira Berlin and Philip D. Morgan, eds. Pp. 221–242. Charlottesville: University
Press of Virginia.
Van Bueren, Thad M. 2002a The Changing Face of Work in the West: Some Introductory
Comments. Historical Archaeology 36(3):1–7.
—— 2002b Struggling with Class Relations at a Los Angeles Aqueduct Construction Camp.
Historical Archaeology 36(3):28–43.
Veltre, Douglas W., and Allen P. McCartney 2002 Russian Exploitation of Aleuts and Fur
Seals: The Archaeology of Eighteenth- and Early-Nineteenth-Century Settlements in the
Pribilof Islands, Alaska. Historical Archaeology 36(3):8–17.
Wallerstein, Immanuel 1974 The Modern World-System, Volume 1. New York: Academic
Press.
—— 1980 The Modern World-System, Volume 2. New York: Academic Press.
Wurst, LouAnn 1999 Internalizing Class in Historical Archaeology. Historical Archaeology
33(1):7–21.
—— 2002 “For the Means of Your Subsistence . . . Look Under God to Your Own Industry
and Frugality”: Life and Labor in Gerrit Smith’s Peterboro. International Journal of
Historical Archaeology 6(3):159–172.
Wurst, LouAnn, and Randall H. McGuire 1999 Immaculate Consumption: A Critique of
the ‘Shop till you Drop’ School of Human Behavior. International Journal of Historical
Archaeology 3(3) 191–199.
Yamin, Rebecca 2002 Children’s Strikes, Parents’ Rights: Paterson and Five Points. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 6(2):113–126.
Young, Amy L. 1997 Task and Gang Labor: Work Patterns at a Kentucky Plantation. North
American Archaeologist 18(1):41–66.
Chapter 9
Exploring the Institution:
Reform, Confinement,
Social Change
Lu Ann De Cunzo
Boundaries and Crossings
This chapter begins as an archaeology of places. Places of reformation, surveillance,
confinement, protection, control, ritual, punishment, resistance, inscription,
segregation, labor, purification, and discipline. These concepts define many places
around the world and through time. Here I consider social institutions in the
modernizing world – almshouses, poorhouses, prisons, asylums, hospitals, and
schools. Material culture is used to accomplish and thwart institutional goals; as
students of material culture, archaeologists offer vital insights into the cultures and
histories of institutions.
What is an “institution”? Why do they exist? How do they “work”? Institutions
are places that embody and challenge the boundaries of socially, philosophically,
scientifically, or legally acceptable actions, minds, and bodies. Goffman’s (1961:87)
concept of the “total institution” sets the initial (for they will be transgressed)
boundaries for this essay. Total institutions in the modern world seek to create
self-directed, moral, normal individuals. Within their boundaries, one authority
controls the highly routinized and tightly scheduled activities established to fulfill
institutional aims. All “work” in similar ways. Upon entering the institution, one is
immediately stripped of her social self, degraded, and mortified. Passing from what
ritual scholars call a liminal state to what Goffman (1961:48–63) calls the “reassembled self” involves formal and informal instruction, enforced with a system of
privilege and punishment. “Messing up” – a complex process of engaging in forbidden activity, getting caught, and receiving “full” punishment – serves important
social functions. Ultimately, inmates adapt by withdrawing, challenging, accepting,
and/or converting to the institution’s view of the self.
In attempting to review the archaeology of total institutions, I have set other
boundaries by limiting the study to Anglophone literature. The institutions of
slavery and the modern military have produced vast archaeological literatures, and
168
lu ann de cunzo
warrant separate treatment. For similar reasons, I also exclude the bioarchaeology
of institutional cemeteries (for overviews, see Elia and Wesolowsky 1991; Grauer
1995) and the archaeology of religious institutions, although spiritual influences
pervade many of the total institutions we will visit (see also Graham 1998; Tarlow
2002).
Institutional Technologies of the (Social) Body
Michel Foucault sought the origins, forms, functions, and perversions of total
institutions in the Western world, and his analyses have framed the dominant
paradigm in institutional studies. He situates the emergence of total institutions in
17th- and 18th-century Europe and specifically Britain, where population growth
promoted a proliferation of discourses concerned with sex, the individual, the
state, and ultimately, power. Non-productive bodies drained and potentially
harmed society, and so an array of institutions developed to discipline the
“body as machine” (Foucault 1977:164; Lucas 1999:135). Performance of public
service work as punishment, and ultimately private coercion of the body and soul,
replaced the public spectacle of torture as the visible power of the sovereign in the
capitalist state. Punishment sought to restore a social soul, an obedient subject,
through discipline in a place “that coerces by means of observation” (Foucault
1977:131, 171). That place is the total institution, its architectural form and design
playing a critical role in the reformation, or transformation, process (Foucault
1977:143, 191).
The disciplinary power of the capitalist state, however, had bled through the
walls (as Foucault viscerally described the process) of enclosed institutions to
pervade the whole social body over the course of the 17th and 18th centuries
(Foucault 1977:198–200, 209–212, 221). In America, Rothman (1990) moves the
transformation forward from the 1820s to 1860s and relocates its causes. Earlier
generations blamed deviance on humanity’s inherently corrupt nature. Changing
religious ideologies in the early 19th century located the sources of corruption
outside the human condition. Deviant behavior thus “was symptomatic of a failing
in society” (Rothman 1990:69). The restoration of social order required no less
than the elimination of crime and corruption.
In the Western world beginning in the 17th century, men and women negotiated
far-reaching changes through discourses framed in complex cultural metaphors and
realities. In total institutions, these ritualized dramas took heightened, and thus
revealing, forms. To comprehend them requires attention to the relationships among
places, things, and actors. It requires the perspectives of historical archaeology.
Relieve, Classify, Work: Almshouse, Poorhouse, Workhouse
Almshouses originated in medieval European monasteries where the homeless
received food and temporary housing. They remained church-supported through
exploring the institution
169
the 18th century in Roman Catholic countries. With the mid–16th-century Protestant abolition of monasteries and an increase in the numbers of paupers due to
plague, war, poor harvests, and inflation, towns built the first public institutions for
the poor (Baugher and Spencer-Wood 2002:15–16). Over the next century, almshouses grew in scale and equipment, modeled after academic buildings with formal
gardens (Huey 2001:126). In Britain, the Poor Laws classified and governed treatment of the poor (Lucas 1999:131), relegating the “undeserving, unworthy” poor
to workhouses and prisons, where inmates produced cloth, pins, needles, and the
like. The archaeology of these institutions remains “largely undeveloped,” and a
general lack of careful analysis of the finds hinders comparison and interpretation
(Huey 2001:124–135, 148; but see Dawson 2000).
In the United States, Pena’s (2001) study of wampum production in the
colonial almshouse in Albany, New York, suggests fruitful analytical directions
(see Figure 13.1). An unusual, undocumented product of an 18th-century almshouse, Pena asks, why wampum? Iroquois and other Native American groups
valued wampum for its spiritual and ideological properties, and it played an
important role in commercial and ceremonial transactions. Wampum served as
cash money in the Dutch community, and later as a means of exchange between
fur traders and native trappers. In the almshouse, production occurred during a
hiatus between religious and secular administration of poor relief, accommodating
an important principle of Dutch charity, that physical labor helped reform the
poor. A commodity used to make other commodities such as belts, wampum
made at the almshouse for an external market provided a “proto-industrial”
incentive to economic growth in the unstable colonial economy (Pena 2001:156–
160, 170–172).
In her study of the contemporary New York City almshouse (1736–97) (see
Figure 13.1), Baugher focused on the architecture and landscape, compelling
“visible symbols of their [the city administration’s] philosophy about care of the
poor” (Baugher 2001:193). The almshouse stood adjacent to, not in the city, to
avoid expensive real estate and provide a larger property. Gardens combined
aesthetics with kitchen gardens in which inmates learned the value of work. Visible
to outsiders, the landscape “created an impression of an orderly, self-supporting,
self-contained, charitable institution” on the model of European contemporaries
(Baugher 2001:194–196).
Garman and Russo also consider the role of architecture in their examination of
the Smithfield, Rhode Island (see Figure 13.1), town farm and asylum (established
1834), which they describe as a place where “inmates were warehoused and abandoned at the end of the road, out of sight of polite society” (Garman and Russo
1999:127–129). By the early 19th century, effects of industrialization, especially a
transition to a cash economy, led many towns to establish almshouses and town
farms, mostly for “helpless” orphans, widows, and unmarried women (Bell 1993:22–
24; Cook 1991:49–50, 64–65). The Smithfield asylum architecture – a barracks
with an ell housing the keeper and his family – “projected a firm ideology of patriarchy and paternalism” in a time of social and economic instability (Garman and
Russo 1999:120–122).
170
lu ann de cunzo
Discipline, Punish, Reform, Resist: Prison and Penitentiary
Almshouses and poor farms have disappeared from the American landscape in
the past century, but another total institution – the prison – has not. The United
States has the highest rate of incarceration in the world, confining two million
people. The numbers have increased exponentially in the past 20 years, even as
Foucault’s Discipline and Punish (1977) directed scholarly attention to the institution. Anthropologists conducted little of this research; however, the literature in
other disciplines is overwhelming. The most important, Rhodes (2001:65–66)
argues, revises our understanding of prison history, challenging Foucault and
gaining access to the “interior life” of the prison.
Foucault (1977:9, 77, 81–82) contends that we must view the prison as part of
a complex whole comprising developments in production, increasing wealth, a
higher legal and moral value placed on property, stricter methods of surveillance,
more rigid hierarchical ordering of people, and more efficient techniques of locating
and obtaining information. As such, the archaeology of the institution is also the
archaeology of the body. A new political economy infused the power to punish more
deeply into the social body, and punishment became the most hidden part of justice,
removed to the isolated, insulated prison. Here punishment became more fearful,
shameful, and humiliating than the imagined pleasure and profit derived from the
crime. “Show him what it is to lose the freedom to dispose as one wishes of one’s
own wealth, honour, time and body, so that he may respect it in others” (Foucault
1977:106–107). Teaching thus should beget reformation.
By the 18th century in England, reformers revolted against the prevalent corruption, filth, lack of security, and high incidence of disease in prison. “Evangelicals”
proposed reform through solitude, reflection, and prayer, and “utilitarians” favored
work and discipline to create industrious citizens. The debate remained unresolved
in England into the 19th century. American experiments with the penitentiary
influenced the British system even as Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon – an architectural form allowing constant surveillance of inmates from a central point – informed
American penitentiary design. Two penal models developed in the United States.
The Philadelphia or Pennsylvania “separate plan,” exemplified by Eastern State
Penitentiary in Philadelphia (established 1829), represented the “evangelical”
approach (see Figure 13.1). The Auburn model replicated contemporary views of
the ideal society, vertically integrated, productive, and morally isolated. Nightly
solitary confinement, exercise in the yard, and silent, communal daily labor worked
together to effect the prisoner’s reformation. Most American states adopted the
Auburn plan, lured by its potential profitability (Foucault 1977:123, 236–238;
Garman 1999:54–57; Tomlinson 1980:95, 106–108, 112).
Post-medieval prisons in Britain have attracted very little interest among archaeologists, whereas in America, archaeologists have studied 18th- and 19th-century
prisons for at least three decades (see, for example, Cotter et al. 1988). Garman’s
(1999:4–6, 14, 239) dissertation on Rhode Island’s first state prison (1838–77)
represents contemporary scholarship grounded in public concern over the punish-
exploring the institution
171
ment and reformation of society’s “transgressors” (Figure 9.1). He understands
prisons as “places of Othering” and “power containers” manipulated by the institutional leadership, and investigates the peculiar form of corporate capitalism
created with institutional labor. Garman adopts Edward Soja’s (1989) “spatial
trialectics” – space as conceived, perceived, and lived – to guide his analysis of the
Pennsylvania plan prison, which stood in the center of downtown Providence
(Figure 9.2, see Figure 13.1). Tall, castellated granite walls protected the public
from the deviants imprisoned within. Behind the walls, the location, design, and
landscape of the keeper’s house evoked a paternalistic image. Garman (1999:15–17,
94, 135) grants the reader the perspective of the prisoner, moving from the entry
into the block of solitary cells. He paints an image of “stark, unremitting stone,”
relieved only by the filth, mud, and trash strewn around the prison yard. We understand how, within five years, insanity among the prisoners led to abandoning the
Pennsylvania plan and allowing congregate labor.
Figure 9.1 This 1888 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map of Providence, Rhode Island, best portrays the
spatial layout of the “Old State Prison” (1838–77) although published ten years after its abandonment. Note that the Harris Steam Engine Works then used the former Engine House and Workshop.
The Keeper’s House has been converted to a boarding house for city workers.
172
lu ann de cunzo
Figure 9.2 Rhode Island State Prison (1838–1877) exposed during excavations directed by James
Garman for PAL in 1997. (Courtesy of James C. Garman)
The Rhode Island state penitentiary typified the institutional experience with
forced labor: a first phase of experimentation and optimism; a second phase of
uncertainty as expectations went unmet, work was diversified, and the institution
struggled financially; and a third phase of apathy, during which outside contractors
bought convicts’ labor. Five approved activities made up each ritualized day at the
prison: working, eating, sleeping, reading, and worshipping. Prisoners worked tenhour, monotonous days, making shoes, fans decorated with pastoral scenes, and
furniture from which the state and private firms accumulated profit. The Auburn
prison plan thus constituted a transitional form of industrialization and served as
an archetype for the factory system (Garman 1999:152–188).
Institutional economies shared problems of unwilling, unruly workers, a lack of
markets, and competition with private industry; but prisons could not fire, so they
punished. Prisoners responded and resisted, shirking work, damaging tools and
products, pretending incompetence, and attempting to escape. They also engaged
in covert acts, undetected or misunderstood by the guards and keepers – such as
smuggling alcohol, tobacco, and pipes. Heating pipes conducted sounds, including
taps of communication among the prisoners. The keepers punished arson by forcing
prisoners to lay thousands of cobblestones in narrow paths. Aside from the tedium
and futility of the work, the paths controlled inmates’ movement through the
complex, periods of potential communication and group resistance (Garman
1999:8, 31–33, 95, 204–205).
exploring the institution
173
In the end, the prison failed, and Garman must ask why. He cites the lack of a
clear vision and rationale for imprisonment, harsh economic reality, a poor choice
of location, and the constant contests of power within the walls. The institution
submitted to the constant subversion of boundaries and spaces by prisoners. “The
failure of the prison,” he concludes, “is ultimately a parable about . . . the illusory
nature of spatial control” (Garman 1999:231–236).
Despite Garman’s concern with interactions and experience in the Rhode Island
prison, Nobles (2000) and other feminist scholars may well challenge the history
he has presented. Using a classification based on people’s role – as prisoner, guard,
keeper – he missed the opportunity to explore other differences, and similarities, in
perception and lived experience. Nobles critiques a public booklet about archaeology at the Louisiana Penitentiary because it makes women and children invisible.
“Editing them out” of the prison’s history only reproduces their marginalization.
At the Rhode Island prison, women accounted for fewer than five percent of the
inmates, and Garman (1999:172, 195) makes passing reference to differences in
men’s and women’s work, but his narrative remains essentially an androcentric
portrayal of the prison experience.
A more critical and self-reflexive archaeology of crime and punishment has
developed in Australia, whose history as a penal colony from 1788 through the
1850s made a significant contribution to national identity as well as the archaeological record (Connah 1988). The penal system moved convicts through stages of
probation, assignment, hiring out, conditional pardon, and finally, freedom. Each
stage required places that mirrored the hierarchy of restrictions and freedoms associated with it (Gibbs 2001). When reform by work did not succeed, the colony sent
convicts to penal settlements, which “specializ[ed] in human suffering” (Connah
1988:52, 57).
Karskens has produced an evocative, detailed account of the convict road
gangs formed in New South Wales beginning in 1827. “Most accounts,” she
wrote, “have alternated between the refuse-of-the-colony image . . . [and] the
convict as the passive recipient of cruel and inhumane treatment, on the other.
Neither view gives the convict . . . a face or a mentality, nor allows an assessment
of his contribution to the colony’s development” (Karskens 1986:18). Extant
stone retaining walls comprise the most visible and extensive record of the convict
men’s skill. These and other convict work places offer opportunities to study
industrialization shaping the work process and the forms of worker resistance
(Gojak 2001:78). Convicts also composed the workforce at isolated military
installations such as Fort Dundas on Melville Island, northern Australia (1824–
29) (see Figure 15.1), where the shabbiness and inadequacy of the convict-built
commissariat storehouse sheds light on the labor system. Codified daily work
quotas and a highly regimented daily routine, meager wages, disease, poor
diet, and isolation contributed to hopelessness and abandonment of the fort
(Fredericksen 2001:48–58). A few years later, the imperial government authorized
another experimental penal facility for juvenile male convicts, at Point Puer on
the Tasman Peninsula (see Figure 15.1). Jackman’s (2001:10) landscape archaeology focused on implementation of a reform agenda and the overcrowding that
174
lu ann de cunzo
demanded new construction, including distinct punishment and training zones
enforced by military patrols. He concludes that the facility remained a work in
progress, “an untidy piece of building graffiti” constantly negotiating the distances
separating prisoner and guard.
Gojak (2001:80) has also promoted a more comprehensive landscape approach
to the urban landscapes in which convicts lived and worked, and to which they
made substantial contributions through their labor. The British established Sydney
in 1788 principally to house transported convicts (see Figure 15.1). An extensive
research program examined dozens of houses, yards, and lanes in “The Rocks.”
This archaeology of convict life asks, “Who were the people? What was their
worldview? What sort of culture did they bring with them from the old countries?
How did they negotiate their positions in relation to authority?” (Karskens
2002:34–35, 45–47). The evidence suggests lifestyles characterized by independence, thwarting of government authority, and a search for personal gain and
comfort defined by their own tastes and preferences, a blending of older traditions
with new.
These projects, Gojak (2001:74) claims, have left unasked the fundamental question of how to theorize convicts in Australian society – as a class, caste, or status
group? Casella has responded that any theory of convicts must also theorize gender
and sexuality. How did Australians negotiate 19th-century Victorian gender ideals
on the colonial frontier (see chapter 11)? Britain mostly transported women convicted of thievery, but records describe them in terms of sexual perversion. Those
arriving in Tasmania in the mid-19th century served time in female factories.
Designed on the British workhouse system model, the factories shared the now
familiar goals of reformation and redemption. At Launceston and Ross female
factories (1847–54), Casella (2002:12) has asked how the material world created,
legitimated, and challenged gendered, ethnic, and class identities and power relationships (see Figure 15.1). She masterfully evokes the sensory, embodied experience of Ross factory as we follow the convict women up and down the landscape,
encountering walls that constrained movement and grated windows that framed
views, and feel the textures of wool garments and cold water. A woman’s relative
status “provided varying degrees of spatial privilege and restriction.” Her strictly
ordered, regulated procession through the factory “meticulously choreographed”
her transformation (Casella 2001:106, 110–111). Yet a coexisting, alternative geography transgressed the procession of reform. Solitary cells replaced corporal punishment, and transgressors descended into cramped, dark, silent cells for up to three
weeks of isolation (Figure 9.3). Still the women resisted, as the archaeological
remains document arson and rebuilding. These public displays of resistance challenged and, at least temporarily and symbolically, transcended the disciplinary
architecture (Casella 2002:78–81).
In other “transgressive moments” convict women explored alternative sexual
identities, marking these encounters with illicit exchange of money, alcohol, tobacco,
food, and clothing. Casella (2000:215; 2001:111–114) mapped these artifact distributions. Most occurred in the solitary cells, where incorrigibles maintained access
to black market goods, and relieved boredom, cold, and hunger by trading for extra
exploring the institution
175
Figure 9.3 Excavations exposed a portion of the 4 ft ¥ 6 ft (1.3 m ¥ 2 m) solitary cells constructed
in 1851 at the Ross Female Factory (1847–55), Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania) Australia. Eleanor
Conlin Casella directed the excavations in 1997. (Courtesy of Eleanor Conlin Casella)
food and indulgences. In the process, these women re-created the social meanings
of these objects as valuable tokens of desire and illicit sexuality (Casella 2000:214,
219–220). As alluded to above, the archaeology of institutions translates into an
archaeology of bodies.
In the United States, Bush (2000) has also begun to explore the recreation of
social meaning and the creation of memory objects among prisoners-of-war at
Johnson’s Island Civil War Military Prison (1862–65) in Ohio (see Figure 13.1).
He has identified three critical phenomena of prison existence accessible through
archaeology: resistance, survival, and collaboration-assimilation. The Confederate
officers resisted confinement by tunneling toward freedom in the latrines. Latrine
fill contained Union military buttons likely used in the “art of deception” by prisoners masquerading as Union officers. Bush’s study exposes the complex ideologies
that dichotomized north–south (and less explicitly, white–black, and male–female)
in antebellum and Civil War America, drawing up images of the South as a traditional, rural place. In this northern POW camp, captured Southern gentlemen
confronted their alter ego – the industrial, urban, impersonal, progressive, and
common. They began to create a “middle ground,” in one of many ways, through
the ritual process of making gutta percha jewelry. They purchased products of the
industrial culture against which they fought, and crafted commodities and gifts that
kept them bound up tightly in a culture of family, honor, and male authority. They
crafted objects of remembrance and of value to their families. They began to engage
the North, and what it represented, on their own terms.
Other studies of military prisons around the world have begun to outline future
research directions. Argentinian fortlets used as military prisons in the Indian Wars
of 1750 to 1900 have led Romero (2002:403) to examine the technology of military
176
lu ann de cunzo
power through public torture, an authentic ritualization of power “deeply inscribed
in the hearts of men.” Morrison’s (2001) study of the military jail at Anglesea
Barracks, in Tasmania (1846–70), focuses on the transference and adaptation of
imperial power in a colonial setting. Technology, torture, resistance, and remembrance number among the many themes archaeologists of World War II have begun
to confront (Beech 1999).
Proliferation and Specialization of Institutional Places
As total institutions multiplied in the 19th century, they also morphed into a constellation of new types to meet the disciplinary, reformatory, and material needs of
the “others” they confined. But archaeologists know not to confuse ideals and
prescriptions with realities. Piddock (2001a:74–90) has investigated the built environment of the Destitute Asylum of Adelaide, South Australia (1849–1917) (see
Figure 15.1), home to several hundred poor, elderly, and incurably ill men and
women, along with orphans, prostitute and pregnant women, and Aboriginals.
Economic demands and spatial limitations precluded a purpose-built institution,
and the asylum remained a shifting collection of small buildings. Flexibility to
accommodate fluctuating numbers of different kinds of inmates demanded plain,
open spaces. Detailed comparisons of architectural, landscape, graphic, textual, and
archaeological evidence like those that Piddock has begun at Adelaide will ultimately unravel the complex, mutable material reality of these places.
Gojak and Iacono (1993:27–31) probed reality at the Sydney Sailors Home
(established 1860s) (see Figure 15.1). Special facilities for seamen became common
in 19th-century seaports, a product of Christian evangelical movements and
concern with controlling the workforce. The stereotypical lower class, drunken,
brawling, homeless, and disease-ridden seaman represented a particular threat and
hence particular attention was lavished on their accommodations. Given the uncertainties of the 19th-century mercantile economy, seamen could spend half of their
careers in these homes. Like the archetypal home in London, Sydney reformers
modeled the home on shipboard conditions, but the model imagined by reformers
did not mirror the sailors’ lifestyle choices. An early trash deposit contained grog
bottles; consumption of grog violated the temperance rules of the house, and
tobacco pipes with Irish nationalist slogans may also indicate resistance among the
seafaring Irish underclass. Gojak and Iacono conclude that understanding reality
at the temperance mission homes requires additional research on the crews and
life at sea.
A profusion of new voluntary societies also institutionalized the American landscape in the first half of the 19th century. Many had British origins, and like the
female factories in colonial Australia, theorized female deviance in sacred and sexual
terms. By the early 19th century, Catholic and Protestant homes for “fallen” women
had multiplied exponentially across the British Isles. Finnegan summarizes the
striking similarity of the “Magdalen” (as reformers labeled them) experience to
exploring the institution
177
Figure 9.4 First floor plan of the Magdalen Society Asylum, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (1846–1915),
portrayed in an 1857 fire insurance plan updated in 1888. (Policy No. 9,858. Courtesy of The
Philadelphia Contributionship for the Insurance of Houses from Loss by Fire)
those in other contemporary institutions: “For every minute of her day – perhaps
for the rest of her life – her conduct was regulated and her every movement
watched” (Finnegan 2001:8, 22, 232).
The Philadelphia Magdalen Society asylum (1800–1915), like others in America
and Britain, afforded a venue in which the city’s elite male leadership, elite and
middle class women, and young, unmarried, sexually active women could “converse” with each other (Figure 9.4; see Figure 13.1). And they did – in words,
actions, and through material culture – but they spoke and acted in different cultural
languages, and constrained by different cultural ideals. Like its contemporaries, the
asylum embodied a much more complex, nuanced, and culturally embedded conception of the Society’s philosophy, goals, and methods than any words the management ever wrote (De Cunzo 2001:20).
The asylum’s reform program pursued two related courses: to reform the soul
and retrain the body’s work. The “fallen” would become the domestic servant,
laundress, laborer in the textile trade, or wife and mother dependent on her husband’s labor. The Society did not seek to change the city’s gendered economy or
social hierarchy. The reformers labored to prepare women for existing opportunities
deemed acceptable in accordance with their cultural definitions of womanhood.
The Society located the asylum far from the environmental and social defilement
and temptation of the Magdalens’ former neighborhoods. High fences and later a
wall enclosed the asylum grounds, ensuring former associates could not seek out
178
lu ann de cunzo
the inmates. Its rural setting and garden landscape surrounded the Magdalens with
domesticated nature’s purity.
Ritual has provided an informative “window” into social and cultural dynamics at the asylum. Ritual acts symbolically and through repetitive (though unique),
formal, stylized action. It constructs, dismembers, and repairs the body, creating
a new social being (Bell 1992:3, 90–117). The rites of passage performed at the
Magdalen asylum sought to change young women’s moral state, social position,
and cultural milieu. The process of ritual separation began when board members
interviewed each potential Magdalen. Her removal to the asylum physically separated her from her previous life and identity. There the matron escorted the
entering Magdalen to her chamber, symbolically closing five doors on the woman’s
old self as she wound her way through and up the umbilical-like passages. Ultimately she emerged in a safe, secure, isolated chamber deep within the asylum’s
walls. Now disoriented, the Magdalen would remove her clothes and other personal effects, and replace them with the asylum uniform, the short gown of the
working woman. The matron assigned the new Magdalen her ritual name (a
number assigned consecutively to women entering the asylum), and reviewed
the rules. In the asylum’s workroom, kitchen, dining room, and garden, the
Magdalens learned domestic skills and performed social rituals. Excavated ceramics and glassware suggest the dining paraphernalia embodied a permanently
liminal identity for the Magdalen: economically and socially that of the working
woman, morally that of the middle class, virtuous wife and mother (Figure 9.5)
(De Cunzo 1995:118–120).
During the first decades of the asylum’s history, Society leaders increasingly
imagined the “fallen’s” transformation as a religious experience meant to occur in
the inner sanctum of the unadorned upstairs bedchambers. These spaces incorporated many meanings in their allusions to and parallels with rooms in other buildings – the convent’s cell, the brothel’s “work” rooms, the boardinghouse
bedchambers, the servant’s quarters, the prison cell. There the Magdalens spent
time in prayer, repented, and became new women. The asylum staff and board
monitored each Magdalen’s progress for signs of purification in demeanor and
behavior. Once redeemed, the Magdalen concluded her passage in a final ritual of
reincorporation into society (De Cunzo 1995:121–124).
In 1878, a new matron transformed the asylum into a home for wayward girls
that involved a strategic recentering of the ritual object. On one level, the Magdalen
Society strove to guide wayward girls through the difficult process of puberty. On
another, the Society’s transformation of socially and morally threatening girls into
pious, pure women well trained in the domestic arts ritually purified a chaotic world.
The Magdalens became active agents in maintaining both the productivity and the
beauty of the asylum landscape. For the first time, the asylum overflowed capacity.
Yet other statistics demonstrate that the Society only succeeded in attracting more
young women to the asylum. Their stays decreased in length, recidivism increased,
and the percentage of Magdalens released to the care of family or friends or to
promises of employment declined dramatically. In 1915, the asylum moved to a
larger farm outside the city (De Cunzo 2001:32–36).
exploring the institution
179
Figure 9.5 Fragment of blue transfer printed ceramic plate with natural, rural, floral imagery
symbolic of female purity excavated at the Magdalen Society Asylum. Shown with a more complete
example of a similar plate. Lu Ann De Cunzo directed the excavations in 1988–89. (Photograph by
Barbara H. Silber; courtesy of the author)
Spencer-Wood (1987, 1994, 1996) has cast a materialist feminist gaze on the
Victorian ideal of separate spheres that informed the Magdalen Society and so many
contemporary institutions. Her work with domestic reform challenges scholarship
that devalued and stereotyped women. The significance of domestic reform lies in
the reformers’ larger vision of social transformation and the fight for women’s economic independence through “culturally acceptable female ‘professions’ ” (SpencerWood 1987:11). Spencer-Wood (1996:400–413, 425–431) argues specifically that
we cannot reduce the complexity and diversity embodied in this reform movement
to the idiom of social control. Drawing on multiple lines of evidence, she has
brought analytical and “insider” perspectives to her studies of the meanings of
material culture in institutions such as cooperatives, day care centers, public kitchens, playgrounds, and parks.
Body and Mind: Hospital and Insane Asylum
Foucault’s metanarrative of capitalist society develops the “technology” of the
“normal” body and mind in Madness and Civilization (1965) and The Birth of
the Clinic (1973). The clinic was born, Foucault (1973:xiii–xiv, 34) argues, in “the
180
lu ann de cunzo
empirical gaze” that enabled physicians to “see” within the body, and made possible a scientific discourse about an individual. Medicine became not only about
disease and cure, but also about maintaining health. Ultimately, the new medicine
defined the “normal” and the “deviant,” and the hospital became an important tool
in regulating social order.
In the 19th century, military doctors proposed that the hospital itself worked
as an independent instrument of healing, and archaeologists have begun to examine
these new military hospitals. Excavations at Cantonment Burgwin hospital (1852–
61) in New Mexico (see Figure 14.1) revealed a scaled down, vernacular version
of the ideal military hospital prescribed by the Surgeon General, built of local
materials (Woosley 1980:3–7, 36–38). Australian archaeologists excavating the
Civil Hospital (ca. 1845–55) privy at the notoriously cruel penal settlement of
Norfolk Island discovered that it had become a convenient place to exchange
contraband and smoke, resisting the rules. Other artifacts document penal control
over the convict body against which actions like smoking rebelled. Uniforms
stripped the men of personal identity, rendering them visible and identifiable
only as convicts, while toothbrushes and lice combs served middle class ideals of
bodily discipline and hygiene that denied the filth characterizing the convicts’
experience of Norfolk Island. Syringes, cupping glasses, and medicine cups remind
us of mid–19th-century medical treatments and explain the numerous bottles
for alcohol to anesthetize, manage pain, and relax tightened muscles (Starr
2001:41–45).
For African Americans and others facing a discriminatory health care system,
institutions such as churches provided critical services, especially during epidemics.
Excavations at the Wayman African Methodist Episcopal Church (established 1843)
in Bloomington, Illinois (see Figure 13.1), uncovered almost 600 glass prescription
and patent medicine bottles and jars, test tubes, and syringes from a dense sheet
midden, privy, and refuse pit. The assemblage documents a “dual health care
strategy” embracing features of both traditional West African practices based on
sophisticated knowledge of plant medicines and Western health care (Cabak et al.
1995:55–71). The study highlights the limits of Foucault’s totalizing narrative
of the body’s conquest in 19th-century institutions. Cultural imperatives shaped
resistance and alternative practices.
Foucault’s (1965) exploration of the person as “subject” sought the origins of
“madness” as deviancy in the context of the post-Enlightenment West. He charted
the rise of the asylum in 17th-century Europe, the association of madness with a
moral and political condemnation of idleness by the 18th century, and physicians’
“creation” of madness as a disease and major form of deviance in the 19th century
(Foucault 1965:21, 58, 270). Piddock (2001b:84–85) has examined the therapeutic nature of the 19th-century asylum as a curative institution in South Australia
and Tasmania, focusing on asylum designs and precedents. No legislation required
a particular approach to the insane in 19th-century Australia, and no institutions
existed on the continent to provide models. Institutional designers adopted the
British ideal of “Moral Management,” which advocated the roles of rural settings,
fresh air, aesthetically pleasing designs, and extensive grounds. Landscape archaeol-
exploring the institution
181
ogy at the Adelaide Lunatic Asylum, Parkside, and the Hospital for the Insane at
New Norfolk revealed that excessive construction costs led to compromising English
design ideals (Piddock 2001b:88–91). The implications for those confined in these
institutions demand further consideration.
Teach the Children Well: Particular Places of Pedagogy
Total institutions of education – boarding schools, academies, universities – have
received little intellectual attention by archaeologists (see, e.g., Gibb and Beisaw
2000). An innovative study of acculturation and resistance in United States Indian
schools offers an important exception. In the late 19th century, off-reservation
boarding schools became the primary instrument of the government’s Indian education initiative. At the schools, native children first interacted with the larger
American culture. The United States Industrial Indian School at Phoenix (see
Figure 14.1), one of more than 100 such primary and secondary coeducational
schools, opened in 1892, and by 1905 almost 900 students lived on the large
campus and 240-acre farm. Students and employees came from dozens of tribes
(Lindauer 1997:1, 3). The government sought to provide the rudiments of an
academic education, and teach individualization, Christianity, and citizenship.
Indian boys received training in trades, and girls learned household skills. Most
traditional Indian practice was treated with contempt, widening the gap between
children and parents and hindering reintegration into reservation life (Lindauer
1996:8, 38).
Artifacts excavated from an 1892–ca. 1924 sanitary landfill at the Phoenix Indian
School suggest the students did not assimilate, but rather incorporated their Indian
identity with elements of the “school-learned” American identity. A steam whistle
had once regulated students’ movement through the day. The segmented, efficient
“clock time” of Western society contrasted with native concepts of “natural time”
regulated principally by the sun. Constant marching and drilling instilled conformity and discipline in the body, punctuated by whistle blasts marking obligations
linked with specific clock times. Discarded combs and toothbrushes had also taught
personal discipline when used in daily “toothbrush drills,” while Western-style dolls,
toy tea sets, and marbles objectified gender roles and responsibility. Soda, candy,
sewing materials, and other goods purchased during trips to town introduced students firsthand to American consumerism (Lindauer 1997:18–49). School records
document both overt and covert resistance – from arson to smuggling food and
conducting native spiritual ceremonies. Native pottery brought from home marks
social identity, and fragments of glass and industrial ceramics modified using traditional stone-working technologies point to resistance through the appropriation
of Western goods for traditional purposes. Perhaps ironically, in the boarding school
“technology of power” lay the origins of the pan-Indian movement. “American”
education led to the creation of a new “Indian” identity incorporating elements
from all (Lindauer 1997:46–56).
182
lu ann de cunzo
Toward an Archaeology of Institutions: Perspectives from Feminist
and Disability Studies
These historical archaeologies of total institutions share a concern with the culture
and economy of capitalism and relationships of power in the modern world. They
recount the social, political, and moral acts of establishing institutional places. They
outline the goals and purposes of these “places of Othering,” “power containers,”
and “protected places of disciplinary monotony.” They explore their missions to
create and maintain the social body through action on individual bodies, souls, and
minds. They probe acts intended to transform, reform, and punish. They seek to
understand conceptions of identity, madness, deviance, and normalcy in different
times and places.
The practices and technologies of “Moral Management” and other systems
employed to achieve these institutional purposes also receive attention. We have
learned about the transitions of entering and leaving institutions, of classifying those
who enter and reclassifying those who stay. Surveillance, discipline, and ritual have
specific meanings in these institutional contexts. We have followed the paths of the
confined as they worked, ate, cleansed, read, worshipped, and slept – permitted,
even required acts. We have witnessed the choreographies of time, space, object,
and body that shaped the experiences of confiners and confined in institutions.
These “trialectic” – conceived, perceived, lived – institutional spaces were constituted in the sound, image, touch, and smell of high stone walls, small cells, gardens,
and musky bodies. Their hierarchical spaces and purifying landscapes controlled
movement to produce the “body as machine.” Beyond this seemingly passive action
– acting as directed – we also glimpsed resistance, so that destruction, transgression,
exchange, and sexual intercourse also have particular meanings in our imaginings
of institutional pasts.
These archaeologists probed the Foucauldian understanding of institutions’
functions as social control. Some agreed that such arguments are convincing enough,
yet not quite enough. They are essentialist and reductionist, and I concur with
Meskell’s (1996:9) assessment that they sell short individuals’ life experiences and
produce self-fulfilling, over-simplified understandings of society. For this reason,
reconnecting institutions with corporeal bodies might be a fruitful direction. Institutions existed to teach, learn, worship, heal, care for the abandoned, poor, and
incurable, and to help people to grow up and change, as well as to detain. Of course
they involved relationships of power, but we do ourselves and the people we study
an injustice if we subsume everything they were about under the power tent –
whether we call it power under, power with, power over, power to, or power heterarchy (Spencer-Wood 2001:102).
The archaeology of institutions requires “holistic” perspectives and a holistic use
of sources. Individuals and groups “creatively manipulated” institutions, deconstructing them and reconstructing the “bits and pieces” in innovative, complex ways
(Rothman 1990:xxvii). “Meaning,” Robb notes, “does not reside in artifacts or in
people but in the moment of interaction between the two” (Robb 1998:337–338).
Feminist studies of the body, sex, and gender address this relevant issue and others
exploring the institution
183
(see Voss, this volume). Perhaps most fundamentally, they demand the fostering of
views “from many ‘wheres’ ” (Conkey and Gero 1997:430). In Western scholarship,
these converge on three semantic realms of representation and practice that use the
image of the physical body: the social body, the experiencing body, and the individual mind–body (Strathern 1996:2). Most widely referenced in archaeology,
Meskell (1996:2, 7) notes, and I would add specifically in the archaeology of institutions, are positions that write the physical body as a metaphor for society, and a
microcosmic map of large-scale social processes and power negotiations.
Concepts of ritual serve us well, as ritual is at once about people, the society
beyond the institution’s walls, and the world of ideas and spirits. Ritual acts on the
individual body through performance, embodying meanings that thought cannot
frame, and ritual spaces shape both the actions and perceptions that become
“sedimented” via routine (Sorenson 2000:145–149). Referring specifically to Philadelphia’s Eastern State Penitentiary, Upton encouraged historical archaeologists
to take a more experiential approach to our studies. “Our experience of the material world is complex and multisensory; it is a reverberating, constantly permutating
tangle of I–it/it–me relationships, and it must be studied on all these levels” (Upton
1992:52–53). We must begin with individuals – bodies and emotions linked by
vision, touch, smell, and hearing – “being in the world” (Meskell 1996:5, 14; Strathern 1996:198; Sorenson 2000:152). Phenomenology and experience return us one
final time to Foucault, and to his critics. Foucault took phenomenology seriously
in his early work on madness, but expressed doubts that we could ever access the
“pure experience” of others. Neither does madness exist in relation to any absolute
rationality, but in the discursive practices that create it in particular historical and
cultural moments (Megill 1992:95, 99). Foucault had reduced the body to a
“product of representations” and neglected the individual ill, impaired, impoverished, and otherwise “deviant” who formed his subject and who we now seek to
recover (Meskell 1996:8).
A new generation of phenomenological studies is challenging a history of
“erasing” the disabled liminal from society through cultural “solutions” such as
ritualized institutionalization (Murphy 1990; Snyder and Mitchell 2001:368, 386).
These contemporary students of disability begin by divesting able-bodiedness of its
industrial capitalist mythos of perfectibility – “the body as machine.” “Normal” took
on its current meaning in the English language around 1840, replacing the concept
of “ideal.” The ideal is a mythic body, not an attainable lived body. Disability, Davis
(1995:2, see also 24–25, 87) reminds us, “intimately involves everyone who has a
body and lives in the world of the senses.” Phenomenology allows us to graft sensation to our understandings of the exclusions the impaired, and by extension, all
“deviants” face. Whereas the body “disappears” from awareness in the everyday
experience of the unimpaired, when we face pain, disease, or impairment, the body
“dys-appears,” becoming unceasingly present. Most forms of “othering” involve
similar experiences of constant bodily self-consciousness (Paterson and Hughes
1999:598–604).
“Normalizing” perspectives on the material world open another window into
institutional encounters between idealist reformers, mediating staff, and submis­
sive and intransigent inmates. Images, literary texts, personal letters, and other
184
lu ann de cunzo
expressive forms complement the archaeological record, as they re-present the
places and people whose experiences they contained. The performances and
expressive art of impaired persons enable a phenomenology of the lived body and
offer a more “authentic” representation of the creative imagination (Bowler 1997;
Snyder and Mitchell 2001; Thomson 1997). We have seen the “therapeutic value”
that the capitalist ethos placed on work. Besides collections of asylum art, there
are, to name but a few examples, all those stone walls built by Australian convicts,
fans assembled and painted by Rhode Island state prisoners, gutta percha jewelry
crafted by American Civil War prisoners, and shoes and wagons made by Indian
boys at school in Phoenix. Institutional inmates have produced these and other
items of expressive culture by the thousands. Where are they now? Garman
(1999:179) located several of those prisoners’ fans in the Rhode Island School of
Design. We must scour archives, museums, and private collections, as well as
archaeological sites, in search of these objects, and then examine them from the
vantage points of representational, structural, and experiential meaning, design
grammar, style, semantics, social association, life history, manufacturing technique,
use, and user (Robb 1998:341).
A jury convicted Thomas Casey of murder and sentenced him to the Rhode
Island State prison in 1858. Years later, he requested a pardon. The warden remembered sending him to the Dark Cell for talking during work, and denied the request.
In 1870, having served 13 years of his term, Casey died of pneumonia and was
buried in an unmarked grave beside others abandoned in the state’s institutions
(Garman 1999:1–3, 261–262). We have the tools to consider the “institutional
careers” of inmates like Thomas Casey and the ways that routines performed daily
– crafting furniture – and punctuating personal experiences or “transgressive
moments” – writing to request a pardon, lashing out violently at a guard, days and
nights spent in the Dark Cell – inscribed themselves onto individual lived bodies.
The history we seek is embodied not only in the months or years spent in the
institution, but in people’s experiences and performances lived out over the course
of a lifetime (see also Casella 2002:77–78). Thomas Casey must become more than
a narrative trope or an illustration; he must be human subject and analytical object.
It is time to follow him and the others into and out of these institutions, recapturing the fragments of their lives recorded in written records, family histories, homes
and workplaces, objects, and archaeological sites. What began as an archaeology of
places becomes an archaeology of people.
Represent, Interpret, Act: Past and Present
Why should we do an historical archaeology of people and institutions? How shall
we represent that past in the present? Archaeologists have answered these questions
in different ways. Baugher (2001:196) has argued that archaeology at the New York
City almshouse revealed the colonial builders’ “relatively benevolent intentions.
This view of a compassionate colonial past challenges the interpretations of many
historians who wish to see an unbroken chain of the oppression of the poor from
exploring the institution
185
the colonial period to the present.” The convict colony history of Australia has led
places of incarceration to have “iconic status” in popular culture, resulting until
recently in the presentation of a sanitized history (Casella 2001; Dewar and Fredericksen 2003:45). Jackman describes Port Arthur Historic Site even today as a
“pay-to-enter convict theme park, featuring romantic ruins in a garden landscape
that supports a gothic-horror cultural tourism industry . . . [d]isconnect[ed] . . . from
any contemporary social debate” (Jackman 2001:11). At Fannie Bay Gaol museum,
in Darwin (1883–1979), interpretation focuses on the intimate details of prisoners’
lives recovered in part through archaeology (see Figure 15.1). A survey of visitors
elicited these responses to the experience: “All prisons should be as hot & horrible
as this maybe the less people [sic] would commit crimes” (Dewar and Fredericksen
2003:56). Others expressed more sympathy for prisoners forced to exist in such
stark conditions (Dewar and Fredericksen 2003:46–47, 56).
An Irish institution for “fallen women”– the Magdalene laundry – recently galvanized media attention around the world. The award-winning motion picture “The
Magdalene Sisters” opened in 2003 in the United States with a spate of docudramas, exposes, and internet-based hype. It tells the tale of four “fallen women” in
1960s Ireland rejected by their families and abandoned to a Catholic Magdalene
Laundry. The last “Irish gulag” closed in 1996. Survivors write of being stripped
of their identities and describe their experiences as “living dead” (Brown and
McGarry 2003). Irish feminist historian Finnegan (2001:242) offered a scathing
critique of women’s lives destroyed in a “warped attempt to wipe out female ‘sin’.”
The rhetoric sounds chillingly like that of the Holocaust. Beech (1999:12) addressed
archaeologists at the 1999 World Archaeological Congress about the heightened
sensitivities people bring to the Nazi concentration camps of Eastern Europe. He
spoke of an unspecified future day when the heritage of such places won’t hurt so
much. Until then, archaeologists working at institutional sites must negotiate an
emotion-laden terrain with compassion, outrage, and openness to their multilocality and multivocality in the past and in the present.
References
Baugher, Sherene 2001 Visible Charity: The Archaeology, Material Culture, and Landscape
Design of New York City’s Municipal Almshouse Complex, 1736–1797. International
Journal of Historical Archaeology 5(2):175–202.
Baugher, Sherene, and Suzanne M. Spencer-Wood 2002 Almshouses. In Encyclopedia of
Historical Archaeology. Charles E. Orser, Jr. ed. Pp. 15–17. London: Routledge.
Beech, John G. 1999 The Differing Development Paths of World War II Concentration
Camps and the Possibility of an Application of a Principle of Equifinality. In Material
Culture: International Perspectives on Recent Military Remains. World Archaeological
Congress 4. Cape Town, South Africa.
Bell, Catherine 1992 Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice. New York: Oxford University
Press.
186
lu ann de cunzo
Bell, Edward L. 1993 Historical Archaeology at the Hudson Poor Farm Cemetery, Hudson,
Massachusetts. Boston: Massachusetts Historical Commission.
Bowler, Anne E. 1997 Asylum Art: The Social Construction of an Aesthetic Category. In
Outsider Art: Contesting Boundaries in Contemporary Culture. Vera L. Zolberg and Joni
Maya Cherbo, eds. Pp. 11–36. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Brown, Hilary, and Matt McGarry 2003 Ireland’s Dirty Laundry. Electronic document,
http://www.infomanage.com/forums/showthread.php?p=5757#post5757, accessed June
15, 2005.
Bush, David R. 2000 Interpreting the Latrines of the Johnson’s Island Civil War Military
Prison. Historical Archaeology 34(1):62–78.
Cabak, Melanie A., Mark D. Groover, and Scott J. Wagers 1995 Health Care and the Wayman
A.M.E. Church. Historical Archaeology 29(2):55–76.
Casella, Eleanor Conlin 2000 “Doing Trade”: A Sexual Economy of Nineteenth-Century
Australian Female Convict Prisons. World Archaeology 32(2):209–221.
—— 2001 Landscapes of Punishment and Resistance: A Female Convict Settlement in
Tasmania, Australia. In Contested Landscapes: Movement, Exile and Place. Barbara
Bender and Margot Winer, eds. Pp. 103–120. Oxford: Berg.
—— 2002 Archaeology of the Ross Female Factory: Female Incarceration in Van Diemen’s
Land, Australia. Launceston: Records of the Queen Victoria Museum No. 108.
Conkey, Margaret W., and Joan M. Gero 1997 Programme to Practice: Gender and Feminism
in Archaeology. Annual Review of Anthropology 26:411–437.
Connah, Graham 1988 The Archaeology of Australia’s History. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Cook, Lauren J. 1991 The Uxbridge Poor Farm in the Documentary Record. In Archaeological Excavations at the Uxbridge Almshouse Burial Ground in Uxbridge, Massachusetts. Ricardo J. Elia and Al B. Wesolowsky, eds. Pp. 40–81. BAR International Series, 564.
Oxford: British Archaeological Reports.
Cotter, John L., Roger W. Moss, Bruce C. Gill, and Jiyul Kim 1988 The Walnut Street Prison
Workshop. Philadelphia: The Athenaeum of Philadelphia.
Davis, Lennard J. 1995 Enforcing Normalcy: Disability, Deafness, and the Body. London:
Verso.
Dawson, Joanna 2000 Crockery from Craiglockhart Poorhouse, Edinburgh. M.A. Thesis,
University of Glasgow.
De Cunzo, Lu Ann 1995 Reform, Respite, Ritual: An Archaeology of Institutions. The
Magdalen Society of Philadelphia, 1800–1850. Historical Archaeology 29(3).
—— 2001 On Reforming the “Fallen” and Beyond: Transforming Continuity at the Magdalen Society of Philadelphia, 1845–1916. International Journal of Historical Archaeology
5(1):19–43.
Dewar, Mickey, and Clayton Fredericksen 2003 Prison Heritage, Public History and Archaeology at Fannie Bay Gaol, Northern Australia. International Journal of Heritage Studies
9(1):45–63.
Elia, Ricardo J., and Al B. Wesolowsky, eds. 1991 Archaeological Excavations at the Uxbridge
Almshouse Burial Ground in Uxbridge Massachusetts. BAR International Series, 564.
Oxford: British Archaeological Reports.
Finnegan, Frances 2001 Do Penance or Perish: A Study of Magdalen Asylums in Ireland.
Piltdown, Ireland: Congrave Press.
Foucault, Michel 1965 Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason.
New York: Pantheon.
exploring the institution
187
—— 1973 The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception. A. M. S. Smith,
trans. New York: Pantheon Books.
—— 1977 Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. A. Sheridan, trans. New York:
Vintage.
Fredericksen, Clayton 2001 Confinement by Isolation: Convict Mechanics and Labour at
Fort Dundas, Melville Island. Australasian Historical Archaeology 19:48–59.
Garman, James C. 1999 “Detention Castles of Stone and Steel”: An Historical Archaeology
of the First Rhode Island State Prison, 1838–1878. Ph.D. Dissertation, University of
Massachusetts.
Garman, James C., and Paul A. Russo 1999 “A Disregard of Every Sentiment of Humanity”:
The Town Farm and Class Realignment. Historical Archaeology 33(1):118–135.
Gibb, James G., and April M. Beisaw 2000 Learning Cast up from the Mire: Archaeological
Investigations of Schoolhouses in the Northeastern United States. Northeast Historical
Archaeology 29:107–129.
Gibbs, Martin 2001 The Archaeology of the Convict System in Western Australia.
Australasian Historical Archaeology 19:60–72.
Goffman, Erving 1961 Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other
Inmates. Chicago: Aldine.
Gojak, Denis 2001 Convict Archaeology in New South Wales: An Overview of the Investigation, Analysis and Conservation of Convict Heritage Sites. Australasian Historical Archaeology 19:73–83.
Gojak, Denis, and Nadia Iacono 1993 The Archaeology and History of the Sydney Sailors
Home, The Rocks, Sydney. Bulletin of the Australian Institute for Maritime Archaeology
17(1):27–32.
Graham, Elizabeth 1998 Mission Archaeology. Annual Review of Anthropology 27:25–62.
Grauer, Anne L., ed. 1995 Bodies of Evidence: Reconstructing History through Skeletal
Analysis. New York: Wiley-Liss.
Huey, Paul R. 2001 The Almshouse in Dutch and English Colonial North America and its
Precedent in the Old World: Historical and Archaeological Evidence. International Journal
of Historical Archaeology 5(2):123–154.
Jackman, Greg 2001 Get Thee to Church: Hard Work, Godliness and Tourism at Australia’s
First Rural Reformatory. Australasian Historical Archaeology 19:6–13.
Karskens, Grace 1986 Defiance, Deference and Diligence: Three Views of Convicts in New
South Wales Road Gangs. Australian Historical Archaeology 4:17–28.
—— 2002 Revisiting the Worldview: The Archaeology of Convict Households in Sydney’s
Rocks Neighborhoods. Historical Archaeology 37(1):34–55.
Lindauer, Owen 1996 Historical Archaeology of the United States Industrial Indian School
at Phoenix: Investigation of a Turn of the Century Trash Dump. Anthropological Field
Studies, 42. Tempe: Department of Anthropology, Arizona State University.
—— 1997 Not for School, But for Life: Lessons from the Historical Archaeology of the
Phoenix Indian School. Tempe: Office of Cultural Resource Management, Arizona State
University.
Lucas, Gavin 1999 The Archaeology of the Workhouse: The Changing Uses of the Workhouse
Buildings at St. Mary’s, Southampton. In The Familiar Past? Archaeologies of Later Historical Britain. Sarah Tarlow and Susie West, eds. Pp. 125–139. London: Routledge.
Megil, Allan 1992 Foucault, Ambiguity and the Rhetoric of Historiography. In Rewriting the
History of Madness: Studies in Foucault’s Historie de la Folie. Arthur Still and Irving
Velody, eds. Pp. 86–104. London: Routledge.
188
lu ann de cunzo
Meskell, Lynn 1996 The Somatization of Archaeology: Institutions, Discourses, Corporeality. Norwegian Archaeological Review 29(1):1–16.
Morrison, Richard 2001 The Military Prison, Anglesea Barracks, Hobart. Australasian
Historical Archaeology 19:97–106.
Murphy, Robert F. 1990 The Body Silent. New York: Norton.
Nobles, Connie H. 2000 Gazing upon the Invisible: Women and Children at the Old Baton
Rouge Penitentiary. American Antiquity 65(1):5–14.
Paterson, Kevin, and Bill Hughes 1999 Disability Studies and Phenomenology: The Carnal
Politics of Everyday Life. Disability and Society 14(5):597–610.
Pena, Elizabeth S. 2001 The Role of Wampum Production at the Albany Almshouse. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 5(2):155–174.
Piddock, Susan 2001a “An Irregular and Inconvenient Pile of Buildings”: The Destitute
Asylum of Adelaide, South Australia and the English Workhouse. International Journal of
Historical Archaeology 5(1):73–95.
—— 2001b Convicts and the Free: Nineteenth-Century Lunatic Asylums in South Australia
and Tasmania (1830–1883). Australasian Historical Archaeology 19:84–96.
Rhodes, Lorna A. 2001 Toward an Anthropology of Prisons. Annual Review of Anthropology
30:65–83.
Robb, John E. 1998 The Archaeology of Symbols. Annual Review of Anthropology 27:329–
346.
Romero, Facundo Gomez 2002 Philosophy and Historical Archaeology: Foucault and a
Singular Technology of Power Development at the Borderlands of Nineteenth-Century
Argentina. Journal of Social Archaeology 2(3):402–429.
Rothman, David J. 1990 The Discovery of the Asylum: Social Order and Disorder in the
New Republic. Boston: Little, Brown.
Snyder, Sharon L., and David T. Mitchell 2001 Re-engaging the Body: Disability Studies
and the Resistance to Embodiment. Public Culture 13(3):367–389.
Soja, Edward W. 1989 Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social
Theory. London: Verso.
Sorensen, Marie Louise Stig 2000 Gender Archaeology. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Spencer-Wood, Suzanne 1987 A Survey of Domestic Reform Movement Sites in Boston and
Cambridge, ca. 1865–1905. Historical Archaeology 21(2):7–36.
—— 1994 Turn of the Century Women’s Organizations, Urban Design, and the Origin of
the American Playground Movement. Landscape Journal 13(2):125–137.
—— 1996 Feminist Historical Archaeology and Domestic Reform. In Historical Archaeology
and the Study of American Culture. Lu Ann De Cunzo and Bernard L. Herman, eds. Pp.
397–446. Winterthur, Delaware: Winterthur Museum.
—— 2001 Views and Commentaries: What Difference Does Feminist Theory Make? International Journal of Historical Archaeology 5(1):97–114.
Starr, Fiona 2001 Convict Artefacts from the Civil Hospital Privy on Norfolk Island.
Australasian Historical Archaeology 19:39–47.
Strathern, Andrew J. 1996 Body Thoughts. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Tarlow, Sarah 2002 Excavating Utopia: Why Archaeologists Should Study “Ideal” Communities of the Nineteenth Century. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 6(4):299–
323.
Thomson, Rosemarie G. 1997 Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in
American Culture and Literature. New York: Columbia University Press.
Tomlinson, Heather 1980 Design and Reform: The “Separate System” in the NineteenthCentury English Prison. In Buildings and Society: Essays on the Social Development of
exploring the institution
189
the Built Environment. Anthony D. King, ed. Pp. 94–119. London: Routledge and Kegan
Paul.
Upton, Dell 1992 The City as Material Culture. In The Art and Mystery of Historical
Archaeology: Essays in Honor of James Deetz. Anne E. Yentsch and Mary C. Beaudry,
eds. Pp. 51–74. Baton Rouge: CRC Press.
Woosley, Anne I. 1980 Fort Burgwin’s Hospital: A Surgeon’s Journal and an Archaeological
Dig Reveal the Nature of Frontier Medicine and Healing. El Palacio 86(1):3–7, 36–39.
Chapter 10
A Class All Its Own:
Explorations of Class
Formation and Conflict
LouAnn Wurst
Introduction
Class is a curious concept. As an omnipresent aspect of the capitalist world, class
has commonly been used as a way to classify and label groups of people, both in
the present and in the past. And yet, while the word surrounds us in our everyday
life, it is a concept that is supposed to have little salience to our world. Many pun­
dits claim “class is dead”; while it was once one of the most important organizing
concepts in sociology, class is thought to have little significance for understanding
our postmodern world (Pakulski and Waters 1996). Other scholars argue that class
has always been ignored in American society and scholarship and that class and
class relations are rarely discussed openly (McNall et al. 1991; Aronowitz 1996).
Similarly, Durrenberger (2001) argues that class is the only truly serious ethno­
graphic problem and that we are all implicated in obscurantism by not addressing
it. Ortner (1991:165) describes how class suffers from conceptual marginality in
anthropology. For most, class is always with us but irrelevant.
We might expect historical archaeologists, who frame their discourse around
the study of capitalism (cf. Leone and Potter 1999), to have spent a lot more time
talking about class. Indeed, the word “class” is commonly encountered in histori­
cal archaeological studies. However, while the term class is often mentioned, the
concept of class has received very little attention in historical archaeology (Wurst
and Fitts 1999; Duke and Saitta 1998; Paynter 2000a). This theoretical blindspot
has been filled with other terms such as capitalism and modernity which are,
perhaps, more benign. What minimal discussion exists tends to be contradictory
and more than a little confusing. At one end of the spectrum, Duke and Saitta
state that “one could argue that, to the extent that class is an axis of variability
that crosscuts lines of gender, race, and ethnicity, it is arguably more important
than these categories” (Duke and Saitta 1998:3). At the other extreme, Yentsch
and Beaudry claim that class had no relevance for the early colonial period or to
the cultures created through the colonial process, and they suggest that class “both
a class all its own
191
conveys and exhibits the arrogance of the dominant class” (Yentsch and Beaudry
2001:223).
Statements by both the general populace and historical archaeologists seem to
run a wide gamut: from class being the single most important aspect of social life
to class being unimportant; from class as a structural location to class as a process;
from an attribute of individuals to an analytical method; from a stale and outdated
concept to a fresh approach that has seldom been operationalized; from a static
evolutionary moment to a fluidly historical abstraction. So which is it? My glib
answer is “yes”! I believe that our expectation that class can only be or do one thing
has been damaging to the development of historical archaeology and our goal of
understanding the modern world. Any simple example of a context where class is
not the most important organizing principle has seemed sufficient for some to
conclude that class is a poor concept upon which to build a rigorous archaeology.
Any number of references that point to the importance of gender or race also seem
to do the trick. We are assuaged from the conceptually difficult task of making sense
of all of the conflicting statements and claims about class. Or are we? It would,
perhaps, be wiser to assume that if class did not matter, there would be no need
for such a copious literature (a theoretical form of “me thinks they doth protest
too much”).
A great deal of the confusion about class stems from the fact that the same term
has been used in several very different ways. Wright (1997, 1994) divides these
conceptions into gradational and relational views of class. Wood (1995:76) claims
that there are only two ways to think about class: as a structural location and as a
social relation. Williams (1983:60–69) presents a “classification” of class meanings
that includes an objective group as in taxonomy, rank, or relative social position,
and class as a formation or relationship. We can then define two major approaches
to class: class as an objective entity, thing, or structural location based on a gradu­
ated scale, and class as a relation or formation. In what follows, I will contrast
these two views to try to untangle the ways that historical archaeologists have used
class.
Class as a Thing: Various Approaches
Class as an entity or thing on a graduated scale is the most familiar use of the term
in capitalist society. From this perspective, class is defined as fixed rungs on a ladder
of inequality, as in strata within an income distribution, occupation structure, or
status variations (Wright 1994:89). These distinctions hinge on relative amounts in
the quantity of defining resources, such as income, education, or occupational
prestige that individuals possess (Fantasia 1988:13). In a gradational view, class is
seen as a descriptive attribute of individuals (Zavarzadeh 1995:53), and classes
represent the aggregate of individuals who share a particular descriptive quality.
In this sense, classes are seen as fixed and immutable even though individuals
can change their class standing by virtue of a change in occupation or increase or
decrease in income.
192
louann wurst
One of the clearest symptoms of a gradational view is using class as an adjective
to describe the location of an individual or group within a larger structural context.
We commonly refer to “lower class,” “middle class,” “working class,” or “elite.”
While not all of these terms are equivalent, historical archaeologists often use them
as taxonomic units that define inclusion into a discrete group. For example, Wall
(1999) distinguishes the working and middle classes of urban America based on
whether individuals perform manual or non-manual labor. Hardesty (1994:131)
described the class structure of western North American mining towns as com­
prised of the poor, unskilled, semi-skilled, and skilled workers, a middle class of
professionals and managers, and an elite class of capitalists and managers. Three
classes – upper, middle, and lower – are most commonly used, although some have
defined as many as six (e.g., LeeDecker et al. 1987). All of these class titles are
relative and are based on a view of class as ranked social position.
In historical archeology these objective groups, based on either income or occu­
pation, are most commonly linked to material culture through the study of socioeconomic status, and historical archaeologists often use the terms class and status
interchangeably (Baugher and Venables 1987; Shepard 1987). Archaeologists most
often determine this relative social position by documentary evidence of wealth or
occupation. Typically, historical archaeologists have then “tested” this documentderived status with material culture by calculating the amount of money expended
on the items recovered from archaeological contexts. The vast majority of these
consumer choice studies focus on ceramics (LeeDecker et al. 1987; Shephard 1987;
Spencer-Wood and Heberling 1987), although some scholars have used faunal
remains (Reitz 1987; Schultz and Gust 1983).
The focus on ceramics stems from their abundance and preservation on archaeo­
logical sites and from the pioneering work of George Miller (1991). Miller’s index
value for decorated white earthenwares compared to an undecorated common
creamware (CC) baseline provides a standardized measure to compare the relative
cost of ceramics from virtually any 19th-century context. Miller’s research initiated
a frenzy of studies attempting to relate the value of ceramic assemblages with status.
At first, many archeologists treated this as an objective measure of socio-economic
status; however, it soon became apparent that the correlation between ceramics
and status was far from simple (Klein 1991:77). Studies showed that household
size and structure (LeeDecker et al. 1987), as well as ceramic availability (Brighton
2001), affected the types of ceramics purchased. Noting that ceramics comprised
a small percentage of a household’s expenses when compared to the cost of housing,
food, and other forms of material culture, some scholars even suggested that the
focus on ceramics as indicators of wealth was misguided (Friedlander 1991:27;
LeeDecker 1991). Other studies have documented that impoverished individuals
used expensive ceramics, but in contexts that indicate that they were out of date
and thus less desirable (Garman and Russo 1999; O’Donovan and Wurst 2001–02).
These critiques represent significant improvements over earlier consumer choice
studies based on a simple correlation between cost and status; however, few ques­
tion the underlying assumption that equates economic wealth with social class
and that uses material culture simply as the passive indicator of wealth. The socio-
a class all its own
193
economic status approach in historical archaeology is a gradational view that sees
class as a static, unchanging classification of reified persons and social roles.
The heyday of consumer choice and status studies has certainly ended in his­
torical archaeology. I suspect that consumer choice and status models remain much
more common in Cultural Resource Management (CRM) research, since they
provide easily testable assumptions with ready-made interpretations. Other periodic
forays can still be found. Monks (1999) proposes a “bottom up” perspective that
builds from archaeological analysis toward the social concepts that can be accessed
from it. Monks’ approach is indeed different, but rather than challenge the idea
that class is an entity, his critique simply states that we have not found the appro­
priate middle-range linking strategies. A more contemporary incarnation of class as
a thing, the hallmark of a gradational view, can be detected in the way that many
historical archaeologists have embraced the postmodern themes of individualism
and agency. Since much recent work places the autonomous individual at the center
of analytical focus, social formations such as class become blurred or invisible
(Thomas 2002). With the active individual in the forefront of their efforts, post­
modern inspired archaeologists have produced a literature littered with statements
about why the individual is the only actor capable of creating cultural change
(Meskell 1999; Hodder 2000; Sweely 1999). These individual agents give meaning
to the world around them and, in the end, the postmodern scholar tends to reduce
their interpretations to the meanings given by individual agents.
Most postmodernist interpretations attempt to understand the interplay between
individual subjectivities and structure, and yet, the dynamics of this articulation
have not been fully realized (Dobres and Robb 2000:7). Since postmodernists begin
with the individual, the social becomes an analytical problem – how do you get
structure from the aggregate of discrete individuals? The solution has been to
present structure as the sum total of experiences and practices. The sense of struc­
ture conveyed is fragmentary with little attention paid to the reality of the network
of relations that joined individuals, social groups, and institutions, with little if any
attention to class.
In historical archaeology, earlier consumer choice models have morphed into an
emphasis on agency and the individual, and the terms “individual,” “identity,” and
“agency” have become common. Mary Beaudry, Stephen Mrozowski, and Lauren
Cook present one of the clearest statements of this new direction (Beaudry et al.
1991). In their study of the Boott Mills complex in Lowell, Massachusetts (see
Figure 13.1), they examine the artifacts found associated with factory workers and
managers and interpret them as symbols that these groups used to give meaning
to their lives. From this approach, class is an unchallenged category which people
express through freely chosen material symbols (see Orser 1996 for an extended
discussion of their case study, and Lodziak 2002 for a general critique).
A more recent statement by Wilkie and Bartoy (2000) provides some idea of the
fruition of the individual agency trend in historical archaeology. They take aim at
the so-called “Annapolis School” and argue that these archaeologists have failed to
problematize basic concepts, including class (Wilkie and Bartoy 2000:748). Wilkie
and Bartoy emphasize that class relates to individual decision-making and choice.
194
louann wurst
This focus can be clearly seen in their case study of the Freeman family of Oakley
Plantation. Silvia Freeman worked as a cook on the plantation, and two of her
daughters continued to live in the house after her death and worked as cook and
domestic servant. According to Wilkie and Bartoy “their occupations clearly
placed them in a social class distinct from that of the farming families” (Wilkie and
Bartoy 2000:759). The descriptive adjectives that they use, “accept,” “participa­
tion,” “motive,” and “choices,” convey the sense that class is an attribute of
individual identity – a choice that can be changed as simply as employment.
Many historical archaeologists clearly recognize that “identity” implies relation­
ships. However, much of the actual analyses focus on individual actors that appear
to have unconstrained freedom, a trend that is particularly evident in Wilkie and
Bartoy (2000). In this approach, class has become an emblem of individual identity,
like ethnicity, race, or gender, that individuals pick and choose from to create the
identities they find most meaningful. Class has continued to be an attribute – a
label designating where an individual stands in relative social standing.
This version of class also becomes tangled with what Eagleton (1996) calls the
great triplet of gender, class, and race. Most historical archaeologists recognize
the complex intersections between class, race, gender, and ethnicity (Delle et al.
2000; Orser 1996; Orser and Fagan 1995; Scott 1994), yet continue to identify all
of these aspects as objective traits or attributes that characterize individual identity.
Since these traits relate to individuals, these models assume that there is little room
for the concept of class. If, as many archaeologists have assumed, seeing class as
an entity or thing were the only way of looking at class, I would have to reject it
as well.
Many of the recent attacks on class can be understood as attacks on this per­
spective. For example, class as structural location is rejected theoretically since it
cannot account for agency (either individual or social). It would also be impossible
to coherently argue that ethnicity, race, or gender were unimportant to social life.
Given the postmodern context, it is ironic that historical archaeologists have argued
for a proliferation of identities, genders, races, and ethnicities, yet typically constrain
class to a rigid triad of Upper, Middle and Lower, or an exclusive duality of workers
and capitalists. To quote Eagleton:
we seem stuck with far too few social classes, whereas if the postmodern imperative
to multiply differences were to be taken literally we should strive to breed as many
more of them as we could, say two or three new bourgeoisies and a fresh clutch of
landowning aristocracies. (Eagleton 1996:127)
Class as a Formation: The Rhetoric of Social Relations
In contrast to essentialized views that see class as a thing, relational views use class
to designate the nature of the underlying social relations (Wright 1994:89). A rela­
tional view of class stems largely from the work of Karl Marx. Many have com­
plained that Marx himself did not use the term class in a consistent way and never
a class all its own
195
even provided an adequate definition. Pareto argued that Marx’s words were like
bats: appearing as both birds and mice (Ollman 1976:3). Many have railed against
Marx’s laxness – if class is indeed the most important concept to a viable critique
of capitalism, how is it that the concept was never adequately defined? No wonder
generations of scholars have thrown up their hands in frustration and futility!
To make sense of this, we need to understand that Marx used a dialectical
method to study social relations. Marxism is often seen as a theory of internal rela­
tions, where the web of social relations makes up the whole, and the appearance of
these relations is taken to be its parts (Ollman 1993:35). As McGuire (1992) notes,
a theory of internal relations is not the only approach that uses the idea of relations.
Relations are equally important within “commonsense” approaches that view class
as a thing. The difference, however, is that these theories define concrete and objec­
tive entities, such as class, race, and gender, that interact in external relations. Using
the dialectic implies that the relation actually defines what the entity will be and
that the entity does not and cannot exist apart from that relation (Harvey 1996,
2000; McGuire 1992:94; Ollman 1976, 1993; Sayer 1987). One common example
of a dialectical relation is husband–wife, neither of which can exist without the
other. If the relation between husband–wife severs, as in divorce, both of these
en­tities transform into ex-husband and ex-wife. In this simplified example, the
internal relations define the surface appearance of the entity. To move this analogy
to the social level, class is the surface appearance of the complex web of social rela­
tions of production.
Dialectical research emphasizes social totality and focuses on the whole of real
lived experience. It proceeds by examining each part to see where it fits and how
it functions within the social totality. The elements are defined through the process
of abstraction, the simple recognition that all thinking about reality begins by break­
ing it down into manageable parts (Ollman 1993:24). According to Sayer (1987:147),
this process begins with the use of concepts that are empirically open-ended and
analytically capable of letting the real world in. This process eventually leads back
to a fuller understanding of the whole with which we began (Ollman 1993:12).
It is in this context that we must evaluate Marx’s use of class. Godelier (1986)
has suggested that Marx used the term “class” in two different ways, specific
and general. The specific use of class is restrictive and designates the relations of
domination and exploitation between the social groups, which constitute modern
capitalist society (Godelier 1986:245). In this specific usage, class is defined as
strictly a capitalist formation. Marx, however, did not limit his use of class to this
construction, and his general definition refers to the determinant role of the pro­
ductive forces and relations of production in human history. Class is thus identified
as an organizing principle in the ancient and medieval worlds, as well as modern
bourgeois society (Marx and Engels 1955). With this definition, the relations of
production and differential group membership form the dynamic in any social
context. Marx and Engels’ famous quote, “The history of all hitherto existing
society is the history of class struggles” (Marx and Engels 1955:9), refers to class
in a general sense and points to the determinant role of the relations and forces of
production.
196
louann wurst
It is also important to realize that Marx used the dialectic in two ways: as a social
theory to account for the way the world works and, equally important, as a method
of inquiry (Ollman 1993:12, see also Marquardt 1992). This dual usage has impli­
cations for a relational view of class, since class can be conceived as both an ana­
lytical concept and a concrete reality (McGuire 1992). As an analytical concept,
class is used to classify, organize, and make sense of the complex web of social
relations that form human society. However, real classes only exist in concrete
historical contexts. Since the relations of production among people are not univer­
sally given, they can only be defined with reference to a particular historical context
(Sayer 1987). As Sayer states, “to define a class – or any other social phenomenon
– is, in the final analysis, to write its history” (Sayer 1987:22). To define a class, we
must realize that class is not a thing we can find by sifting dirt or identify by a
badge or insignia. Many historical archaeologists have tried to create predictive
models of class by relating economic wealth or occupation to material patterns.
This process “defines class” without examining the social relations present, and
thereby reifies those categories. Sayer (1987) refers to this process as the “violence
of abstraction.” As Thompson writes: “When, in discussing class, one finds oneself
too frequently commencing sentences with ‘it’, it is time to place oneself under
some historical control, or one is in danger of becoming the slave of one’s own
categories” (Thompson 1978:85). From a relational approach, creating a firm and
final list of the classes in any society is neither possible nor desirable. Ollman
(1993:47) argues that “arriving at a clear-cut, once-and-for-all classification of
capitalist society into classes” was not Marx’s goal:
Rather than simply a way of registering social stratification as part of a flat description
or as a prelude to rendering a moral judgment, which would require a stable unit, class
helps Marx to analyze a changing situation in which it is itself an integral and chang­
ing part. (Ollman 1993:48)
Thus, class is an abstraction used for analytic purposes and the process of abstrac­
tion is the key to operationalizing a relational view of class. Ollman (1993) shows
how Marx used abstraction in three different, but closely related, senses: abstraction
of extension; abstraction of levels of generality; and abstraction of vantage point
(see also Wurst 1999; O’Donovan 2002). One aspect of abstraction refers to delim­
iting both spatial and temporal boundaries around the subject of our studies. Unlike
common temporal periodization schemes, abstractions of extension require abstract­
ing relations or processes rather than simply events. Marquardt (1992) refers to this
process as the dialectics of scale and notes that since individuals act on numerous
different scales, our analyses must be multi-scalar. The patterns of human interac­
tion identified will vary depending on what scale is examined. To be truly effective,
Marquardt argues that multiple scales must be examined since different social
relations come into focus at different scales (Marquardt 1992). Different scales
affect how we abstract the class that any individual belonged to and, in fact, even
the number of classes present in society (Ollman 1993:47). Marx’s well-known
allusion to capitalism as a two-class society is based on abstracting all groups in
a class all its own
197
society into either workers or capitalists. On other occasions, Marx abstracted more
limited extensions, which allowed him to refer to a variety of classes or class factions
based on many social and economic differences.
Therefore, in a relational view, class is more than just a label for an objective
reality. As an analytical abstraction, class becomes the most important concept to
focus on issues of struggle, conflict, and contradictions in productive relations. The
key aspect to a dialectical approach is an emphasis on relations and the explication
of social totality – all social relations are intertwined into a complex web. Some
may object to stating the primacy of class so boldly – indeed, many have (Yentsch
and Beaudry 2001). Yet, it is important to realize that class does not provide the
only entry point into the analysis of this social totality; gender and race cannot be
divorced from these social relations of production and can also provide an impor­
tant starting place. Since none of these entities can be separated from their under­
lying social relations, and the social relations are completely intertwined, arguing
over which “surface appearance” is paramount is non-productive.
Paynter and McGuire (1991:1) state that the archaeology of inequality “empha­
sizes the struggles among members of society over the exercise of social power.”
This emphasis on power relations and inequality fits nicely with a relational defini­
tion of class that focuses on the struggle between social groups over the means of
production. Paynter and McGuire, and the associated articles in The Archaeology
of Inequality (1991), persuasively argue for a relational view of class although most
of the discussion is framed around the concepts of power and inequality rather than
class. McGuire and Wurst (2002) present a similar discussion focused on the
concept of struggle. In their view, the analytical emphasis on social relations of
struggle has several components that include the real struggles of the past, scholars’
struggles to know about the past, and uses of knowledge about the past to struggle
in the present. These three aspects, in the context of archaeology, necessarily have
temporal dimensions and components, and are best approached through the study
of the production and reproduction of everyday life (Wurst and McGuire 1999).
People must produce things to live and reproduce, but they must also reproduce
themselves and their social relations that they enter into in order to engage in
production. Understanding this for any context means understanding class.
Class as Relations in Historical Archaeology
Relational views of class in historical archaeology prove somewhat difficult to find,
particularly since they are just as likely to avoid the term “class,” use the term in a
way that mimics a gradational approach, or use other terms from a relational per­
spective such as power, inequality, or struggle. As a result, I find it difficult to clas­
sify these studies into a manageable synthesis. Instead, I have decided to illustrate
the potential of a relational view of class by organizing this discussion around several
different scales that many historical archaeologists approach through their work. In
particular, I will discuss studies that focus on what class analysis “looks like” at
local, capitalist, and global scales of analysis. My goal here is not to be comprehen­
198
louann wurst
sive, but to explore several examples that capture the complexity of class relations
at each of these scales to help us think about class in a relational way. It is also
important to keep in mind that these scales are not mutually exclusive realities; they
comprise analytical categories that focus attention on different webs of relations.
Since real classes only exist in concrete historical contexts, much of the histori­
cal archaeology of class occurs at a local level. It is no surprise that one of the most
common foci of explicit class analysis from a relational perspective has been on
industrial labor contexts. Nassaney and Abel’s (1993, 2000) study of the John
Russell Cutlery factory in Turner’s Falls, Massachusetts (see Figure 13.1), deals
with the struggles between workers and management over work regulation and
hiring practices that resulted from the transformations of industrial production.
Waste piles recovered from the factory led the archaeologists to ask whether the
workers may have intentionally spoiled knives to resist imposed regulations and
regain some autonomy over their production. Their analysis deals with the way that
factory elites used space in both the workplace and the workers’ homes to reinforce
their positions of power and authority over workers’ lives. The possibility that the
workers resisted this control through their sabotage of the product of labor focuses
attention on the relational and contested nature of class. This study, and others
focusing on the relational aspects of class in industrial contexts (cf. Mrozowski
2000; Shackel and Larsen 2000), emphasize that labor relations are not separate
from household ones, and that capitalists sought to create docile workers by con­
trolling aspects of their workers’ everyday lives. In these examples, class is not just
our commonsense view of male workers in the industrial workplace.
Margaret Wood (2002a, 2002b) provides an excellent example of the relational
aspects of class, gender, and ethnicity as seen through women’s work in the coal
town of Berwind, Colorado. Her work is part of the Colorado Coal Field Archaeol­
ogy Project (McGuire and Reckner 2002; Wood 2002b) that has studied the
1913–14 Coal Field Strike and in particular the Ludlow Massacre (see Figure 14.1).
Wood examined material culture recovered from pre- and post-strike contexts in
Berwind to examine how the social relations of women’s domestic labor changed
between 1900 and 1930. In particular, she focuses on women’s role in boarding
and food production to link women’s communal labor to the shared experience of
oppression. She argues that this was instrumental to the workers’ effective organiza­
tion during the 1913–14 strike. Wood’s example reminds us that the social relations
of class are as much about the home and domestic labor as the workplace, and
enmesh class with commonsense classifications of gender, ethnicity, and race (see
also Kruczek-Aaron 2002).
Instead of focusing on a single industrial context, my research in the small rural
community of Upper Lisle, New York (see Figure 13.1), looks at the dynamics of
class relations within a single community (Wurst 1999, 2002). Contrary to common
assumptions, rural communities included individuals involved in both agricultural
and industrial economic spheres that exhibited a complex class structure. In Upper
Lisle, this class structure included laborers in agriculture and industry, small com­
modity producers and farmers, merchants, wealthy farmers, and the Burghardt
family who owned the tannery. Analysis showed that the Burghardts actively mini­
a class all its own
199
mized the material differences between themselves and their workers in house
architecture and gravestones, while their ceramics and disposal patterns showed
striking differences. These material strategies denied the problematic nature of their
class differences while constraining the Burghardts’ material behavior.
These cases demonstrate several important aspects of a relational approach to
class at a local scale. Class analysis crosscuts many of the dichotomies that structure
commonsense ideas based on surface appearance. Class is about work and home,
about men and women. In fact, it encompasses all social groups that lived within
a particular historic context. These studies show that at the local level, class is lived
everyday and thus plays out in all aspects of material existence. Finally, all of these
studies, whether about a cutlery factory, a coal-mining town, or a small rural com­
munity, clearly link the class relations playing out at the local level with larger
capitalist transformations.
One of the most valuable contributions of historical archaeology has been the
analysis of class to elucidate the operations of capitalism itself. One research ques­
tion at this scale has dealt with the “origin” of capitalism itself (Johnson 1996;
Leone 1999; Orser 1996; Paynter 1988, 2000a). Other research has focused on the
transformations of capitalism over the course of its oppressive history (McGuire
1991). Mark Leone has spent several decades elucidating these transformations.
Building on ideas of worldview shift from folk society to Georgian order, Leone
(1988) has demonstrated how these transformations expressed the development
of capitalism in North America. In his work on Annapolis (see Figure 13.1), Leone
argued that an economic crisis in the area led to the adoption of the accouterment
of Georgian order. While many have critiqued Leone for overemphasizing the
elite and the role of dominant ideology (Hall 1992; Hodder 1986; Wilkie and
Bartoy 2000), his work has been instrumental in focusing attention on class at a
capitalist level.
Robert Paynter has also contributed to the archaeology of class at the scale of
capitalism. Paynter (1988) presents a general framework to understand the material
and organizational transformations of capitalism from the 18th through 19th cen­
turies. He made us recognize the fact that capitalism is itself an abstraction of a
dynamic formation defined by social relations characterized by temporal processes
that vary from short-term business cycles to long-term cycles on the order of
200–300 years (Paynter 1988:415). The idea of capitalist transformation is also
captured in Randy McGuire’s (1988) research on gravestones from Binghamton,
New York (see Figure 13.1). These cemeteries embody the transformations from
the early 19th-century ideal community that masked inequality, to the mid to late
19th-century material glorification linked to industrialization and the doctrine of
Social Darwinism, to the early 20th-century expansion of mass production, con­
sumption, and the cult of individual success (McGuire 1988:461–464).
Class can also be a very powerful concept to deal with global-scale issues. Ques­
tions of globalization have been a key part of historical archaeology for decades
(Falk 1991; Funari et al. 1999; Orser and Fagan 1995; Paynter 2000b). Orser
(1996:27) defines historical archaeology itself as the study of “the global nature of
modern life.” Recently, several historical archaeologists have argued that “capital­
200
louann wurst
ism” is a poor organizing concept for the field of historical archaeology since it is
based on an American focus and cannot account for non-capitalist contexts (Funari
et al. 1999). Their first point is well taken; we need to guard against seeing all global
processes from only the perspective of the United States. Paynter reminds us that
“world-scale processes must be understood as the articulation of European and
indigenous processes, and not simply the response of the imperatives of European
political economies” (Paynter 2000b:9).
A dialectical view recognizes that capitalism is not a monolithic entity but
a complex web of relations. Obviously, capitalism does not “play out” the same
way in every global context (Hall 2000; Purser 1999), and the global stage is char­
acterized as much by capitalist domination as “spaces of rupture” (Aronowitz
and Gautney 2003:xxv). Warren Perry’s (2000) discussion of the Zulu state in
southeastern Africa, Martin Hall’s (2000) comparison of South Africa and the
Chesapeake, and contributors to Historical Archaeology: Back from the Edge (Funari
et al. 1999) all provide prime examples of the intricacies of class formation on the
global stage. Class analysis at the global scale provides the analytical tool to inves­
tigate the vagaries of capitalism as it spread throughout the world and articulates(d)
with other modes of production.
A dialectical approach to class analysis makes it clear that class can be different
things at different scales of analysis. People always make history, but, following
Marx, we need to realize that the nature of class divisions, and even the number of
classes we discuss, will be “determined” by the purpose of analysis. At the local
level, terms such as working class and elite are of a particularistic nature, whether
we are talking about John Russell, cutlery factory workers, coal miners and their
wives, or the Burghardt family. When we shift the analytical lens to larger capitalist
relations, the stark dialogue of capitalist and working class are necessarily of a sig­
nificantly different nature to capture social relations at this scale. Discussions of
class at the capitalist or global levels may well draw sharp contrasts, but their
abstractions are necessary to understand the transformations of capitalism itself and
its articulations on the global stage.
The One of Class
Many of the confusing statements about class, both within historical archaeology
and without, are clarified when we recognize the two very different frameworks
that structure the discourse about class. Class as an objective entity or essence has
proven disappointing as a concept to understand human experience in the past. As
has been pointed out, class in this sense cannot account for human agency or the
complexity of the social relations of gender and race. This view of class is indeed
dead – requiem et pacem.
However, we have barely begun to scratch the surface of the potential of a rela­
tional perspective of class. The goal of an archaeology based on a relational view is
not to define as many classes as possible, but rather to understand the lived experi­
ence of the past and bring into focus aspects of the totality of social relations that
a class all its own
201
would otherwise be invisible. Instead of using objective definitions of class that
pigeonhole individuals into a narrow range of classes, we have to recognize that
class is a relational, analytical, multi-scalar category. Much of the argument seems
to deal with issues of scale – since we assume that class is an objective property,
archaeologists believe that their views of class have to be the same at every scale.
Examining class at the local, capitalist, and global scales makes it clear that the
abstraction of class can be drawn, and that the social relations “appear,” very dif­
ferent at each of these scales. Recognizing, as Marx did, that class can be defined
differently gives us a powerful tool to understand the social relations at each of
these levels.
Given this, one of the most powerful aspects of a dialectical view of class is
its insistence on social totality – the intricate whole of social relations. This means
that class is not a male thing, a female thing, a workers’ thing, a consumer thing,
or any THING. Patterson argues that social totality has two aspects: “the phenom­
enal world of appearances – that is, everyday life – and the level of the unobservable
processes and relations that are simultaneously revealed in the everyday as
well as concealed by it” (Patterson 1993:91). Class is a concept that can help us
understand the totality of the material conditions of human life in the past. This
must include the everyday life of commoners as well as the elite. We also need to
acknowledge the middle (managerial) class – the silent majority whose active role
has been assumed but not subject to critical analysis (Bledstein and Johnston 2001;
Praetzellis et al. 1988; Praetzellis and Praetzellis 2001). Archaeologists cannot, as
mere mortals, study the totality of any social context, but we must recognize that
we proceed with abstractions of the internal relations that form a totality.
Some readers may find this insistence on totality discomfiting. In this post­
modern world, scholars have been trained to eschew any totalizing discourse in
favor of diversity and difference. Yet, a dialectic approach emphasizing totality is
not the same as a single universal explanation. We also need to ask what the post­
modern “war on totality” does, and realize that this perspective does not challenge
the dominant ideology of modern capitalism (Eagleton 1996; Zavarzadeh 1995:18).
Larrain (1995) has suggested that the postmodern discourse plays an ideological
role to conceal the true contradictions of advanced capitalist societies and thereby
reproduces the ruling class interests. By emphasizing subjectivity, discontinuity, and
difference, these theories conceal the elements of shared humanity and exploitation
that exist in modern society (Larrain 1995). By denying any sense of totality, the
universal, and objective reality, postmodernists provide no ground on which to act
in order to change existing social relations (Eagleton 1996; Ebert 1995:128).
Harvey claims that to turn our back on universals at this stage in our history,
however fraught or even tainted, “is to turn our back on all manner of prospects
for progressive political action” (Harvey 2000:94).
No other concept has the potential to explicate issues of struggle, conflict, and
contradictions in productive relations. Leone and Potter’s (1999) volume, Historical
Archaeologies of Capitalism, represents one of the strongest statements characterizing
American historical archaeology as political action. Wylie (1999) passionately
argues that historical archaeologists have to study class and capitalism if we are to
202
louann wurst
understand and provide alternatives to the present that is based on exploitative
social relations. And this is exactly why we need to study class.
REFERENCES
Aronowitz, Stanley 1996 The Politics of Identity: Class, Culture, Social Movements. New
York: Routledge.
Aronowitz, Stanley, and Heather Gautney 2003 The Debate about Globalization: An
Introduction. In Implicating Empire: Globalization and Resistance in the 21st Century
World Order. Stanley Aronowitz and Heather Gautney, eds. Pp. xi–xxx. New York: Basic
Books.
Baugher, Sherene, and Robert W. Venables 1987 Ceramics as Indicators of Status and Class
in Eighteenth-Century New York. In Consumer Choice in Historical Archaeology. Suzanne
M. Spencer-Wood, ed. Pp. 31–53. New York: Plenum Press.
Beaudry, Mary C., Lauren J. Cook, and Stephen A. Mrozowski 1991 Artifacts and Active
Voices: Material Culture as Social Discourse. In The Archaeology of Inequality. Randall
H. McGuire and Robert Paynter, eds. Pp. 150–181. Oxford: Blackwell.
Bledstein, Burton J., and Robert D. Johnston, eds. 2001 The Middling Sorts: Explorations
in the History of the American Middle Class. New York: Routledge.
Brighton, Stephen 2001 Prices that Suit the Times: Shopping for Ceramics at the Five Points.
Historical Archaeology 35(3):16–30.
Delle, James A., Stephen A. Mrozowski, and Robert Paynter, eds. 2000 Lines that Divide:
Historical Archaeologies of Race, Class and Gender. Knoxville: University of Tennessee
Press.
Dobres, Marcia-Anne, and John E. Robb 2000 Agency in Archaeology: Paradigm or
Platitude? In Agency in Archaeology. Marcia-Anne Dobres and John E. Robb, eds. Pp.
3–18. London: Routledge.
Duke, Philip, and Dean Saitta 1998 An Emancipatory Archaeology for the Working Class.
Assemblage 4, 1–7.
Durrenberger, E. Paul 2001 On Class. Anthropology News 42, 5–6.
Eagleton, Terry 1996 The Illusion of Postmodernism. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.
Ebert, Teresa L. 1995 (Untimely) Critiques for a Red Feminism. In Post-Ality: Marxism and
Postmodernism. Mas’ud Zavarzadeh, Teresa L. Ebert, Donald Morton, eds. Pp. 113–149.
Washington, DC: Maisonneuve Press.
Falk, Lisa, ed. 1991 Historical Archaeology in Global Perspective. Washington, DC:
Smithsonian Institution Press.
Fantasia, Rick 1988 Cultures of Solidarity: Consciousness, Action, and Contemporary
American Workers. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Friedlander, Amy 1991 House and Barn: The Wealth of Farmers, 1795–1815. Historical
Archaeology 25(2):15–30.
Funari, Pedro P. A., Martin Hall, and Siân Jones, eds. 1999 Historical Archaeology: Back
From the Edge. London: Routledge.
Garman, James C., and Paul A. Russo 1999 ‘A Disregard of Every Sentiment of Humanity’:
The Town Farm and Class Realignment in Nineteenth-Century Rural New England.
Historical Archaeology 33(1):118–135.
Godelier, Maurice 1986 The Mental and the Material. London: Verso Press.
a class all its own
203
Hall, Martin 1992 Small Things and the Mobile, Conflictual Fusion of Power, Fear, and
Desire. In The Art and Mystery of Historical Archaeology. Anne Yentsch and Mary
Beaudry, eds. Pp. 373–400. Boca Raton: CRC Press.
—— 2000 Archaeology and the Modern World: Colonial Transcripts in South Africa and the
Chesapeake. London: Routledge.
Hardesty, Donald L. 1994 Class, Gender Strategies, and Material Culture in the Mining
West. In Those of Little Note: Gender, Race and Class in Historical Archaeology. Elizabeth
M. Scott, ed. Pp. 129–145. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
Harvey, David 1996 Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference. Oxford: Blackwell
Publishers.
—— 2000 Spaces of Hope. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Hodder, Ian 1986 Reading the Past: Current Approaches to Interpretation in Archaeology.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
—— 2000 Agency and Individuals in Long-term Processes. In Agency in Archaeology.
Marcia-Anne Dobres and John E. Robb, eds. Pp. 21–33. London: Routledge.
Johnson, Matthew 1996 An Archaeology of Capitalism. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.
Klein, Terry 1991 Nineteenth-Century Ceramics and Models of Consumer Behavior.
Historical Archaeology 25(2):77–91.
Kruczek-Aaron, Hadley 2002 Choice Flowers and Well-Ordered Tables: Struggling
Over Gender in a Nineteenth-Century Household. International Journal of Historical
Archaeology 6(3):173–185.
Larrain, Jorge 1995 Identity, the Other, and Postmodernism. In Post-Ality: Marxism and
Postmodernism. Mas’ud Zavarzadeh, Teresa L. Ebert, Donald Morton, eds. Pp. 271–289.
Washington, DC: Maisonneuve Press.
LeeDecker, Charles H. 1991 Historical Dimensions of Consumer Research. Historical
Archaeology 25(2):30–45.
LeeDecker, Charles. H., Terry Klein, Cheryl Holt, and Amy Friedlander 1987 NineteenthCentury Households and Consumer Behavior in Wilmington, Delaware. In Consumer
Choice in Historical Archaeology. Suzanne M. Spencer-Wood, ed. Pp. 233–259. New York:
Plenum Press.
Leone, Mark P. 1988 The Georgian Order as the Order of Merchant Capitalism in
Annapolis, Maryland. In The Recovery of Meaning: Historical Archaeology in the Eastern
United States. Mark P. Leone and Parker B. Potter, Jr., eds. Pp. 235–261. Washington,
DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.
—— 1999 Setting Some Terms for Historical Archaeologies of Capitalism. In Historical
Archaeologies of Capitalism. Mark. P. Leone and Parker B. Potter Jr., eds. Pp. 3–22. New
York: Kluwer Academic.
Leone, Mark P., and Parker B. Potter, Jr., eds. 1999 Historical Archaeologies of Capitalism.
New York: Kluwer Academic.
Lodziak, Conrad 2002 The Myth of Consumerism. London: Pluto Press.
Marquardt, William H. 1992 Dialectical Archaeology. In Archaeological Method and Theory.
Michael B. Shiffer, ed. Pp. 101–140. Vol. 4. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
Marx, Karl, and Frederick Engels 1955 The Communist Manifesto. New York: AppletonCentury-Crofts.
McGuire, Randall H. 1988 Dialogues with the Dead: Ideology and the Cemetery. In The
Recovery of Meaning: Historical Archaeology in the Eastern United States. Mark P. Leone
and Parker B. Potter, Jr., eds. Pp. 435–480. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution
Press.
204
louann wurst
—— 1991 Building Power in the Cultural Landscape of Broome County, New York 1880–
1940. In The Archaeology of Inequality. Randall H. McGuire and Robert Paynter, eds.
Pp. 102–124. Oxford: Blackwell.
—— 1992 A Marxist Archaeology. San Diego: Academic Press.
McGuire, Randall H., and Robert Paynter, eds. 1991 The Archaeology of Inequality. Oxford:
Blackwell.
McGuire, Randall H., and Paul Reckner 2002 The Unromantic West: Labor, Capital, and
Struggle. Historical Archaeology 36(3):44–58.
McGuire, Randall H., and LouAnn Wurst 2002 Struggling with the Past. International
Journal of Historical Archaeology 6(2):85–94.
McNall, Scott G., Rhonda F. Levine, and Rick Fantasia, eds. 1991 Bringing Class Back In.
Boulder: Westview Press.
Meskell, Lynn 1999 Archaeologies of Social Life. Malden: Blackwell.
Miller, George 1991 A Revised Set of CC Index Values for Classification and Economic
Scaling of English Ceramics from 1787 to 1880. Historical Archaeology 25(1):1–25.
Monks, Gregory G. 1999 On Rejecting the Concept of Socio-Economic Status in Historical
Archaeology. In Historical Archaeology: Back From the Edge. Pedro P. A. Funari, Martin
Hall, and Siân Jones, eds. Pp. 204–216. London: Routledge.
Mrozowski, Stephen A. 2000 The Growth of Managerial Capitalism and the Subtleties of
Class Analysis in Historical Archaeology. In Lines that Divide: Historical Archaeologies
of Race, Class, and Gender. James A. Delle, Stephen A. Mrozowski, and Robert Paynter,
eds. Pp. 276–305. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press.
Nassaney, Michael S., and Marjorie R. Abel 1993 The Political and Social Contexts of
Cutlery Production in the Connecticut Valley. Dialectical Anthropology 18, 247–289.
—— 2000 Urban Spaces, Labor Organization, and Social Control: Lessons from New
England’s Nineteenth-Century Cutlery Industry. In Lines that Divide: Historical
Archaeologies of Race, Class, and Gender. James A. Delle, Stephen A. Mrozowski, and
Robert Paynter, eds. Pp. 239–275. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press.
O’Donovan, Maria 2002 Grasping Power: A Question of Relations and Scales. In The
Dynamics of Power. Maria O’Donovan, ed. Pp. 19–34. Carbondale: Center for Archaeo­
logical Investigations and Southern Illinois University.
O’Donovan, Maria, and LouAnn Wurst 2001–02 Living on the Edge: Consumption and
Class at the Keith Site. Northeastern Historical Archaeology 30–31:73–84.
Ollman, Bertell 1976 Alienation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
—— 1993 Dialectical Investigations. New York: Routledge.
Orser, Charles E. 1996 A Historical Archaeology of the Modern World. New York: Plenum
Press.
Orser, Charles E., and Brian M. Fagan 1995 Historical Archaeology. New York: Harper
Collins.
Ortner, Sherry B. 1991 Reading America: Preliminary Notes on Class and Culture. In
Recapturing Anthropology: Working in the Present. Richard G. Fox, ed. Pp. 163–189.
Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press.
Pakulski, Jan, and Malcolm Waters 1996 The Death of Class. London: Sage.
Patterson, Thomas C. 1993 Archaeology: The Historical Development of Civilizations.
Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall.
Paynter, Robert 1988 Steps to an Archaeology of Capitalism. In The Recovery of Meaning:
Historical Archaeology in the Eastern United States. Mark P. Leone and Parker B. Potter,
Jr., eds. Pp. 407–433. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.
a class all its own
205
—— 2000a Historical Archaeology and the Post-Columbian World of North America. Journal
of Archaeological Research 8(3):169–217.
—— 2000b Historical and Anthropological Archaeology: Forging Alliances. Journal of
Archaeological Research 8(1):1–37.
Paynter, Robert, and Randall H. McGuire 1991 The Archaeology of Inequality: Material
Culture, Domination and Resistance. In The Archaeology of Inequality. Randall H.
McGuire and Robert Paynter, eds. Pp. 1–27. Oxford: Blackwell.
Perry, Warren R. 2000 The Divide in Post-Fifteenth-Century Southern Africa: Archaeology
of the Color Line and White Settler History. In Lines that Divide: Historical Archaeologies
of Race, Class, and Gender. James A. Delle, Stephen A. Mrozowski, and Robert Paynter,
eds. Pp. 78–106. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press.
Praetzellis, Mary, Adrian Praetzellis, and Marley Brown 1988 What Happened to the Silent
Majority? Research Strategies for Studying Dominant Group Material Culture in Late
Nineteenth-Century California. In Documentary Archaeology in the New World. Mary
Beaudry, ed. Pp. 192–202. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Praetzellis, Adrian, and Mary Praetzellis 2001 Mangling Symbols of Gentility in the Wild
West: Case Studies in Interpretive Archaeology. American Anthropologist 103(3):645–
654.
Purser, Margaret 1999 Ex Occidente Lux? An Archaeology of Later Capitalism in the Nine­
teenth Century West. In Historical Archaeologies of Capitalism. Mark P. Leone and Parker
B. Potter, Jr., eds. Pp. 115–141. New York: Kluwer Academic.
Reitz, Elizabeth J. 1987 Vertebrate Fauna and Socioeconomic Status. In Consumer Choice
in Historical Archaeology. Suzanne M. Spencer-Wood, ed. Pp. 101–120. New York: Plenum
Press.
Sayer, Derek 1987 The Violence of Abstraction: The Analytical Foundations of Historical
Materialism. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Schulz, Peter D., and Sherri M. Gust 1983 Faunal Remains and Social Status in Nineteenth
Century Sacramento. Historical Archaeology 17(1):44–53.
Scott, Elizabeth M., ed. 1994 Those of Little Note: Gender, Race, and Class in Historical
Archaeology. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
Shackel, Paul A., and David L. Larsen 2000 Labor, Racism, and the Built Environment in
Early Industrial Harpers Ferry. In Lines that Divide: Historical Archaeologies of Race,
Class, and Gender. James A. Delle, Stephen A. Mrozowski, and Robert Paynter, eds. Pp.
22–39. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press.
Shephard, Steven J. 1987 Status Variation in Antebellum Alexandria. In Consumer Choice
in Historical Archaeology. Suzanne M. Spencer-Wood, ed. Pp. 163–198. New York: Plenum
Press.
Spencer-Wood, Suzanne M., and Scott D. Heberling 1987 Consumer Choices in White
Ceramics: A Comparison of Eleven Early Nineteenth-Century Sites. In Consumer Choice
in Historical Archaeology. Suzanne M. Spencer-Wood, ed. Pp. 55–84. New York: Plenum
Press.
Sweely, Tracy L., ed. 1999 Manifesting Power: Gender and the Interpretation of Power in
Archaeology. London: Routledge.
Thomas, Julian S. 2002 Taking Power Seriously. In The Dynamics of Power. Maria
O’Donovan, ed. Pp. 35–50. Carbondale: Center for Archaeological Investigations and
Southern Illinois University.
Thompson, E. P. 1978 The Poverty of Theory and Other Essays. New York: Monthly Review
Press.
206
louann wurst
Wall, Diana DiZerega 1999 Examining Gender, Class, and Ethnicity in Nineteenth-Century
New York City. Historical Archaeology 33(1):102–117.
Wilkie, Laurie A., and Kevin M. Bartoy 2000 A Critical Archaeology Revisited. Current
Anthropology 41, 747–777.
Williams, Raymond 1983 Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Wood, Ellen M. 1995 Democracy Against Capitalism: Renewing Historical Materialism.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wood, Margaret C. 2002a Women’s Work and Class Conflict in a Working-Class Coal-Mining
Community. In The Dynamics of Power. Maria O’Donovan, ed. Pp. 66–87. Carbondale:
Center for Archaeological Investigations and Southern Illinois University.
—— 2002b Fighting for Our Homes. Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Anthropology,
Syracuse University.
Wright, Erik O. 1994 Interrogating Inequality: Essays on Class Analysis, Socialism and
Marxism. London: Verso.
—— 1997 Class Counts: Comparative Studies in Class Analysis. London: Cambridge
University Press.
Wurst, LouAnn 1999 Internalizing Class in Historical Archaeology. Historical Archaeology
33(1):7–21.
—— 2002 Mobilizing Social Labor in Nineteenth-Century Rural America: A Power Play in
Three Acts. In The Dynamics of Power. Maria O’Donovan, ed. Pp. 88–104. Carbondale:
Center for Archaeological Investigations and Southern Illinois University.
Wurst, LouAnn, and Robert K. Fitts 1999 Introduction: Why Confront Class? Historical
Archaeology 33(1):1–6.
Wurst, LouAnn, and Randall H. McGuire 1999 Immaculate Consumption: A Critique of
the ‘Shop till you Drop’ School of Human Behavior. International Journal of Historical
Archaeology 3(3):191–199.
Wylie, Alison 1999 Why Should Historical Archaeologists Study Capitalism? The Logic of
Question and Answer and the Challenge of System Analysis. In Historical Archaeologies
of Capitalism. Mark P. Leone and Parker B. Potter, Jr., eds. Pp. 23–50. New York:
Kluwer.
Yentsch, Anne, and Mary C. Beaudry 2001 American Material Culture in Mind, Thought,
and Deed. In Archaeological Theory Today. Ian Hodder, ed. Pp. 214–240. Cambridge:
Polity.
Zavarzadeh, Mas’ud 1995 Post-Ality: The (Dis)Simulations of Cybercapitalism. In PostAlity: Marxism and Postmodernism. Mas’ud Zavarzadeh, Teresa L. Ebert, and Donald
Morton, eds. Pp. 1–75. Washington, DC: Maisonneuve Press.
Part III
World Systems and
Local Living
Chapter 11
Conquistadors, Plantations,
and Quilombo: Latin
America in Historical
Archaeological Context
Pedro Paulo A. Funari
Latin America: Modern Civilizations with Old Roots
More than a region, Latin America is one of the many concepts resulting from the
Enlightenment and the French Revolution, a new way of understanding the world
and dividing it. Nowadays, Latin America is felt as natural a concept as the meter,
a major invention by the French in their search for universal ways of measuring the
world. Latin America is a concept used for the first time in 1856, in Spanish, and
1861, in French. It was an attractive name, as it did not refer to the Iberian colonizers, but to a rather vague “Latin” origin (Heydenreich 1995:231–234). It took
several decades for it to be adopted. In fact, Brazil rejected the term during the
19th century, and to this day still a clear separation exists between Brazil and Latin
America, understood as “Spanish-speaking America.”
However, Latin America is now a label used in most countries by both scholars
and ordinary people as a shortcut for describing the independent countries extending from the southern border of the United States of America to Cape Horn,
formerly part of the Spanish and Portuguese empires, as well as the old French
colony of Haiti (Pendle 1963:13) (Figure 11.1). It has distinct ramifications for the
practice of historical archaeology. This definition of Latin America directly links to
the process of building nation states in the 19th century, and for this reason, it
usually does not apply to areas formerly under Spanish or French rule, like large
parts of the United States, or to those colonies still under direct colonial rule, like
French Guiana (Bethel 1984).
However, this traditional definition is not entirely consistent or satisfactory as an
analytical device. In the past five hundred years or so, the first three centuries
were characterized by the rule of two competing Iberian crowns, the Spanish and
the Portuguese, whose legacy is still very much felt to this day (Funari 1998;
Weckmann 1992, 1993). Accordingly, in this book, I use Latin America to refer to
Iberian civilizations in the Americas. A more appropriate name would be Iberian
210
pedro funari
Figure 11.1 Map of Latin America with sites referred to in this chapter and elsewhere in the
volume (shown in italics)
America, a term officially in use in Spain but otherwise not widely used. Latin
America here then refers to Spanish and Portuguese civilizations in the western
hemisphere. The two Iberian Peninsula kingdoms spread not only their administration, but also their language and culture to large areas, and it is thus possible to
differentiate two Iberian Americas: the areas under the control of the Castilians
and those under Portuguese rule, the former being also named Hispanic, and the
conquistadors, plantations, and quilombo
211
latter known as Brazil. The two areas differed also in the official languages used:
Castilian or Spanish in the areas under Spanish rule and Portuguese in Brazil. Even
though native languages were and are widely spoken in several areas within Latin
America, the official languages have always been only Spanish and Portuguese.
Although quite close, the two languages have been more a factor of difference than
of interaction.
This chapter deals with Hispanic and Portuguese Americas in both a contrasting and integrative way, all the while charting the context for the practice of
historical archaeology and the understanding of material and lived culture. The
Iberian roots of Latin America explain many shared general traits, mores, customs,
and ways of life, so much so that for outside observers, Brazilians, Mexicans, and
Argentines are seen in quite the same light. Perhaps the most important shared
cultural outlook is a syncretic form of Roman Catholicism, but several others too
are true, like the Roman legal system, a Mediterranean approach to life, even a
shared mixed experience in living with Muslims and Jews, as well in the fight
against both.
The differences, however, are no less impressive, as Portugal forged its own
identity in the first centuries of the second millennium A.D. in direct opposition to
the Castilians. Portugal was the only medieval kingdom in the Iberian Peninsula
able to retain independence from the imperial ambitions of the Castilians, and the
result were two different civilizations in Europe itself. Castilians invented an empire
in the peninsula and named it Spain, the old Roman name for the entire Iberian
peninsula, in a clear challenge to Portugal. The rivalries and differences were only
to increase with time, with the colonization of the Americas further splitting the
two civilizations. When Portugal was ruled by Spain from 1580 to 1640 it kept its
own administration, and the experience only reinforced the sense of difference in
both sides. This chapter addresses both sides of the coin: the common features and
the diversity between the Spanish and the Portuguese, in particular as they relate
the practice of historical archaeology.
The Iberian Peninsula in the Late Middle Ages and the Origins of
the Conquistadors
Latin America starts in the Pyrenees, in the Iberian peninsula of southern Europe.
To understand Latin American historical archaeology it is necessary to understand
first Iberian cultures and their long history. Nearly seven hundred years of continuous Roman involvement have left their mark on many aspects of contemporary
life in both Spain and Portugal and in their American offspring. Iberia is the largest
peninsula in Europe (580,160 square kilometers) and comprises different geo­
graphical areas, occupying a unique position in the crossroads between the Mediterranean, Europe, Africa, and the Atlantic. A country of passage, it has been settled
by several peoples. There are six main geographical regions: the Mediterranean
coast, the Ebro valley, Andalusia, the north and south Meseta, the Atlantic coast,
and the northwest.
212
pedro funari
The Romans conquered the Iberian peninsula as a direct result of a struggle with
her old North African rival, Carthago, the powerful Semitic empire with several
settlements in Spain. It took Rome almost two hundred years to conquer the whole
peninsula, even though the Mediterranean and southern areas stayed under Roman
rule since the end of the third century B.C. By the mid-first century A.D., a mixed
population of Iberian, Celtic, Semitic, and Roman descent lived under Roman rule,
lived in Roman towns and cities, and used Latin as their tongue. The spread of
Latin resulted in the development of several Romance languages in the Middle Ages
and still in use: Castilian (known as Spanish), Portuguese, Catalan, and Galician.
Only in the high lands between modern Spain and France did a non-Romance
language, Basque, survive, spoken mainly by peasants until the recent development
in the 1970s of an autonomous Basque government in the area. Hispano-Roman
society was, in many ways, the result of a self-generated fusion of Italic, Native
Iberian, and others (Keay 1988). The population of the peninsula was varied both
in ethnic origin and in their attitude to Rome (Goodman 1997). In the second
century A.D., Roman emperors were born in Spain or of Spanish extraction,
and Rome’s imprint in the peninsula and later in their colonies is very much felt.
It is no coincidence the fact that the term coined to refer to the former Iberian
American colonies is precisely “Latin” America, referring as it does to their Roman
ancestry.
A most recognized face of Roman society in the peninsula is slavery, practiced
by the Carthaginians and expanded by the Romans, an institution which continued
in use during the Medieval and then early Modern periods. Another feature of
Roman origin is academic architecture, grounded on the fundamental importance
of layout, order, proportion, symmetry, and stylistic perfection. The Spanish crown
much later re-appropriated these values, both by highlighting the Roman architectural heritage and by reading the classics. The Romans regarded the development
of cities as perhaps the most effective way of consolidating their rule (Thorpe
1995:19), and Romans spread the grid plan in Spain. Romans cities were walled
and two major avenues crossed at the center, the cardo and decumanus. Just at its
heart, there was a forum, the center of community life, with temples, civic buildings,
and the marketplace, all of which would later inspire the foundations of Hispanic
cities in the Americas (Contin and Larcamón 1996). Native towns were not planned
and were usually grown in the hills, the so-called oppida, while Roman towns were
preferably settled in plain and open areas (Funari 1997a).
Roman private housing is also worth mentioning. The typical domus was a single
story building planned around two unroofed spaces, the atrium in the part nearer
the street and the perystile further back. The house was inward-looking, with
few windows to the outside; features which were to reemerge in modern times.
Catholic church buildings developed from another Roman traditional building, the
basilica, originally an administrative building. However, the Catholic basilicas were
seldom built over Roman temples, even though pre-Roman hallowed ground often
kept their religious importance by being honored with Catholic chapels (Mierse
1999:299). Again, the experience in the Americas replicates this pattern, using
previous native sacred sites to the advantage of the Catholic faith.
conquistadors, plantations, and quilombo
213
During the centuries of Roman rule the Iberian peninsula was converted to the
official Roman Catholic faith. The fourth century A.D. saw the appearance of
ecclesiastical buildings as an important new focus in town life. Literary and archaeological evidence show that church buildings began to dominate the centers of
major towns as they became ever more closely identified with the state. The decline
of secular public buildings matched the first appearance of churches and other
Catholic buildings, marking a significant step toward the small fortified ecclesiastical centers of early medieval Spain. Catholicism was vibrant yet intolerant of pagans
and heretics, and it produced the Christian emperor Theodosius (A.D. 379–395)
who tried to impose a rigid Catholic orthodoxy on heretics and pagans, culminating in A.D. 391 with the banning of pagan sacrifices and the closure of all pagan
temples (Keay 1988:172–201). Catholic orthodoxy established itself in the Iberian
peninsula and its grip on power and society was to be longstanding.
The peninsula was settled by Germanic peoples, the Sueves in the northwest
and the Visigoths elsewhere. The Visigoths mixed with the local elites, adopted
Romance tongues, and converted to Catholicism. Large properties continued in
use, and slavery was even reinforced, the institution being explicitly justified by the
great thinker, Isidore, archbishop of Seville. After Saint Isidore, “God in his just
judgment created slaves and masters, so that freedom of slaves be controlled by
their masters” (Gourévitch 1976:55). Free people, on the other hand, were losing
rights, so that they were described the same way as the slaves, as serui, the medieval
serfs. In both Sueve and Goth areas the Church was the most important authority
and even in remote areas, like notably in Galaecia, it was the main conveyor of
tradition. In Galaecia, an area which produced two closely related Romance languages, Galego and Portuguese, the Church was so important that it was able to
impose liturgical terms to refer to the days of the week (Mattoso 1997:310).
The Enduring Material Culture of the Moors
Muslims conquered most of the peninsula in the early 8th century and more than
half of it stayed under their rule for several centuries. Al Andaluz was the name in
Arabic of Muslim Spain and to this day southern Spain is called Andalusía. The
colonizers came from North Africa, Berbers and Moors, spreading not only the new
faith but also the Arabic language and a new material world. It is believed that half
of the population under Andalucian rule continued to practice Catholicism in Goth
style (Torres 1997: 365–372), but conversion to Islam was also widespread. Arabic
was used as learned language from the tenth century. Several languages were in
use, however, by the scholars, notably Arabic, Latin, and Hebrew, while the people
used Romance tongues, heavily influenced by the Arabic used by the elites. The
spoken Arabic left its imprint in Iberian Romance languages and is an important
indication of Arab material culture introduced in everyday usage. Some dwellings
were made with unburned bricks dried in the sun, adobe (from Arabic al tub), others
used glazed tiles (azulejos, from al zualij), and some had a roof terrace (açotéia from
al sutaihah). Other architectural features introduced by the Moors were the alcove
214
pedro funari
(a recess, from al cobba) and a hall or lobby (saguán from satwan), as well as balconies, courtyard houses, and roof framing systems (Mahfouz and Serageldin 1990).
Inside, there were baskets without handles (açafates), ornaments (alfaias) and cushions (almofadas), carpets (alfrombras), caskets (ataúde), and household furniture
(enxoval; ajuar).
In towns, there were minarets (almádenas), butchery (açougue), and urban quarter
(barrio). Lunch was also an Arab meal (almuerzo), using olive oil (aceite) and several
other ingredients from the Arabic (like arroz, acelga, alfarroba, açafrão, acepipe,
albarrã, almôndega). Agriculture techniques that are Moorish, such as irrigation
ditching (alfobre), as well as the water mill (aceña) (Caro Baroja 1983: 239–349),
the village itself (aldea), hamlet (arraial), store (armazém), reservoir (açude), and
quarter (arrabalde). Several trades bear names of Arabic origin, like tailor (alfaiate),
practical veterinarian (alveitar), armorer (alfageme), muleteer (almocreve), as well as
measures and weights like arroba (measure of weight) and quilate (carat). Several
officials and administrative functions are still named with Arabic words, like alcalde
(mayor), almoxarife and alguazil (bailiffs), almotacel (alderman), alvará (permit), and
masmorra (dungeon). Moorish weapons and military buildings were adopted, such
as zaga (spear), alfange (sword), alcáçar (fortress), adaga (dagger), atalaia (watch
tower), ameia and adarve (battlement), alcáçova (castle), and arsenal (Bueno
1967:31–34, 101–103). Caravel, a most important kind of ship for early modern
sail, is also a result of Arab and general Mediterranean techniques. The word itself
of probable Greek origin, “lobster,” but it was through the Arabs that the word was
introduced in Italian (caravella), Spanish (carabela), and Portuguese (caravela)
(Eguilaz y Yaguas 1886; Mendonça 1892). The modern Caravel though was invented
by the Portuguese in the 1430s (Barata 1987), not least thanks to Arab technology
both in boat building and in astronomical and cartographic matters (Miceli
1997:73).
Glazed pottery was one of the most enduring introductions by the Moors
(Mazahéri 1968:281–285; Riu 1989:157–160). This glazed pottery was to be known
as maiolica, from the name of the Isle of Mayorca, and it was in use in the Christian
areas by the 13th century (Berti and Rizzo 1997; Jiménez 1987). In fact, ceramics
of Moorish filiation are still produced in southern Spain (Llorens Artigas and
Corredor Matheos 1970:164). It is thus difficult to underestimate the importance
of Moorish influence in general (Andrade Filho 1989; Dozy 1946) and in material
culture in particular. The archaeological study of Moorish Iberia is still in its beginnings (cf. Riu 1989:41; Marques 1995), but it is clear that landscape (Navarro
1995), cityscape, housing, and everyday life artifacts of Moorish origin shaped both
the Iberian peninsula and Latin America.
Under the Moors, the Jews established a prosperous community, known as
Sefarad. Jews arrived in great numbers from all parts of the Islamic world to settle
in Al Andalus. The Jewish intellectuals became co-workers of the learned Arabs,
becoming, like the Christians, Arabic-speakers. Maimonides (1135–1204) is the
best representative of this Greek, Roman, Jewish, Christian, and Muslim mixture.
When the Christian kingdoms began to conquer the lands under the Moors, Jews
faced restrictions. Jews living in ghettos (known as juderías) in Seville, Cordoba,
conquistadors, plantations, and quilombo
215
Toledo, Barcelona, and several other cities and towns were often attacked by mobs
under the auspices of the Catholic Church. There was a continuing and relentless
pressure from the Catholic Church and the states to bring reluctant Jews to the
Catholic faith. Some became conversos, soon to be called New Christians and also
Marranos, literally “pigs.” For several centuries, people were accused of being
hidden Jews and were persecuted by the Inquisition. The introduction of the Autoda-fé, or “act of faith,” led to the execution on the stake of several people of Jewish
descent since 1481 (Grigulevich 1980).
For more than three hundred years the pyres blazed in Portugal, Spain, and
her Latin-American domains (Lea 1908). Ferdinand and Isabella signed an edict
expelling the Jews from Spain on March 31, 1492. Soon afterward, Portugal in
1496 and Navarra in 1499 followed suit and also expelled the Jews (PedreroSánchez 1994). This led to mass conversion and to later persecution of New
Christians and also to a large movement of Sephardim (“Spaniards” in Hebrew)
to the Netherlands, France, and elsewhere in both Europe and the Islamic world.
The imprint of the Jewish into the Iberian material world was not as extensive as
that of the ruling Moors (but see Cantera and Millás 1956; López Álvarez 1986),
but Jewish and New Christian influence continued for centuries in Latin America,
not least in the constant persecution by the Church (Grigulevich 1980).
The Outset of Colonial Expansion
The Iberian peninsula was not only under the grip of Catholic repression, it was
also under the influence of the Renaissance. In the late Medieval period, there was
a growth of a fresh, humanistic exploration of Greek science and Latin culture in
general. An outstanding achievement of early Spanish humanism and of printing
skill was the publication, delayed until 1522, of the famous Complutensian Polyglot
Bible, a tri-lingual edition with the original Hebrew paralleled to the Greek
Septuagint and to the Latin Vulgate translations. Iberian vernacular languages were
spoken for several centuries, and they were written in ordinary contexts from the
12th century (Freches 1970:11–21). By the end of the 15th century, the main
languages in use were Castilian (later to be known as Spanish), the official language
of the Spanish court, Portuguese/Galician, Catalan, and Basque. In the beginning
of the 16th century, Castile was able to establish a Spanish monarchy superseding
several Medieval kingdoms, so that there were only two vernacular languages officially in written use: Spanish and Portuguese. Latin had for centuries been the
official language, but the new interest in Roman authors led to a more classical use
of Latin by intellectuals beyond the clerics.
The late Medieval period witnessed an outward expansion of the Iberian powers.
The main strategy followed by Portugal in the west and León-Castile and Aragón
to the east was the seizure of external resources. This first took place in the peninsula itself, with the Reconquista of Muslim areas, but soon the expansion was
to Africa and then the Far East by the Portuguese, and to the Mediterranean by
the Spaniards. As the Muslims were expelled from the western Mediterranean, in
216
pedro funari
the east the Ottomans were conquering the ancient Byzantine Roman Empire. The
massive Ottoman Empire would block direct European access to the Orient for
over three centuries and caused the deflection of Portugal and Spain to search a
western route to the East. Portugal explored the African coast, reached the Cape
of Good Hope and then India, while the Spanish crown financed Columbus (Wolf
1982:34–36).
In the Iberian peninsula, pastures were extended at the expense of arable land,
especially during the 15th century. Payments to the Castilian Crown by the sheepherders’ guild, called Mesta, became a major source of royal revenue, accelerating
the decline of agriculture. As the price of wool was stable, sheep raising was favored
by the state, and wool was exported to Flanders and to Italian towns. The dominant
pursuit came to be livestock keeping. The pastoral economy throttled industrial
development in Spain. The distribution of conquered land from the Moors was very
uneven, so that large latifundia were owned by a small number of estate owners.
Thanks to irrigation systems and agricultural techniques of the Romans, sometimes
preserved and improved by the Moors, new crops were available for consumption
and export. Fruits, vegetables such as sugar, cotton, citrus fruit, peaches, strawberries, rice, figs, dates, almonds, saffron, mulberry trees, and silkworms were exotic
and profitable industries left by the Moors (Miskimin 1975:61–65).
In Portugal, the bulk of the population worked the land, most of them under
feudal rules; the cultivators paid in kind or money and also by rendering two or
three days a week of unpaid labor. Agricultural rents and labor dues supported a
military nobility and a large Catholic clergy. The merchants grew in importance
from the beginning of the 15th century, dealing with the export of grain, olive oil,
wine, pork, salt, and dyestuffs for English cloth. Merchants continued to work
in a feudal context, through concessions and contracts, as a bureaucratic estate.
Raymundo Faoro (1976:73–96) refers to the late Medieval period in Portugal as
the “freezing of the bureaucratic estate,” when the nobility, the clergy, and the
merchant stratum consolidate as stable estates, precluding the development of
modern classes. Medieval men had long exhibited geographical curiosity and as
early as 1344 the Kingdom of Castile claimed and had extracted from the papacy
a title to the Canary Islands, off the coast of Africa. By the early 15th century, the
stimuli for discovery existed in strength, and Portugal combined practical experience, Arab science, and open inquiry in an eclectic approach to the problems of
the Atlantic. John I and his sons conquered Ceuta, a Moorish fortress on the southern side of the Straits of Gibraltar, in 1415 (Bourdon 1973:53–67), setting a logical
stage in the long reconquest of lands from the Arabs.
Portugal was recognized as an independent kingdom by the papal bull
Manifestis probatum, in 1179, as a conquering kingdom against the Moors. Pope
Alexander III donated to King Afonso Henrique de omnia loca que . . . de sarracenorum manibus eripueris (“all the places he gains from the Sarracens”), and the king
is described as sicut bonus filius et princeps catholicus (“good son and Catholic
prince”). Reconquest was thus a Medieval ideology extending to the modern period
(Boissellier 1994:139–141; Edmann 1940). Several papal bulls and other documents refer to the conquest of Muslim territory in the Iberian peninsula and later
conquistadors, plantations, and quilombo
217
in Africa as actions as important as the Crusades to the Holy Land. For several
centuries, indulgences were given to Iberian fighters. Later, in the Americas, the
same indulgences were given to those conquering and converting Indians. This
practice continued in use until the 19th century (Rabello 1984). At the same time,
this venture can be considered as an early example of modern colonialism. Henry
the Navigator, Prince of Portugal, led the expedition against Ceuta, a major center
of the Saharan gold trade. Once in North Africa, Portugal aimed at controlling the
gold trade and sidelining the Muslim enemies of Christendom. The Portuguese
discovered Madeira and the Cape Verde Islands, developing labor-intensive sugar
plantations worked by African slaves, anticipating the whole American exploration
in the next century (Orser and Fagan 1995:53).
Prince Henry the Navigator progressed slowly, hindered by fear of the unknown
and by fantastic rumors, such as the famous fear that the sea became warmer as
one sailed south and it would at some point boil like a cauldron. By 1434, Cape
Bojador was rounded; by 1444, Cape Verde and the river Senegal had been reached.
The slave trade began in earnest in the 1540s, and produced a lot of state revenues
for Portugal. By the middle of the 15th century, the Atlantic islands were raising
sugar, competing with traditional Mediterranean producers (Amado and Figueiredo
1999). Grown on fertile soils and with slave labor, the competitive products of the
Atlantic made a dramatic impact upon the European market. Once the profitability
of the explorations had been proven, nothing could restrain further progress and
southward and westward voyages grew in intensity. The Portuguese trading station
at Elmina, on the Gold Coast, was established in 1482, becoming a trade center for
slaves, ivory, gold, and pepper (Miskimin 1975:158–163; Pikirayi, this volume).
The Spanish Crown entered the race for the west late but was able to reach the
New World first. Columbus returned to Spain in 1493 convinced that he had landed
in eastern Asia. Christendom was confined and suffering defeats in the Mediterranean; its bastions against Islam were falling. Long-standing Medieval traditions,
such as that of St. Thomas in India, meant the possibility of contact with Catholic
peoples on the other side of the Islamic world. A practicable sea route to Asia promised thus an enticing prospect of trade in silk and spices, but also strategic inroads
against Islam. Still on his second voyage, Columbus identified Cuba as China:
After that I wish to leave for another very large island, which I believe must be Cipangu
(Japan), according to the signs which these Indians whom I have with me make; they
call it “Colba.” They say that there are ships and many very good sailors there. Beyond
this island, there is another which they call “Bofio,” which they say is also very large.
The others, which lie between them, we shall see in passing, and according to whether
I shall find a quantity of gold or spices, I shall decide what is to be done. But I am
still determined to proceed to the mainland and to the city of Quinsay and to give the
letters to Your Highnesses to the Grand Khan, and to request a reply and return with
it. (Columbus 1960:41)
It took some time until the “New World” was introduced in the vocabulary of the
period (Parry 1969:3–5). Soon after that, in 1494 Portugal and Spain signed a treaty
at Tordesillas, dividing the world between the two countries. The treaty established
218
pedro funari
that all the lands 170 leagues to the west of the Azores were Spanish, those to the
east were Portuguese (Romano and Tenenti 1986:177–180). The Portuguese arrived
at South America in 1500, and in the following year the Florentine Amerigo
Vespucci was sent by the Portuguese to explore the South American coast. Vespucci
was the first to call the western hemisphere “New World” and afterward the continent gained his name, America. In the first decades of the 16th century Portugal
sent several expeditions to South America, which was called successively Ilha de
Vera Cruz (“Isle of the true Cross”), Terra de Santa Cruz (“Land of the Holy
Cross”), sometimes Terra dei Pappagalli (“Land of the Parrots”), and finally Brazil,
the name of a Medieval mythic island to the west of Ireland. Since the Middle Ages,
Brazil wood had been called verzino, in Italian, a product of the mythic island
(Funari 1997b; Weckmann 1993: 29–40).
Features of Iberian Societies at the Outset of New World Colonization
and Their Enduring Character
The divine mission of the Church and the monarchy was the basis of political
doctrine, and it remained so for several centuries during the modern period. Iberian
kings were dutiful followers of the Church, and in return the Church granted money
to the crown, sent its knights and tenants to serve in the royal armies, and provided
experienced counselors for the court. Iberian monarchies owed its spiritual character to the Church. Popular support for the monarchy was reinforced by the
theoretical conception of the Church on the two powers, secular and clerical.
Typically the serf tilled a plot of land owned by a lord or baron who gave him a life
tenure and military protection as long as he paid an annual rent in products, labor,
or money. In the large latifundia resulting from the conquest of enemy land, peasants could be evicted at the owner’s will. Around the baronial villa peasants had
their village, part of a manor. The landed proprietor was known as dominus (Lord)
in Latin language documents, señor in Romance. The feudal law of property recognized several forms of land possession. Unconditional ownership was reserved for
the king, while lords were considered as tenants and inheritance was through the
Germanic principle of primogeniture. Younger sons were encouraged to venture
forth and carve out new estates in conquered lands. Torture was revived in the 13th
century, when Roman and ecclesiastical law were extended to large areas of the
peninsula. Out of Germanic customs of military initiation, crossed with Muslim
influences, chivalry flowered.
Marx (1978:52) refers to feudal relics in capitalist society, but in the Iberian
world those “relics” continued for centuries, hindering the development of capitalism. In feudal society, relations which were far removed from the nature of feudalism were given a feudal form, probably the best example being simple money
relations. Even though there was no trace of mutual personal service as between
lord and vassal, they worked under a patronage and patriarchal framework (Marx
1978:408). The elites were concerned with nobility (hidalguía, fidalguia) and purity
of Catholic blood (limpieza de sangre), but also disdaining business and manual
conquistadors, plantations, and quilombo
219
occupations. Particular attention has always been paid to the special privileges of
the grandees, the growing abyss between rich and noble few and the povertystricken masses, the enormous numbers of the clergy, the absence of an enterprising bourgeoisie, the fatalistic acceptance of exploitation, the pervasion of the
government bureaucracy by the nobility and privileged few, the crippling effects of
the sale of offices, and the formidable powers of grandees on their vast estates, or
latifundia.
The Archaeology of Slavery: Early Plantations and Maroons
Only against this backdrop can this chapter turn to a consideration of the archaeological study of Latin America. Still in its infancy, historical archaeology has developed unevenly in different areas within South America. Historical archaeology in
Latin America is practiced by archaeologists from the area itself and by American
and European scholars, and their outlooks are usually quite different, locals being
much more concerned with the intricacies of local realities. In the past few years,
several archaeologists from the United States have been studying the continent, but
if we include Spanish sites in the present day territory of the U.S., as we should,
then we must turn to the early and pioneering study by Kathleen Deagan, whose
work rightly linked the whole Caribbean area as a social and cultural unit (Deagan
1987). Mission archaeology developed as a result (e.g., Weisman 1992), as well as
several other subjects such as Spanish forts and bastions (Bense 2004, with comprehensive earlier literature). Based in non-Latin American countries, their outlook
usually stresses the global features of Latin American material culture and pays only
marginal attention to documents and literature in Spanish or Portuguese. Their
main contribution relates to their external understanding of Iberian culture, being
unconstrained by a close contact and daily life within Latin American countries,
that is, with their specificity.
Latin American historical archaeologists are in the opposite situation, immersed
in their own societies, usually aware of historical documents and recent literature
in local languages. While historical archaeology by Americans is rooted in anthropology, historical archaeologists in Latin America understand the discipline from
other standpoints, usually history, art history, and architecture, even if anthropology
also plays a role in several institutions in different countries. Since the mid-1980s,
Arno Álvarez Kern (1991) in Brazil has been a pioneer, using a historian’s perspective on the importance of documents to foster the study of the Jesuit missions. In
Argentina, Daniel Schávelzon (1993) introduced modern historical archaeology
and encouraged urban archaeology during the same period while in the faculty of
architecture at Buenos Aires University. Even though coming from different disciplines, both pioneers stressed the use of documents in Spanish and Portuguese,
used as an epistemological reference not anthropological theory, but history, art
history, and architecture.
In recent years, with the restoration of civilian rule in several countries, historical archaeology has developed quickly, and the contacts with foreign colleagues led
220
pedro funari
to new trends in the discipline as practiced by Latin Americans. Social theory has
become more widely used, and the study of social interaction, conflicts, and contradictions has witnessed a noticeable expansion. The main feature, though,
continued to be the importance of local conditions in Latin American contexts.
Zarankin (2002) has shown how archaeological remains from Santa Fe la Vieja,
Argentina, reflect a mix of indigenous and Spanish population in different, core
and peripheral, quarters of the city. In several countries, archaeologists used social
theory by local thinkers, such as Brazilian anthropologist Gilberto Freyre (1933)
and Cuban social scientist Fernando Ortiz (1940), to understand material culture
as a result of transculturation, instead of “acculturation” or “ethnogenesis.” Rejecting the notion of homogeneous culture, as in normative social interpretive models,
transculturation is a homegrown, Latin American interpretive framework grounded
in everyday life in Latin America. Lourdes Domínguez’s (1995) analysis of Cuban
beads shows the intricacies of African, Iberian, and Native elements in those
religious artifacts.
The same applies to the role of patriarchal and authoritarian relations in Iberian
societies, as reflected in material culture. The excavation of clandestine cemeteries
of missing people is such an archaeology, but so is the study of wars against rebellious ordinary people, as in the case of the early 20th-century Canudos in Brazil.
Archaeology at Canudos has shown both ordinary people, with their mix of Iberian,
Native, and African material culture, and the assaulting military troops in their
violence, revealed by the atrocities committed against unarmed children and women.
Far from being bourgeois, elites were patriarchal and authoritarian, and all of those
features have been revealed by archaeological analysis. It is fair to say that this kind
of archaeology remains less popular in countries with strong pre-colonial roots and
a prestigious body of archaeological remains from Indian civilizations, as is the case
of Peru and Ecuador, but the same applies to countries whose indigenous communities maintain a strong sense of identity today, as in Paraguay, where an astonishing 90 percent of the population speak Guarany.
As historical archaeology has traditionally focused on European remains, it is
not surprising that it developed first and foremost in those countries whose national
identities link most strongly to Europe, notably Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil. It
is remarkable that all of the papers from South America in the “Historical Archaeology in Latin America” series, published by the University of South Carolina
(1992–95), focus exclusively on these three countries. As in the United States, Latin
American historical archaeology has been the “archaeology of us,” that is, the
cultural history of European descendants, in opposition to the “archaeology of the
other,” that is, precontact Indians. There are differences in the conceptualization of
these categories, however, because in the United States, “us” is a less inclusive
category than in South America. In the latter case, indigenous peoples and slaves
are subsumed as part of “our” society, even if playing a subordinate role.
Yet another difference between the practice of historical archaeology in the U.S.
and Latin America is the inclusion of classical archaeology – that is, the archaeology
of Greece and Rome – within the field of historical archaeology, no doubt because
both the ancient and the modern worlds are historical, but also because there is an
conquistadors, plantations, and quilombo
221
active desire to relate modern and ancient identities. Classical collections in
Montevideo and Rio de Janeiro have been involved since the 19th century in forging
a sense of national identity, and as a result, classical archaeology could not be
excluded from the mindset of local historical archaeologists. More recently,
the medieval roots of South American historical material culture would inevitably
lead historical archaeologists to favor a broad approach, exploring the medieval
origins of Latin American culture, such as town planning and church architecture.
So, while in the United States archaeologists stress perceived discontinuities between
the premodern and modern periods, in the Southern Cone countries such a hiatus
does not prevail, first and foremost due to a subjective perception of the past that
emphasizes continuity over change.
The study of slave settlements, known as quilombos, cimarrones, and palenques,
began years ago, using both written documents and archaeological material
(Guimarães 1992; Guimarães and Lanna 1980). Maroons were runaway settlements established by slaves, African, Native South American, and mixed people
together, usually far from the main colonial slave areas. The largest maroon, though,
was left untouched by archaeologists until the early 1990s, when Orser and Funari
decided to survey the area. Historical accounts of this polity rely mostly on Dutch
and Portuguese documents. Maroons were established in areas where there
were extensive slave-holding plantations, as was the case of the northeast of the
Portuguese colony in South America. Runaway settlements were probably established in the hills running parallel to the coast, some 60 to 100 km west, at the
beginning of the 17th century. The fact that Portugal was under Spanish rule
(1580–1640) could have contributed to a relaxation of colonial control, making it
easier for runaway slaves to create a homeland for themselves. The Portuguese called
the settlements “Palmares,” or palm tree grove; the inhabitants preferred to call it
“Angola Janga,” or Little Angola (Figure 11.2). Even though Africans came from
different parts of the continent, most of them probably were from Bantu-speaking
areas, as the name Angola implies.
Even before the end of Spanish rule, the Dutch established a colony in 1630 in
the northeast of Brazil. However, Portuguese settlers continued to live under Dutch
rule, which introduced sources of conflict to the area as the Portuguese colonial
authorities remained in Bahia to the south of the Dutch colony. This further
enhanced the opportunities for growth of the maroon, as the runaways could count
on playing off the rivalries of different colonial authorities. The Dutchman
Bartholomew Lintz lived in Palmares and described it as comprising one large
settlement and one smaller one, with several people living in a dispersed fashion in
the valleys. Several attacks by the Dutch were unsuccessful in destroying the polity,
whose settlements grew in size and number. In 1645, Reijmbach led an attack
against the capital and described it as a village surrounded by a double palisade.
The settlement held more than 200 dwellings, a chapel, four forges, and a large
meeting place, chaired by a chief described as a king.
After the expulsion of the Dutch soon afterward, the colonists traded with the
runaway people, and we know that the polity was run from the capital city of
Macaco by a great lord called Ganga Zumba. The polity, known in contemporary
Figure 11.2 Only known contemporary rendering of Palmares in northeastern Brazil (Barleus
1647)
conquistadors, plantations, and quilombo
223
documents as a Republic (a name used to describe any state as this period), comprised several villages, most of them displaying Bantu roots, but two of them clearly
Tupi, a South American Native branch of languages. Thousands lived in these
settlements, and even though they were attacked almost annually, they continued
to grow. A peace treaty was even struck at Recife between King Ganga Zumba and
the colonial authorities. This outcome was not accepted by other runaways and the
king was killed; he was replaced by his nephew, known as Zumbi. The regular forces
were not able to cope with the rebel state. The authorities had to offer a mercenary
paulista, or pioneer, from São Paulo in the south, Domingos Jorge Velho, the opportunity to conquer the area and receive most of the booty. In February 1694, Macaco
fell, and several rebels managed to flee, among them Zumbi who was captured and
executed on November 20, 1695. Zumbi and Palmares are today considered important symbols for African Brazilians and indeed for all those people fighting against
oppression and for freedom.
The archaeological study of this large maroon polity has been carried out in
relation to a single settlement, the Serra da Barriga or Potbelly Hill, known
in 17th-century documents as “Oiteiro da Barriga” or “Hill like an altar in the
shape of a belly” and identified by local people and scholars alike as the historical
capital of the kingdom, the “Royal Stockade.” Today it is located within the rural
area of União dos Palmares, being approximately 4,000 meters east to west and
500–1,000 meters north to south, elevated from 150 to 560 meters above sea level,
in the original forest area. Two field seasons (1992–93) were undertaken in order
to confirm that this hill, declared a National Heritage Monument in 1985, was
indeed a maroon settlement. The archaeological evidence recovered during the
field seasons resulted in the location of several sites, mostly by pedestrian survey
and trial excavations. The ubiquitous presence of pottery could be interpreted
as of Native South American, European, or mixed styles. The second phase of
archaeological research has been carried out by Scott Allen, who has written a
master’s thesis on the pottery (Allen 1999), and who has continued surveying the
hill since 1996.
Thanks to the publication of papers and books with explicit analyses of Palmares,
even though fieldwork is still in its early stages, it is now the best known historical
site outside of South America and its study has produced theoretical insights unparalleled in the greater region. I will summarize them briefly in the next paragraphs,
emphasizing their different theoretical and conceptual analytic frameworks. Orser
(1996:41–55, 123–129) has integrated the archaeology of Palmares within the
overall global perspective he develops in detail in his book on the archaeology of
the modern world. Palmaristas maintained strong ties to colonial European networks by bartering with colonists, and considering the conflicts within the colonial
society, it is tempting to suggest that at least some settlers may have felt that they
had closer ties to the maroon people than to their rulers, especially the coastal
plantation owners. Besides, as there are references in the colonial documents both
to persecution of Jews, Muslims, heretics, witches, and other outcasts, and to the
presence of some of these marginalized people at Palmares, it is difficult to over­
estimate the contacts between rebels and settlers.
224
pedro funari
The backlands of the Portuguese colony were settled by different ethnic groups,
most of them speaking Tupian languages, and in the coastal plantations, the slaveowners used to mix “blacks of the land” (Native South Americans) and “Guinean
blacks” (Africans). Considering the presence of pottery of Native South American
style at the site (Figure 11.3), the references in documents to native people maintaining friendly ties with the maroon and living there, and even the fact that three
villages of Angola Janga bore Native names (Arotirene, Tabocas, and Subupira), it
is natural to suppose that some groups allied themselves with the attacking colonial
forces, while others could have shared common concerns with the rebels. However,
most people living in the maroon were presumably of African birth or descent. The
slave trade brought people from Angola, many of them war captives in Africa itself
and embedded in African social networks, even though the double enslavement, as
well as the new social environment in the plantations, probably led to rather generic
ties with African traditions. A possible good example is the institution of a war
camp, known in Angola as “kilombo,” and resulting from the European intervention
in Africa, for Palmares was also called a “quilombo.”
The mutualist approach proposed by Orser (1996) tries to put together archaeological and documentary evidence (Knapp 1996:146) and to explain the importance of both large- and small-scale relationships, deemphasizing the notion of a
“culture” and stressing the connection between communities in the modern world,
so that Africans, Native South Americans, and Europeans cannot be disentangled.
Palmares can only be properly understood within the context of global colonialism,
Eurocentrism, capitalism, and modernity, each one being central to historical
archaeology in general and to the understanding of Palmares in particular (Orser
1996:55).
The study of the pottery at the site by Allen (1999) established the presence
of three main wares: Native South American, European, and Palmarino folk manufacture. Rejecting the notion of maintenance of African, Native American, or
European “traits” in the archeological record, Allen preferred to emphasize that
Palmares people forged a new syncretic culture within a specific context. Contextual
interpretation facilitates an understanding of the role of pottery as it relates to
networks of exchange, social organization, settlement patterns, creation of identity,
and so on. The presence of native and European wares underscores the integration
of Palmares into a larger, regional system as a society not isolated, but whose
escaped slaves were fully cognizant of the colonial situation and constructed a
culture and identity that could be used in their interactions with colonists and
Native South Americans. Using an ethnogenetic approach, Allen (2000) proposes
that the process of becoming a new cultural group, who identified themselves as
Palmarino, provides a challenge to the culture historical search for ethnic markers
and should contribute to the development of new foci on the construction of
cultural identity and ethnic group formation.
Rowlands (1999) goes further and suggests that the site was already occupied
by native Indians with whom the first runaways found refuge and that archaeologically the picture indicates neither a multiethnic society of fusion and assimilation nor one of ethnic difference. Thus the possibility exists of a more pluralist
conquistadors, plantations, and quilombo
225
Figure 11.3 Pottery from Palmares
structure with relatively little differentiation in the material culture of much of the
site but increasing elite distinction in specific areas of the settlement. Palmares was
not a refuge site but owed its growth and survival and final destruction to the role
it played in coast/inland trade, as mercantile interests and Palmares opposed those
of the nobility and plantation slave owners, who were able to triumph in the end
due to the strength of precapitalist groups in both Portugal and in the colony.
Furthermore, the ideal of racial mixing, which dominated from the end of the 17th
century as it was cheaper to locally reproduce than to buy new Africans, was a
side effect of this crushing of a tendency toward pluralism in the early history
of Brazil.
As Rowlands’ interpretive framework suggests, Palmares can also be approached
by emphasizing continuity over change, as colonialism and Eurocentrism are practices whose origins can be traced back to the Roman world (Johnson 1997:221).
Furthermore, colonial society, especially in the Iberian world, actively re-created
feudal institutions and worldviews, like the town councils, the cult of the Virgin,
the medieval social structure, church presence, administrative and commercial
rules, scholasticism, and so on (Funari 1998). Palmarino society was not only
enmeshed with other contemporary groups, like the settlers, the Native South
Americans, or the Africans, but also with the past. We cannot understand why
226
pedro funari
Muslims are quoted in documents referring to Palmares if we do not pay due attention to the Catholic, crusader outlook of colonial authorities who were persecuting
infidels as defined within medieval thought. The same applies to other continuities,
like the use of African titles of nganga and nzumbi to refer to the rebel leaders, for
these “kings,” as described by the European sources, were considered as sacred
rulers in tune with African religious traditions. It is true that nganga was in Africa
the translation of “Catholic priest,” but it was the church father who was being
reinterpreted within African frameworks, so that even Catholicism, acknowledged
in Africa and at Palmares, was very much embedded in an African Weltanschauung.
Native South Americans, whose pottery and place names are common features of
Palmares, established continuities with the human fashioning of the landscape in
the backlands of the northeast, as pots, hills, rivers, and the other environmental
contexts were interpreted within their own traditions rather than within African or
European ones.
The search for a specific Palmarino identity thus provides evidence that normative and structuralist approaches disregard the fact that social practices are structured by cultural schemes of meaning, and such structural orientations are
dialectical in that they both structure, and are structured by, social practice (Jones
1997:117). Single isolated aspects, like African names and Amerindian place
names, cannot explain Palmarino identity, as their community was, at the same
time, the result of contemporary contacts and contexts and of different traditions.
Furthermore, the study of archaeological remains considered as “national heritage” and very much part of the modern discourse of Brazilian society on its
history and identity must address the relationship between scholarly and social
interpretations. The history of science is, in this light, essential to the critical
interpretation of the construction of discourse about this, as any other archaeological subject (Funari 1996), and the deconstruction of master narratives is no
less important in understanding the implications of our own conceptual frameworks (Johnson 1999).
REFERENCES
Allen, Scott Joseph 1999 Africanism, Mosaics, and Creativity: The Historical Archaeology
of Palmares. In Cultura Material e Arqueologia Histórica. Pedro Paulo A. Funari, ed. Pp.
141–178. Campinas: IFCH/UNICAMP.
—— 2000 The Ethnogenesis of the Palmarino: Preliminary Directions in the Historical
Archaeology of a Seventeenth-Century Brazilian Quilombo. Revista de História da Arte e
Arqueologia 3:39–52.
Amado, Janaína, and Lúcio C. Figueiredo 1999 A Formação do Império Português (1415–
1580). São Paulo: Atual.
Andrade Filho, Rui 1989 Os Muçulmanos na Península Ibérica. São Paulo: Contexto.
Barata, João G. L. P. 1987 A Caravela, Breve Estudo Geral. Lisboa: Instituto de Investigação
Científica Tropical.
conquistadors, plantations, and quilombo
227
Bense, J. A. 2004 Presidios of the North American Spanish Borderlands. Historical Archaeology 38:3.
Berti, Giovanni, and Carlo Renzi Rizzo 1997 Pisa. Le Maioliche Archaiche. Seccoli XIII–XV.
Florence: All’Insegna del Giglio.
Bethel, L., ed. 1984 The Cambridge History of Latin America. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Boisselier, S. 1994 Réflexions sur l’Idéologie Portugaise de la Reconquête, XII–XIVe. Siècles.
Mélanges de la Casa de Velazquez 30:139–165.
Bourdon, António A. 1973 História de Portugal. Coimbra: Almedina.
Bueno, Silveira 1967 A Formação Histórica da Língua Portuguêsa. São Paulo:
Saraiva.
Cantera, Francisco, and José M. Millás 1956 Las Inscripciones Hebraicas de España. Madrid:
Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas.
Caro Baroja, J. 1983 Tecnología Popular Española. Madrid: Editora Nacional.
Columbus, Christopher 1960 The Journal of Christopher Columbus. Cecil Jane, trans.
London: Hakluyt Society.
Contin, María I., and Eduardo Larcamón 1996 De la Grecia Clásica a la Pampa Argentina.
Revista Museo 8: 91–96.
Deagan, K. 1987 Artifacts of the Spanish Colonies of Florida and the Caribbean, 1500–1800.
Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution.
Domínguez, Lourdes 1995 Arqueologia Colonial Cubana. La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias
Sociales.
Dozy, Roberto P. 1946 Historia de los Musulmanes de España. Buenos Aires: Emecé
Editores.
Edmann, Carlos 1940 A Idéia de Cruzada em Portugal. Oporto: Lello.
Eguilaz y Yanguas, León 1886 Glosario Etimológico de las Palabras Españolas de Origen
Oriental. Granada: Casa Editorial.
Faoro, Raimundo 1976 Os Donos do Poder. Porto Alegre: Globo.
Freches, Charles H. 1970 La Littérature Portugaise. Paris: Presses Universitaires de
France.
Freyre, Gilberto 1933 Casa Grande e Senzala. Rio de Janeiro: José Olympio.
Funari, Pedro Paulo A. 1996, Historical archaeology in Brazil, Uruguay, and Argentina.
World Archaeological Bulletin 7:51–62.
—— 1997a A Cidade e a Civilização Romana: Um Instrumento Didático. Campinas: IFCH/
UNICAMP.
—— 1997b, “Brasil,” um Nome Celta que Habitava o Imaginário Medieval. Folha de São
Paulo, April 28, 1997, p. F13.
—— 1998 Teoria Arqueológica na América do Sul. Campinas: Instituto de Filosofia e
Ciências Humanas.
Goodman, Martin 1997 The Roman World, 44 B.C.–A.D. 180. London: Routledge.
Gourévitch, Aron 1976 Les Royaumes Barbares. In Histoire du Moyen Age. Michel Abramson,
Aron Gourévitch, and Nicolai Kolesnitski, eds. Pp. 44–56. Moscow: Les Éditions du
Progrès.
Grigulevich, Iuri 1980 Historia de la Inquisición. Moscow: Progress Publishers.
Guimarães, Carlos Magno 1992 Esclavage, Quilombo et Archéologie. Les Dossiers
d’Archéologie 169:67.
Guimarães, Carlos Magno, and Ana Lúcia Duarte Lanna 1980 Arqueologia de Quilombos
em Minas Gerais. Pesquisas 31:146–163.
228
pedro funari
Heydenreich, Theodor 1995 América Latina – “lateinisches Amerika? Zur politischen Begriff
eines Adjektivs im 19. Jahrhundert. Latein Amerika Studien 35:229–245.
Jiménez, Sebastián 1987 Museo Hispano-Musulmán de Granada. Revista de Arqueología
74:51–59.
Johnson, Matthew 1997 Review, Towards a World Historical Archaeology. Antiquity 71:220–
222.
—— 1999 Rethinking Historical Archaeology. In Historical Archaeology: Back from the Edge.
Pedro Paulo A. Funari, Martin Hall, and Siân Jones, eds. Pp. 23–36 London: Routledge.
Jones, Siân 1997 The Archaeology of Ethnicity: Constructing Identities in the Past and
Present. London: Routledge.
Keay, Simon 1988 Roman Spain. London: British Museum.
Kern, Arno A. 1991 Sociedade Barroca e Missões Guaranis: do Confronto à Complementaridade, Actas do Primeiro Congresso Internacional do Barroco. Pp. 445–465. Porto:
Universidade do Porto.
Knapp, A. Bernard 1996 Archaeology without Gravity: Postmodernism and the Past. Journal
of Archaeological Method and Theory 3:127–158.
Lea, Herbert C. 1908 The Inquisition in the Spanish Dependencies. New York: Harper.
Llorens Artigas, José, and José Corredor Matheos 1970 Cerámica Popular Española.
Barcelona: Blume.
López Álvarez, Ana María 1986 Catálogo del Museo Sefardi, Toledo. Madrid: Ministerio de
Cultura.
Marques, Tomás 1995 Carta Arqueológica de Portugal, Faro, Olhão, Tavira, Vila Real de
Santo António de Castro Marin, Alcoutim. Lisboa: Instituto Português do Património
Arquitectónico e Arqueológico.
Marx. Karl 1978 Theories of Surplus-Value. Moscow: Progress Publishers.
Mattoso, José 1997 A Época Sueva e Visigótica. In História de Portugal, José Mattoso, ed.
Pp. 275–328. Lisboa: Estampa.
Mazahéri, André 1968 La Vie Quotidienne des Musulmans au Moyen Âge (Xe. Au XII e.
siècle). Paris: Hachette.
Mendonça, Haroldo L. 1892 Estudos sobre Navios Portuguezes nos Séculos XV e XVI.
Lisboa: Real Academia de Ciências.
Miceli, Paulo 1997 O Ponto Onde Estamos, Viagens e Viajantes na História da Expansão e
da Conquista, Portugal, Séculos XV e XVI. Campinas: Editora da Unicamp.
Mierse, William E. 1999 Temples and Towns in Roman Iberia: The Social and Architectural.
Berkeley: University of California Press.
Miskimin, Harry A. 1975 The Economy of Early Renaissance Europe, 1300–1460.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Navarro, Carlos 1995 El Ma’gil de Liétor (Alabacete): un Sistema de Terrazas Irrigadas de
Origen Andalusí en Funcionamiento. In Primeiro Congresso de Arquelogia Penínsular.
Vítor Oliveria Jorge, ed., Pp. 403–415. Coimbra: Congresso de Arqueologia Peninsular.
Orser, Jr., Charles E. 1996 A Historical Archaeology of the Modern World. New York:
Plenum.
Orser, Jr., Charles E. and Brian M. Fagan 1995 Historical Archaeology. New York:
HarperCollins.
Ortiz, Fernando 2000[1940] La Santería y la Brujería de los Blancos. La Habana: Fundación
Ortiz.
Parry, John H. 1969 The Problem of Discovery: A New World? In Latin American History:
Selected Problems. Fredrick B. Pike, ed. Pp. 3–10. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World,
Inc.
conquistadors, plantations, and quilombo
229
Pedrero Sánchez, Maria Guadalupe 1994 Os Judeus na Espanha. São Paulo: Editora
Giordano.
Pendle, Gerge 1963 A History of Latin America. Hardmondsworth: Penguin.
Rabello, Davi 1984 A Bula da Santa Cruzada. Nota Preliminar. Revista de História 117:143–
162.
Riu, Marc 1989 L’Arqueologia Medieval a Catalunya. Barcelona: Els Llibres de la
Frontera.
Romano, Ruggiero and A. Tenenti 1986, Los Fundamentos del Mundo Moderno, Edad
Media Tardía, Reforma, Renacimiento. Madrid: Siglo XXI.
Rowlands, Michael 1999 Black Identity and Sense of Past in Brazilian National Culture. In
Historical Archaeology: Back from the Edge. Pedro Paulo A. Funari, Martin Hall, and
Siân Jones, eds. Pp. 328–344. London: Routledge.
Schávelzon, Daniel 1993 Arqueología Histórica de Buenos Aires, vol.3, Excavaciones en la
Imprenta Coni. Buenos Aires: Corregidor.
Thorpe, Michael 1995 Roman Architecture. Bristol: Bristol Classical Press.
Torres, Carlos 1997 O Garb-Al-Andaluz. In História de Portugal. José Mattoso, ed. Pp.
2327–372. Lisboa: Estampa.
Weckmann, Luis 1992 The Medieval Heritage of Colonial and Modern Mexico. New York:
Fordham University Press.
—— 1993 La Herencia Medieval del Brasil. México: Fondo de Cultura Económica.
Weisman, Brent R. 1992 Excavations on the Franciscan Frontier. Archaeology at the Fig
Springs Mission. Gainesville: University Press of Florida.
Wolf, Eric 1982 Europe and the People without History. Berkeley: University of California
Press.
Zarankin, Andrés 2002 Paredes que Domesticam. Buenos Aires.
Chapter 12
Gold, Black Ivory, and Houses
of Stone: Historical
Archaeology in Africa
Innocent Pikirayi
Approaches to African Historical Archaeology
The term historical archaeology can be a misnomer as every society has a history
and leaves behind some material traces of its past. However, its usage is governed
by our intellectual perceptions of human development, conveniently divided into
the traditional cultural stages. Thus, studies of the more recent periods of human
development, which integrate archaeology with written records and oral traditions,
are historical archaeology only in the broadest sense. Some of the theoretical and
practical approaches employed on the American continent (see definitions in Orser
and Fagan 1995) exhibit serious limitations when employed in an African context
(Posnansky and DeCorse 1986). A major constraint is the narrow time depth
covered by European sources and the exclusion of pre-European, Native American
history from many, although not all, such studies. Because the term historical
archaeology was first used in the United States, its usage in Africa has been problematic because of differences arising from the search for meaning in, and interpretation of, archaeology. Due to the diversity of sources and the multiplicity of
histories in Africa, there is no single, but rather multiple historical archaeologies
on the continent. The critical issue lies in accessing the “voiceless” through the
study of their material culture, as these were underrepresented and often falsely
represented by written or oral texts (Reid and Lane 2004).
In Africa (Figure 12.1), documentary sources have varying time depths. The Nile
Valley saw the emergence of some of the earliest civilizations on the continent. The
archaeology of these civilizations has been studied with the help of written texts.
Orser and Fagan (1995) regard these as specialist archaeologies, not strictly historical archaeology. They define the latter as the archaeology of the more recent
past, which encompasses colonial and early modern American and world history
and topical issues like slavery, European colonization, indigenous resistance to
European expansion and colonization, and others. The earliest written accounts
gold, black ivory, and houses of stone
231
Figure 12.1 Map of Africa with sites, regions, and features referred to in this chapter
from eastern Africa date from the mid-first century A.D. and describe trade between
the coast and the Mediterranean world, and some Persian and Chinese sources
describe the coast. In western Africa, Arabic written accounts refer to the savanna
and Sudan belts from the late first millennium A.D. They describe African states,
the trans-Saharan trade, and the impact of Islam. In southern Africa, Arabic sources
make references to the Indian Ocean coast and parts of the hinterland from the
early tenth century. European travelers’, traders’ and visitors’ descriptions of the
coast and inland regions date from the 15th century onward (DeCorse 1997a).
232
innocent pikirayi
The usefulness of written accounts to African archaeology varies considerably,
but they are mainly “external” sources. Arabic sources are difficult to understand,
with their descriptions often vague. Scholars have been unable to reconcile some
of the descriptions in the accounts with the archaeological remains on the ground.
This also applies to European sources, some of which describe the interior, but
from coastal locations. The Gold Coast, Mbanza Kongo, Cape Town, and the Lower
Zambezi, for example, are covered in considerably more detail than any other part
of the African coast. Indigenous writing systems such as the Vai script in Liberia
and Barnum hieroglyphics in Cameroon only date to the 19th century and are very
limited in scope (DeCorse 1997a).
An alternative approach to historical archaeology in Africa comes from the use
of “internal” sources, dominated mainly by oral traditions, local histories, and folklore, all of which constitute the primary means of preserving and passing on traditional information and knowledge systems. Oral traditions have been criticized
for their narrow time depth, selective coverage of information, central focus on
ruling dynasties, and narrow content verging on myth. The general perception by
historians is that they are less reliable than written, “external” sources. However,
some African historians such as Beach (1994) have shown the usefulness of these
“internal” sources, especially if approached more critically (see also Vansina 1985).
A marked departure from the historians’ disregard for non-written histories is
Schmidt’s (1978, 1990) research on iron working in the Buhaya region of northwestern Tanzania, where oral traditions may date more than 2,000 years ago,
although it is controversial to argue for continuity of culture on the basis of 20thcentury oral traditions relating to events in the 15th century. Some Europeans have
recorded local histories and traditions in considerable detail, such as the Dutch in
the Cape interior and the Portuguese in the Mutapa state (Beach 1994). In western
Africa the term proto-historical archaeology applies to the past 1,000 years, with
research drawing on all available sources to address a wide range of subjects including state formation and development in the interior and European monumental
architecture on the coast (Andah 1995; DeCorse 1996).
The chapter does not synthesize all of African historical archaeology, but rather
examines one aspect of the subject. It focuses on the past 500 years, examining
European expansion, modernization, and the relationship between colonialism
and the formation of local identities. The title, “gold, black ivory, and houses of
stone” captures major themes in European-African contacts and interaction. Gold
prompted the Portuguese to outflank the trans-Saharan trade and the trade involving the Zimbabwe plateau and Kilwa in eastern Africa. The migration of plantation
economies from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic and later the Indian oceans
promoted trade in slaves, initially to the offshore islands and subsequently the
Americas. This impacted African social formations, as new complex societies
emerged to respond to changed circumstances. Contacts were both beneficial and
destructive to the parties concerned, although Europeans always wanted to manipulate them for maximum gain. Some societies resisted strongly for their survival,
while others adapted to the colonial settings, manipulating them to their own
advantage. This process continued until the late 19th century when Africans were
gold, black ivory, and houses of stone
233
defeated by renewed European colonization of the continent and witnessed marked
shifts in power relations in favor of Europeans.
European Trade on the Coastal Regions of Western Africa
The Sahel region of the western African interior was in contact with the Mediterranean world, including southern Spain, through the trans-Saharan trade from the
first millennium A.D. Archaeological research has been conducted in the savanna
region, home to major states of Ghana (ca. A.D. 700–1100), Mali (ca. 1230–1460),
and Songhai (ca. 1340–1530), and has benefited from detailed Muslim sources and
oral traditions. The conjoining of archives and archaeology has helped to shed light
on the location of Kumbi-Saleh, the ancient capital of Ghana, as well as to reveal
more details on Niani, Jenne, Timbuktu, Gao, and others (DeCorse 1996; Insoll
1996). Finds of Chinese porcelain, Islamic glass beads, and Egyptian glass attest to
external contacts operating prior to the arrival of Europeans. The archaeological
record reflects increased urbanization, craft specialization, uniformity in material
culture, and growing socio-political complexity. Long-distance trading networks
were oriented northward to the Sahara and beyond, but this was to change with
the arrival of Europeans on the Atlantic coast (DeCorse 1997b).
Fortified: the initial African-European contacts
From ca. 1500 to 1900, western Africa witnessed extensive, extended, and varied
contacts between Europeans and Africans. It was the period of the Atlantic trade,
mainly involving slaves. Until the 16th century, Europeans were interested in
African gold (DeCorse 1996:681). Subsequently goods such as ivory, pepper,
redwood, and hides became important. Thus it was trade that brought Europeans
to western Africa, and it is in this sphere that their activities took place. The growing
maritime revolution took time to have a meaningful impact on indigenous African
societies mainly because of disease (Curtin 1990). Initial contacts were characterized by limited intervention in African military and political affairs, as had been
initiated by the Portuguese during the 1490s. The resident European population
was low, and business was transacted in fortifications. The Portuguese soon abandoned the search for gold in favor of slaves. Europeans were restricted to the coastline, except for the Senegal and the Gambia, where they penetrated upriver, but
here, too, they had no direct control of the hinterland. There was also an attempt
to monopolize the trade for the benefit of respective European governments involved
in the trade. Fortifications were supposed to enforce this role, but faced considerable difficulties.
The Senegambia was the first region to enter maritime contact with Europeans,
and it provided about one-third of all the slaves exported from Africa before 1600,
as well as ivory, gum, hides, and beeswax. The Portuguese based at Cape Verde were
the first to be involved, leading to the development of port-towns with an African-
234
innocent pikirayi
Portuguese population. By the 17th century, they dominated trade along the river
Gambia, and established networks with the hinterland. The 17th century also saw
the arrival of the French and British, who operated from St. Louis and St. James,
respectively. These island ports were insecure since pirates sometimes raided them.
The British established factories up the Gambia River, while the French had a
fortified post at Makhana on the Senegal River. It was from these ports that
European traders reached farthest inland in western Africa (DeCorse 1992, 1996,
1998; Kelly 1997, 2001).
Europeans introduced slavery in western Africa as a result of the plantation
complex, first established by the Portuguese in the 1480s at São Tomé and drawing
labor from the African mainland. The historical antecedents of this system are in
the Levant, where Europeans had established sugar plantations in Cyprus following
their expulsion by the Arabs during the Crusades. This complex then migrated
westward to Crete, Sicily, southern Spain and Portugal, and into the Atlantic zone
where the Portuguese set up plantations at Madeira, while the Spanish established
themselves in the Canary Islands. Human resources were critical because such
plantations were labor intensive. By the 16th century the plantation complex had
reached the Caribbean and Brazil. Two centuries later, the complex was geographically extensive and increasingly weighted toward the economies of tropical America.
The growth in the slave trade corresponded with the expansion of the plantation
economy (Curtin 1990). The demographic cost of slavery in the Americas was
passed on to Africa, until such time as the slave population on the plantations stabilized. The migration of the plantation economy to the Americas might not have
been conditioned by lack of better agricultural soils in western Africa, but rather
by poor European knowledge of the African interior. Increased demand for slaves
resulted in slavers foraging deeper in the African interior and, in the process, forcing
the plantation owners to encourage natural growth of slaves on their plantations
(Lovejoy 1983).
On the coast of Upper Guinea and Sierra Leone, more than one-third of the
slaves were exported during the period of Portuguese dominance, but there were
no fortifications until the end of the 16th century. The Portuguese built a fort at
Cacheu on the Windward Coast. There emerged an African-Portuguese community,
which traded as far as the watershed of the Gambia, Senegal, and Niger Rivers,
where the Bambuk and Bure goldfields are located. Warfare in the southern part of
the region, the present Sierra Leone, triggered by the Mane migrations from Mande
territory, produced slaves for sale until the early 17th century. The result was a configuration of small states. Trade then shifted to the sale of beeswax, camwood, ivory,
and the shipment of products from the hinterland such as gold (Curtin 1990).
The French and the British arrived during the second half of the 18th century
and established fortifications in the Sierra Leone estuary with the French at Gambia
Island and the British at Bunce Island. They never controlled beyond these places
(DeCorse 1996). By the 18th century, trading connections between the savanna
and the forest zones had reached the Inland Niger Delta. The traders transformed
the political landscape by waging their own revolutions, the “jula.” The region soon
lost prominence to the Gold Coast, which coincides with the present coastline of
gold, black ivory, and houses of stone
235
Ghana. It saw the greatest concentration of European fortifications and trading
centers in Africa, more than 60 of these being established along the 240-kilometer
coastline, with each European power involved in building their own with an interest
in gold rather than slaves. The Portuguese arrived in 1481 and built a fortification
at Elmina, followed by other Europeans during the 17th and 18th centuries (Figure
12.2). This trade encouraged large-scale political organization among the Akan states
in the forest zone, and further north, among the Ganja (DeCorse 2001a, 2001b).
Archaeological approaches to European-African contact
Archaeological studies during this period provide increasingly detailed and complete pictures of African coastal society just before and during the period of the
Atlantic trade (Kelly 1996). Topical issues include trade and interaction, culture
change and continuity, colonization, acculturation and political ideology, as well
as theoretical approaches to transformations brought about by interaction (e.g.,
Wallerstein 1986). This is important because such issues connect the debates about
African historical archaeology with the general – global – theoretical literature on
historical transformations and social developments. Contact and interaction on the
Windward Coast and adjacent hinterlands of Upper Guinea and Sierra Leone
during the 16th and early 17th centuries, arising out of the increasing demand for
slaves, resulted in the configuration of small states. Further east, on the Gold Coast,
the gold trade encouraged large-scale political organization among the Akan
kingdoms in the forest zone, and further north among the Ganja. Socio-political
complexity was briefly enhanced by new contact situations and settings, which saw
an increase in fortifications, warfare, population shifts, and new patterns of regional
trade. Current perspectives in western African-European contact emphasize
multiple facets of the process, including resistance, negotiation, accommodation,
enslavement, deprivation, and loss of African cultural identity, physical and cognitive spaces. Contact now involved communities beyond African spheres of influence
and worldview, and whose consequence, in the long term, was European domination and control.
Early archaeological research in western Africa concentrated on European forts,
focusing on the preservation and restoration of the structures. Current research,
which largely complements these efforts, is taking place on Goree Island in Senegal,
James Island in Gambia, Bunce Island in Sierra Leone, Cape Coast Castle, Caste
Sao Jorge da Mina and Fort St. Jago in Ghana, and Ouidah in Benin (DeCorse
1996, 1997a, 1997b). Political instability in some states such as Liberia and Sierra
Leone has seriously constrained archaeological research.
We now know how Africans manipulated contact with Europeans at Savi, the
capital town of the Hueda state on the Bight of Benin, formerly the Slave Coast.
The absence of fortified European settlement at Savi suggests local control over
matters of trade. Only warehouses at Ouidah, near the coast, were fortified. In this
way, Hueda rulers determined the location of the trading posts, emphasizing their
dominance over the foreigners (Kelly 1996). Contact with Europeans would result
236
innocent pikirayi
Figure 12.2 Fort Sao Jorge da Mina (Elmina), the first Portuguese fort along the Gold Coast, now
Ghana, built in 1482. Photograph courtesy of Maria Dores Cruz
in trade in slaves in exchange for weapons, iron, cloth, liquor, tobacco, and beads.
According to Kelly (1996), the archaeological presence of some of these items
signified power or association with powerful entities and kept with local tradition.
Chinese porcelains, glass beads, and wine bottles indicated social status, found
among the elite and palace areas in high quantities.
By enclosing the commercial and administrative centre of the town within a
clearly defined zone using ditches and banks (by A.D. 1700 the Dutch, French, and
the English were located within the palace), the occupants distinguished themselves
spatially from the rest of the population, identifying themselves with a European
trading presence, which was the source of considerable economic power. Thus
Hueda leadership both allied with and controlled the traders. Savi was destroyed by
Dahomey in 1727 in a quest to control slave trade, resulting in depopulation and
abandonment of the Slave Coast. Archaeological excavations have also been conducted at Togudo-Awute, the capital of Allada, destroyed by Dahomey in 1724.
DeCorse (1992, 2001a), who has worked extensively at Elmina Castle and
the associated town, suggests the need to research associated African settlements,
beyond the forts, to get a more balanced, informed view of the contact settings
between Europeans and Africans. The Portuguese founded a castle there in 1482
and later lost it to the Dutch (1637) and then the British (1871–73). The African
village nearby developed into a densely populated town, numbering about 15,000
gold, black ivory, and houses of stone
237
by the 19th century. It acquired some degree of independence from surrounding
African polities and became the capital of the Edina state. A wide range of artifacts
attests to the development of commerce and merchant trade in the town. Despite
this massive transformation, Africans continued to observe their traditional beliefs
(DeCorse 1996). Elmina traded with Asante, a powerful state in the forest zone
during the 18th and 19th centuries, and such trading contacts seem to date back
to the 15th century. Asante itself dates from the late first millennium A.D., and
archaeological research has yet to establish whether it spawned from the waning
fortunes of ancient Mali or sprouted as an indigenous response to growing trade
with Europeans arriving from the Atlantic (DeCorse 1998, 2001a, 2001b). Further
east, 16th-century Portuguese accounts describe the Kingdom of Benin, located in
the Nigerian rain forest, as powerful. Its capital, according to the archaeological
evidence, dates from the 13th century. Some of the town walls were already in place
by the middle of the 15th century, a fact confirmed by both oral and written sources
(Kelly 1997, 2001).
For much of their presence in western Africa, the European frontier remained
largely static. Contact was essentially non-violent until slavery dominated the trade.
Evidently, the effects of European contact and slave trade were not the same in all
areas. The dramatic and complex set of events triggered by European arrival –
the slave trade, the increasing conflict which the trade generated, migrations, and
depopulation, all of which are fairly well documented historically – have archaeological representations in pottery, fortified structures, earthworks, and artifacts.
Some contacts were still taking place without European involvement, especially the
Hausa caravan trade in the interior. The transformations that some of the African
states had undergone at the time of European arrival, including political centralization, require detailed archaeological research.
The development of African states along the coastal zone was also a response to
the economic opportunities provided by European trade. Kelly’s (1996) research
on Savi demonstrates that the core–periphery model of evaluating and interpreting
contact and interaction settings in western Africa needs reconsideration (see
DeCorse 1996, 1997a). As demand for slaves increased, some powerful African
rulers collaborated with Europeans to make the slave trade feasible. This collaboration underlined their social and political status as contact settings transformed from
narrowly confined contexts within the precincts of fortifications to wider, more
aggressive interactions to encompass a broader range of lucrative items, including
humans.
“Land of the Zanj”: Swahili, Portuguese and Omani Arab
Interactions in Eastern Africa
Eastern Africa, bordered by the Indian Ocean, shares many historical similarities
with western Africa. Prior to the coming of Europeans in the 15th century, the
region was already known to the Mediterranean world, as indicated by Greek,
Roman, and Arabic sources. Later written accounts by al Masudi (10th century),
238
innocent pikirayi
al Biruni and al Idrisi (12th century), Yakut (13th century), and Ibn Battuta (14th
century) describe parts of the coast from the late first millennium (Horton 1996,
1997). The writers referred to the region as Azania, or Zanj, meaning the land
of the blacks (Sutton 1990). Maritime contacts between Africa, the eastern
Mediterranean, the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, and India date from at least the early
first millennium A.D. Intercontinental trade centered in the Indian Ocean’s northern and western zones, with India and China being the richest nations in Asia.
Although these sources are important in understanding developments of Swahili
urban centers and the spread of Islam to eastern Africa, and despite previous
attempts to link the documents with the material culture (Chittick 1965), they apparently do not fit with the available archaeological evidence (LaViolette 2004).
Finds of Persian and Chinese porcelain, Islamic glass beads, and Egyptian glass
attest to external contacts taking place in eastern Africa prior to European arrival.
As in western Africa, these long-distance trading networks have been dated to
the first millennium, and associated settlements show increased urbanization and
growing socio-political complexity. Early towns such as Manda, Shanga, Galu,
Ungwana, Limbo, and Kilwa processed iron for export, as well as amber, turtle
shells, rock crystal, and gold. Increasing commerce saw the development of a cosmopolitan blend of African and Islamic culture, the Swahili culture, such that by
the 15th century, a hierarchy of settlements characterized the coast. Several vibrant
commercial centers developed at places like Shanga, Ungwana, Gedi, Jumba la
Mtwana, Kaole, and Songo Mnara. Considerably less research work has been done
on hinterland sites that are critical in the debate on the identity of the town dwellers (Chami 1994; Kusimba 1999).
The need to expand and control the hinterland resulted in internecine warfare,
coup d’état, and succession conflicts by the 16th century. The cities involved include
Pate and Lamu (control of trade from the Tana Delta), Mombasa and Malindi
(trade with the Mijikenda and access to agricultural produce from Pemba), Kilwa
and Sofala (gold and ivory trade from southern Zambezia), and Mahilaka and the
Comorian Islands. However, opportunities to consolidate the power bases with large
polities were stifled by the linear and narrow coastal zone. Its immediate hinterland
was populated by migrant foragers and pastoralists and therefore difficult to control.
By the late 15th century when the Portuguese arrived, these cities were unprepared
to stave off European advance.
Portuguese havoc (1500–1698)
When the Portuguese arrived in eastern Africa at the close of the 15th century, they
decided to occupy all strategic points along the Indian Ocean coast. This decision
must be seen in the wider context of the development of European mercantile
capitalism. The Indian Ocean trading network already involved the circulation of
vast quantities of merchandise and raw material. Between 1505 and 1507, the
Portuguese built forts at Sofala on the Mozambican coast, on Mozambique Island,
and at Gereza near Kilwa. Using these forts, the Portuguese bombarded Kilwa,
gold, black ivory, and houses of stone
239
Mombasa, Ungwana, and Barawa in 1505 and enslaved the local population, bringing an end to Swahili civilization (Sutton 1990). Written sources, both Portuguese
and Arabic, are biased toward trade and very poor on daily local events. However,
the Portuguese were responsible for triggering the demise of the city-states in an
attempt to control trade in gold and ivory emanating from southern Zambezia and
spices from India and, in the process, to halt Muslim advance in Africa. Contact
took place in terms set by the Portuguese such as treaties, punitive expeditions, and
levying of tribute. Conquest destroyed competition as the Portuguese sought and
gained total control of the coast. Their forts are an archaeological reminder of this
violent encounter, as well as symbolic of the decline of a once flourishing civilization, with its citizens now reduced to abject poverty.
Continued Portuguese presence further triggered decline in trade and prosperity
of the Swahili. It also discouraged the flourishing of Islam, with many locals reverting
to traditional African religion rather than converting to Christianity. Africans migrated
inland, and the Mijikenda, for example, established kaya settlements to check
Portuguese advances inland (Kusimba 1999). After more than 200 years, the Portuguese lost the Coast to Omani Arabs but retained control of the lower Zambezi.
Omani rule and Arab identity (1699–1964)
With Arab conquest of Pate (1679–88), Fort Jesus (1698), and Zanzibar (1699),
Omani rule was established along the coast from Somalia to northern Mozambique.
More Arabs, Hindus, Baluchis, and other Asians emigrated to eastern Africa, where
they became economically powerful. Many found it to their advantage to claim
Arabic origins as a result of the intermarriage and the opportunities that accrued
with it. This colonization increased differences between urban and rural populations
and reinforced the notion that the former were different from their essentially
African neighbors. Slavery offered one incentive for individuals to emphasize and
take advantage of this identity. Islam was abused to create new privileged notions
of class, an outward-looking elite seeking legitimacy from foreign cultures. This
alienated the entire coast, and hence informs the current problem and debates on
the identity of its practitioners (Kusimba 1999).
Slavery, which had been a domestic activity prior to the arrival of Europeans
and Omani Arabs in eastern Africa, was transformed by merchant trade. Zanzibar
became the hub for the import and export of slaves from the region (Cooper 1977).
The island saw the development of clove plantations, while the mainland specialized
in rubber and copal. Although the Portuguese had been defeated, the 18th century
saw increased European activity in eastern Africa as a result of the slave trade. The
British abolition campaign, 1815–31, which outlawed Portuguese slave trade north
of the Equator, ironically saw increased procurement of slaves from the south,
mainly northern Mozambique and southern and western Tanzania. Treaties signed
with Omani rulers in Zanzibar effectively reduced the prices of slaves but enhanced
their trafficking. Increased European demand for ivory during the late 18th and
19th centuries led to rising prices for the commodity and the hunting of elephants
240
innocent pikirayi
deeper in the African hinterland. This triggered the demand for firearms, provoked
local wars, and led to the enslaving of more people (Feierman 1998). The ivory
trade, which involved the Yao, Makua, Nyamwezi, Kamba, and the Arabs became
an integral part of the trade, as humans captured in the interior were force-marched
to the coast carrying ivory, and then sold as slaves. Bagamoyo, which became
the coastal terminus of Nyamwezi caravans, has rich traditions and documentary
sources on slavery, but surviving structures remain poorly investigated archaeologically. Kilwa and Mozambique Island also became important slave termini, but like
Bagamoyo, have not yet received detailed archaeological attention. The notorious
Zanzibar slave market is now the site of a Christian church (Sheriff 1987).
Archaeological identities
Unlike western Africa, the past five centuries on the eastern African coast have not
received the same degree of archaeological attention as the preceding Iron Age.
Although African, European, and Arab material culture can assist in providing
details not mentioned in oral-historical sources, many regard the recent period as
not worthy of archaeological study. Part of the problem is the considerable structural remains in the form of mosques, churches, forts, and colonial buildings
relating to European and Omani settlement that many erroneously think are well
covered in written sources. This underscores some biases inherent in traditional
historical archaeology, which focuses on European colonial expansion and thus
diverts attention from areas with a research potential such as eastern Africa. If
historical archaeology is construed as a combination of surviving ruins, a rich legacy
of oral and written sources, and material culture, we then have a text-aided archaeology, applicable to earlier Swahili towns mentioned in Arabic texts, some of which
(e.g., Rhapta, Qanbalu) remain unidentified archaeologically. The apparent dissonance in the written sources may reflect the multiple identities of the Swahili as
well as other communities in eastern Africa, which dictates a multi-pronged approach
in the study of historical archaeology. Schmidt’s (1978) pioneering work is a good
example, as he demonstrated, using oral traditions, that historical archaeology could
be done outside the framework of document-based history. He also fundamentally
questioned the traditional perception of the discipline of historical archaeology
(LaViolette 2004; Reid and Lane 2004). Archaeology has also been used to interrogate some of the linguistic evidence used to locate Swahili origins in the mythical
Shungwaya (Chami 1994).
Although the Portuguese presence was considerable in eastern Africa, the archaeology connected with their activities there has been comparatively little. Only Fort
Jesus (1593–1697) has received some detailed archaeological attention (Kusimba
1999), as well as one of the ships wrecked nearby (Sassoon 1981). There is need
for archaeological documentation of Portuguese structures and associated African
settlements to determine the levels of contact and trade between the two groups,
the impact of the trade on local societies, and the local responses to the arrival of
these Europeans. The Portuguese were also present on Pemba Island, but despite
gold, black ivory, and houses of stone
241
documentary references to this effect, no direct archaeological evidence confirms
their settlement there (LaViolette 2004). Omani presence in eastern Africa is
also poorly documented archaeologically. Most of the work in Zanzibar, Pemba,
Bagamoyo, Mombasa, and Lamu is essentially restoration work, an exercise apparently
guided by Arabic and Western texts.
Sofala and “Hottentots”: Reshaping of Southern African Societies
since 1500
Referred to by the Arabic writer Al Masudi as the “land of Sofala,” southeastern
Africa became famous for its gold, which was traded to eastern Africa and beyond
(Sutton 1990). Sofala was an apparent reference to the Mozambican coast and
the Zimbabwe plateau interior, where gold was mined. The Portuguese, Dutch,
and English, however, first encountered the Khoekhoen, whom they labeled
“Hottentots,” at the Cape of Good Hope. Initial contacts were difficult. The rough
southern seas and rocky offshore were prime settings for shipwrecks, some of which
have yielded archaeological data pertinent to the changing patterns of mercantile
trade since the 16th century (Werz 1993). For example, The Oosterland, which
wrecked near Table Bay in 1697, had rich collections of Far Eastern porcelains,
pointing to private initiative in the importation of goods at a time when Dutch
authorities recorded poor profits (Smith 1986).
“Rivers of Gold” and houses of stone
The Mutapa state (ca.1450–1900) in northern Zimbabwe is extensively covered in
Portuguese written sources (Beach 1994; Mudenge 1988). It is a cultural and
political successor to the state once centered on Great Zimbabwe (1270–1550),
located within a region that the Portuguese referred to as the “Rivers of Gold.” Early
Portuguese explorers into the interior reported stone building activity in the Mutapa
state. These structures, referred to as “Symbaoe” (zimbabwe), were the residences of
the ruling elite. Using archaeological data, Portuguese written accounts can shed
light on the decline of Great Zimbabwe, triggered by changing patterns in the trade
in eastern Africa. Archaeology can also enlighten the introduction of merchant
capitalism in northern Zimbabwe evidenced by imported artifacts dated from the
16th century, and assist in the identification of local material culture, such as pottery,
associated with these imports. Such associations are crucial in relating local pottery
to known ethnic groups such as the Karanga, mentioned in Portuguese written
sources, as the people of the Mutapa state. The decline of the Mutapa state is poorly
understood archaeologically, but Portuguese written accounts report violence during
the 17th century. An archaeological perspective on this process may help inform on
the demise of the Zimbabwe Culture in the region (Pikirayi 1993, 2004).
Gold had been traded from the Zimbabwe plateau to the Indian Ocean coast
in exchange for glass beads, sea shells, cloth, and Far and Near-Eastern ceramics
242
innocent pikirayi
since the 9th century A.D. With the emergence of Great Zimbabwe during the
13th century, gold production and trade increased on the Zimbabwe plateau,
matched by corresponding prosperity in African coastal cities. Great Zimbabwe
was at the helm of this commercial expansion. Imported glass beads and ceramics
compare closely with those found in eastern African towns, while iron gongs and
copper ingots point toward regional trading networks with south-central Africa.
Great Zimbabwe thus had extensive regional trading contacts with central Africa
as well as the Indian Ocean coast. The immediate beneficiary of the gold trade
from the Zimbabwean hinterland was Kilwa (12th–15th centuries), the largest port
on the coast. Coincidentally, Kilwa controlled the trade coming through Sofala on
the Mozambican coast, which included gold and ivory. The traders from Kilwa
were in contact with Great Zimbabwe. The hinterland successively controlled the
distribution of trade goods from the coast and helped in the procurement of ivory
and gold destined for export. The Great Mosque and the Grand Palace of Husuni
Kubwa at Kilwa reflect the wealth and building boom generated by this trade
during the early 14th century, a time of renewed international demand in gold
(Sutton 1990). This opulence is also mirrored at Great Zimbabwe with the building of the Great Enclosure during the 14th century.
International trade began to decline during the early 15th century, as indicated
by the paucity of Chinese porcelain at Great Zimbabwe since it was presumably
channeled to other sites. For Great Zimbabwe to continue prospering, it required
a stable political environment which could have been achieved by conquest or
strategic expansion. This made necessary the expansion of its culture on the plateau
and beyond, as a way of attaining control of the gold producing areas, as well as
ensuring political stability in such areas with vital economic resources. This expansion, effected by the rulers at Great Zimbabwe, represented a demographic, political, and economic shift to other parts of the plateau and led to the formation of
states in distant regions (Figure 12.3). The failed Portuguese attempt to invade the
Mutapa state and wrest the trade and production of gold during the 16th century
complicated this process (Pikirayi 2001). The demands for Zimbabwean gold by
Kilwa during the 15th century had already created a situation where, despite
increased exploitation of the mineral after 1500, actual production declined
(Mudenge 1988). The Portuguese initially tried to supplant the Swahili middlemen
in the trade, and during the 17th century, vied for the control of gold mining areas,
but with disastrous consequences (Pikirayi 1993).
The account by Joao de Barros, collated in 1538 and published in Da Asia
(1552), describes Great Zimbabwe in a state of decline. Although tainted by
descriptions of Muslim architecture such as references to square edifices and
ancient inscriptions, these do not make the account less credible. More important,
however, the account clearly states that Great Zimbabwe was not completely abandoned when the Portuguese arrived in the region. A ruling elite still lived in some
of the stone buildings during the early 16th century.
Archaeological research in northern Zimbabwe has revealed the nature of contact
between the Zimbabwe plateau interior and the Indian Ocean, and the nature of
settlements associated with this contact since the 16th century. Focus is on the
gold, black ivory, and houses of stone
243
Figure 12.3 Site of Khami, western Zimbabwe, 1450–1650. Photograph by Innocent Pikirayi
African-Portuguese site of Baranda near Mt. Fura and on other sites in the middle
Ruya-Mazowe valley (Pikirayi 1993). It is therefore possible to study northern
Zimbabwe within the context of international developments such as the spread of
mercantilism from Europe and its effects on indigenous societies. A major objective
here is to establish the extent to which merchant capital contributed toward turmoil
in the region, in an effort to control the “periphery.”
Previous research in northern Zimbabwe could not positively identify local
populations represented by the ceramic evidence recovered from sites associated
with African-Portuguese trading settlements such as Luanze, Dambarare, Rimuka,
and Angwa. At Baranda, trading items such as imported ceramics and glass beads
that all dated from at least the 16th century were associated with local pottery
attributed to the Zimbabwe Culture. This discovery presents a new insight into the
relationship between the historical Mutapa state and the Zimbabwe Culture. Written
sources are an added advantage in this case, as they provide details of ruling dynasties and their capitals. Clearly, sites such as Baranda represented the emergence of
non-stone-walled royal courts in northern Zimbabwe at a time when stone-building
activity had ceased at the beginning of the 16th century. Baranda is located in an
area reported by the Portuguese as rich in gold and is probably the trading site
of Massapa. The discovery of graphite-burnished pottery akin to the Zimbabwe
Culture in an area traditionally referred to as Mukaranga, coupled with the written
sources which mention “Mocaranga,” points to the ancestral Karanga as the makers
of this pottery. These were responsible for the introduction of the Zimbabwe Culture
in northern Zimbabwe. Detailed surface collections, geochemical surveys, and
excavations have been carried out at the site of Baranda to understand the nature
of some of the centers associated with the Mutapa state since the 16th century.
244
innocent pikirayi
Archaeological evidence clearly shows the dual identity of the site. First, it is part
of the African-Portuguese network, as shown by the imported material. Second,
it identifies archaeologically with continuity into the historical period of the
Zimbabwe Culture. Portuguese sources suggest that some capitals of the Mutapa
state were not far away from Mount Fura, six kilometers to the south. They also
point to the existence of a trading market known as Massapa, near the mountain
and close to the banks of the Mukaradzi River. It is probable that one of the capitals of the state was located at Baranda during the first half of the 16th century,
when Portuguese and Muslims lived near the ruler’s court. When the capital moved
the traders continued using the site. Close to Baranda are two Zimbabwe Culture
stone enclosures: Chomagora about three kilometers to the west and Matanda
Farm, eight kilometers south. The relationship of these sites to Baranda may provide
details on the nature of transition from stone buildings to simpler houses of timber
and adobe, which did not involve the use of stone (Pikirayi 1993, 1997).
The decline of the Mutapa state was apparently triggered by negative effects of
merchant capitalism, but only archaeology can assist in identifying these effects.
Fortifications are a feature of complex societies, and their appearance often indicates either emerging or declining socio-political complexity (Pikirayi 1996). In
northern Zimbabwe this occurred during the late 16th and the entire 17th centuries, when crudely built stone defenses were erected on hilltops in the Ruya-Mazowe
basin, the Mukaranga heartland. Detailed Portuguese accounts of fortifications
refer to the Lower Zambezi, where people built wooden stockades. Vague references
to stone-walled fortifications in northern Zimbabwe follow Portuguese occupation
of the Lower Zambezi. Ceramic evidence from the hill forts point to the Budya or
related Tonga groups from the Lower Zambezi as the builders. These people had
moved into the adjacent plateau area in response to the turmoil generated by the
Portuguese estate holders, the southern expansion of the Marave and the Zimba
(Pikirayi 1997, 1999).
Castles and estates: early Europeans on the Cape
Following Dutch settlement at Table Bay in 1652, Fort de Goede Hoope (The
Castle) became the fortification and administrative base of what was to become
Cape Town. Excavations here and the town center demonstrate how the material
culture gradually became Europeanized, as less and less ceramic and other material
arrived from the Dutch East Indies and was replaced by mass-produced pottery
from Britain. Probate records allow detailed comparisons of individual households
and backyard industries, their function, gender, and social class of their owners.
Considerable information on colonial dietary patterns comes from Paradys, a Dutch
station east of Table Mountain (Hall et al. 1993). The Castle reflects many aspects
of colonial life, with workshops, stores, offices, military barracks, and houses for
administrators. Cape Town developed from a very small settlement dominated by
administrative buildings during the 17th century to a town replete with varied styles
of colonial architecture, reflecting the dominance of the British over the Dutch in
gold, black ivory, and houses of stone
245
the 18th century. Standing buildings and foundations, town dumps, and other sites
in the town attest to this development (Abrahams 1993; Hall 1993, 1997a).
Historical archaeological research in Cape Town is not only focusing on buildings, but also on the lifestyles of the under-privileged slaves and domestic servants
(Hall 1994). Slavery was an integral part of Cape society and its recovery in the
archaeological record is important as slaves comprised half the population in the
colony during the 18th century. Vergelegen, the private estate of William Adrian van
der Stel, Governor of the Cape (1699–1707), some distance east of Cape Town, is
one such place. Documentary evidence reveals details on the slave quarters, the
wine cellar, and the mill, all constructed according to Dutch architectural patterns
(Markell et al. 1995). The extensively excavated Castle in Cape Town has also
yielded information on the living conditions of slaves (Hall 1992, 1997b). In order
to meet the labor demands of the Cape, Dutch authorities and private individuals
imported slaves from Madagascar, northern Mozambique, India, and Indonesia.
Considerable research on slavery is currently under way, including diet, as it tells
us about their origins (Hall 1992, 1999).
Herding inward: moving the European frontier from the Cape
European colonization of southern Africa was achieved by the rapidly moving frontier into the interior. Dutch settlers moved into the interior in protest against Dutch
and later British authority at the Cape. Continued penetration of the southern
African interior was conditioned by the search for suitable pasture and water. The
Boers faced resistance from the Khoekhoen and the Xhosa (Elphick and Giliomee
1980). These encounters have been exposed archaeologically at Oudepost 1 (Schrire
1988, 1992a, 1992b; Schrire et al. 1993), where the Khoekhoen lost their independence due to the loss of their cattle pasture as well as to absorption into the
European settler community as laborers. Oudepost 1 shows a reliance on wild
fauna, which helps to confirm the loss of domestic animals (Schrire and Deacon
1989). Evidence for the moving European frontier appear in the form of rock art
such as finger paintings of the Northern Cape depicting white men on horses,
hunting elephants. At Stompiesfontein in the Western Cape, images of Boer wagons
drawn by mules are depicted. Some of these encounters resulted in violent confrontations, as at Zeekou Valley, southern Cape, site of the first European stockpost in
1770, which stalled their advance into the interior (Schrire 1992a, 1995). Khoekhoen
resistance was crushed four years later, and they were forced to live in European
farms, having lost their cattle and territory (Elphick and Giliomee 1980).
The British takeover of the Cape and the gradual movement of the Dutch into
the interior resulted in the establishment of Boer republics in the interior. British
policy to contain these republics saw the region under European rule by the late
19th century. Archaeological research connected with late 19th- and early 20thcentury European presence in the interior is limited. Some industrial archaeology
has been conducted at Cape Town’s Waterfront, Bankfontein, Colliers, and
Schoemansdal. The period is dominated by the South African military, especially
246
innocent pikirayi
the defenses around Pretoria and Potchefstroom, and battle sites such as Rorke’s
Drift. Research on these structures and places has only received some detailed
attention in South Africa (van Vollenhoven 1999), and limited coverage in
Zimbabwe (Hall 1997a; Pikirayi and Pwiti 1999). The main reason is that the
periods are recent in date and are extensively covered in written sources such that
archaeology is erroneously regarded as inappropriate to investigate them.
African Historical Archaeology in the Present: A Final Thought
This chapter has examined the sub-Saharan region of the African continent in a
global context, focusing on how Europeans have impacted local African institutions
as a result of contact and interactions mainly within the sphere of trade, but also
slavery and subsequent settlement in some parts of the continent. What we see is
not only a world system in operation, but also complex local networks shaped by
contact and colonial settings that varied from place to place. While African societies were certainly transformed following these interactions, archaeological research
often demands that we examine the African and European sides in a given contact
setting. Research at Savi (Benin), Elmina (Ghana), Oudepost 1 and Zeekou Valley
(South Africa), and Baranda (Zimbabwe) have largely achieved this dual perspective
in that archaeological data have revealed new narratives in situations where written
sources have often provided the context in which events are discussed.
Africans have been in contact with the “outside world” for many centuries before
the arrival of Europeans, and these contacts were extensively global in character.
Such contacts are best understood from African pre-European as well as nonEuropean sources, thus characterizing the diversity of African historical archaeology. These multiple sources, if properly integrated with archaeological data, can
produce new sets of information and assist in better informing the past. On the
other hand, in the interior such as the Great Lakes region, the formation of states
such as Buganda and Bunyoro-Kitara during the period 1500 to 1800 took place
with little or no connection to intercontinental or maritime trading systems. Europeans only arrived there during the late 19th century. This is comparable to northcentral and west central Africa, where major states such as Kongo, Tio, Mbundu,
Lozi, and Luba emerged. Only Kongo and Mbundu have written documentary
evidence dating from the late 15th and early 16th centuries because of their proximity to the coast. These societies demonstrate remarkable continuities from at least
the late first millennium. The role of historical archaeology in this case would be
to examine the continuity of both the political and economic processes that have
sustained these societies from the earliest times.
In studying historical archaeology, we are dealing with “the past in the present”
(Orser and Fagan 1995), a living archaeology affected by contemporary issues such
as politics and economics. African governments have used archaeological research
for various ends, but mainly to reclaim their past which they had been denied following European colonization. Zimbabwe, for instance, is the only country in the
world named after an archaeological site. Rhodesian colonization had appropriated
gold, black ivory, and houses of stone
247
the African past and had given Great Zimbabwe and its culture a foreign nonAfrican identity. Recent research in northern Zimbabwe has demonstrated continuity of this culture system to the present, and also confirmed its Karanga identity.
South Africa, which identifies itself as the “Rainbow Nation,” a reference to the
diversity of its peoples and cultures, has successfully integrated archaeology into
the education curriculum. What is evident is that the South Africa of today has been
forged from deep historical roots, where current complex politics derive from many
centuries of cooperation and misunderstandings between Europeans and Africans.
These encounters are well documented historically, but archaeology has added
another dimension.
However, in situations where the past has not been given serious consideration,
or has been manipulated to present only one version for certain groups of people,
the consequences can be very tragic. Recent, bloody ethnic clashes on the Kenyan
coast have arisen out of the resistance by coastal communities against long-held
colonial and post-colonial government policies which are seen as being pro-Muslim
Swahili (Kusimba 1999). These sentiments mainly arise from poor appreciation of
the relevance of Swahili history and culture, as well as perceived dominance in
terms of the language on much of the hinterland. Culturally, the Swahili are not
different from other east Africans, and archaeology has demonstrated this very
clearly. Continuities, punctuated by global events such as European colonization,
characterize the historical archaeology of Africa.
Generally, historical archaeology in sub-Saharan Africa can bridge the gap
between our own world and the long millennia of prehistory. Considerable historical archaeological evidence is available for interpretation: midden deposits,
building foundations, standing structures, and the very landscape itself, much of
which is an artifact of the past few centuries of colonialism. As a discipline,
historical archaeology is concerned with themes that make use of this rich body of
evidence to address aspects of the history of colonialism, to supplement documentary sources, and to add perspectives to the interpretation of the past that cannot
be addressed through documentary evidence alone. Much remains archaeologically
unrecovered for the periods relating to European partition and occupation of Africa
from the late 19th century. This period is extensively documented historically, but
also rich structurally in terms of administrative buildings, fortifications, railway
lines, factories, bridges, etc. This would fall under industrial archaeology, a field
that has not yet been given serious academic consideration.
REFERENCES
Abrahams, Gabiba 1993 The Grand Parade, Cape Town: Archaeological Excavations of the
Seventeenth Century Fort de Goede Hoope. The South African Archaeological Bulletin
48:3–15.
Andah, Bassey 1995 Studying African Societies in Cultural Context. In Making Alternative
Histories: The Presence of Archaeology and History in Non-Western Settings. Peter
Schmidt and Thomas C. Patterson, eds. Pp. 149–181. Santa Fe: School for American
Research Press.
248
innocent pikirayi
Beach, David N. 1994 The Shona and their Neighbours. Oxford: Blackwell.
Chami, Felix 1994 The Tanzanian Coast in the First Millennium AD: An Archaeology Of
Iron Working, Farming Communities. Uppsala: Societas Archaeological Upsaliensis.
Chittick, H. Nelville 1965 The “Shirazi” Colonization of East Africa. Journal of African
History 6(3):275–294.
Cooper, Frederick 1977 Plantation Slavery on the East Coast of Africa. New Haven: Yale
University Press.
Curtin, Philip D. 1990 The Rise of the Plantation Complex. New York: Cambridge University Press.
DeCorse, Christopher R. 1992 Culture Contact, Continuity, and Change on the Gold Coast,
A.D. 1400–1900. The African Archaeological Review 10:163–196.
—— 1996 Archaeological Perspectives of Culture Contact and Trade in West Africa. In
Aspects of African Archaeology: Papers from the 10th Congress of the PanAfrican Association for Prehistory and Related Studies. Gilbert Pwiti and Robert Soper, eds. Pp.
681–686. Harare: University of Zimbabwe Publications.
—— 1997a Historical Archaeology in West Africa: Culture Contact, Continuity and Change.
Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.
—— 1997b West-African Historical Archaeology. In Encyclopedia of Precolonial Africa.
Joseph O. Vogel, ed. Pp. 545–549. Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press.
—— 1998 Culture Contact and Change in West Africa. In Studies in Culture Contact: Interaction, Culture, Change, and Archaeology. James G. Cusick, ed. Pp. 358–377. Carbondale:
Center for Archaeological Investigations, Southern Illinois University.
—— 2001a. An archaeology of Elmina: Africans and Europeans on the Gold Coast, 1400–
1900. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.
—— 2001b, ed. West Africa during the Atlantic Slave Trade. London: Leicester University
Press.
Elphick, Richard, and Hermann Giliomee, eds. 1980 The Shaping of South African Society,
1652–1820. London: Longman Penguin Southern Africa.
Feierman, Steven 1998 A Century of Ironies in East Africa (c. 1780–1890). In African
History: from Earliest Times to Independence. Philip Curtin, Steven Feierman, Leonard
Thompson, and Jan Vansina, eds. Pp. 353–376. London and New York: Longman.
Hall, Martin 1992 Small Things and the Mobile, Conflictual Fusion of Power, Fear, and
Desire. In The Art and Mystery of Historical Archaeology: Essays in Honor of James Deetz.
Anne E. Yentsch and Mary C. Beaudry, eds. Pp. 373–400. Boca Raton: CRC Press.
—— 1993 The Archaeology of Colonial Settlement in Southern Africa. Annual Review of
Anthropology 22:172–200.
—— 1994 The Secret Lives of Houses: Women and Gables in the Eighteenth Century Cape.
Social Dynamics 20:1–48.
—— 1997a Central and Southern African Historical Archaeology. In Encyclopedia of
Precolonial Africa. Joseph O. Vogel, ed. Pp. 554–558. Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press.
—— 1997b Patriarchal Facades: The Ambivalences of Gender in the Archaeology of
Colonialism. In Our Gendered Past: Archaeological Studies of Gender in Southern Africa.
Lyn Wadley, ed. Pp. 221–236. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press.
—— 1999 Subaltern Voices? Finding Spaces between Things and Words. In Historical Archaeology: Back from the Edge. Pedro P. A. Funari, Martin Hall, and Siân Jones, eds. Pp.
193–203. London: Routledge.
Hall, Martin, Antonia Malan, Sharon Amann, Lynn Honeyman, Taft Kiser, and Gabie
Ritchie 1993 The Archaeology of Paradys. South African Archaeological Society Goodwin
Series 7:40–58.
gold, black ivory, and houses of stone
249
Horton, Mark C. 1996 Shanga: A Muslim Trading Community on the East African Coast.
Nairobi: British Institute in Eastern Africa.
—— 1997 Eastern African Historical Archaeology. In Encyclopedia of Precolonial Africa.
Joseph O. Vogel, ed. Pp. 549–554. Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press.
Insoll, Timothy A. 1996 Settlement and Trade in Gao, Mali. In Aspects of African Archaeology: Papers from the 10th Congress of the PanAfrican Association for Prehistory and
Related Studies. Gilbert Pwiti and Robert Soper, eds. Pp. 663–669. Harare: University of
Zimbabwe Publications.
Kelly, Kenneth G. 1996 Trade Contacts and Social Change: The Archaeology of the Hueda
Kingdom, Republic of Benin. In Aspects of African Archaeology: Papers from the 10th
Congress of the PanAfrican Association for Prehistory and Related Studies. Gilbert Pwiti
and Robert Soper, eds. Pp. 687–691. Harare: University of Zimbabwe Publications.
—— 1997 The Archaeology of African-European Interaction: Investigating the Social Roles
of Trade, Traders, and the Use of Space in Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Hueda
Kingdom, Republic of Benin. World Archaeology 28(3):77–95.
—— 2001 Change and Continuity in Coastal Benin. In West Africa during the Atlantic Slave
Trade. Christopher R. DeCorse, ed. Pp. 81–100. London: Leicester University Press.
Kusimba, Chapurukha M. 1999 The Rise and Fall of Swahili States. Walnut Creek: AltaMira
Press.
LaViolette, Adria 2004 Swahili Archaeology and History of Pemba. In African Historical
Archaeologies. Andrew M. Reid and Paul J. Lane, eds. Pp. 125–162. New York: Kluwer
Academic/Plenum Publishers.
Lovejoy, Paul E. 1983 Transformations in Slavery: A History of Slavery in Africa. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Markell, Ann B., Martin Hall, and Carmel Schrire 1995 The Historical Archaeology of
Vergelegen, an Early Farmstead at the Cape of Good Hope. Historical Archaeology
29:10–34.
Mudenge, Stanislas I. G. 1988 A Political History of Munhumutapa. Harare: Zimbabwe
Publishing House.
Orser, Jr., Charles E., and Brian M. Fagan 1995 Historical Archaeology. New York: Harper
Collins College Publishers.
Pikirayi, Innocent 1993 The Archaeological Identity of the Mutapa State: Towards an
Historical Archaeology of Northern Zimbabwe. Uppsala: Societas Archaeological
Upsaliensis.
—— 1996 Archaeological Pointers to the Decline or Collapse of the Mutapa State.
Zimbabwea 4:9–22.
—— 1997 Research Trends in Historical Archaeology on the Zimbabwe Plateau and Adjacent
Margins. In Caves, Monuments and Texts: Zimbabwean Archaeology Today. Gilbert Pwiti,
ed. Studies in African Archaeology 14. Uppsala: Department of Archaeology and Ancient
History, Uppsala University.
—— 1999 Research Trends in the Historical Archaeology of Zimbabwe. In Historical Archaeology: Back from the Edge. Pedro P. A. Funari, Martin Hall, and Siân Jones, eds. Pp.
67–84. London and New York: Routledge.
—— 2001 The Zimbabwe Culture: Origins and Decline in Southern Zambezian States.
Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press.
—— 2004 Less Implicit Historical Archaeologies: Oral Traditions and Later Karanga
Settlements in South-Central Zimbabwe. In African Historical Archaeologies. Andrew
M. Reid and Paul J. Lane, eds. Pp. 243–267. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum
Publishers.
250
innocent pikirayi
Pikirayi, Innocent, and Gilbert Pwiti 1999 States, Traders and Colonists: Historical Archaeology in Zimbabwe. Historical Archaeology 33(2):73—89.
Posnansky, Merrick, and Christopher R. DeCorse 1986 Historical Archaeology in subSaharan Africa: A Review. Historical Archaeology 20(1):1–14.
Reid, Andrew, and Paul J. Lane 2004 African Historical Archaeologies. In African Historical
Archaeologies. Andrew M. Reid and Paul J. Lane, eds. Pp. 1–32. New York: Kluwer
Academic/Plenum Publishers.
Sassoon, Hamo 1981 Ceramics from the Wreck of a Portuguese Ship at Mombasa. Azania
16:97–130.
Schmidt, Peter 1978 Historical Archaeology: A Structural Approach to an African Culture.
Westport: Greenwood Press.
—— 1990 Oral Traditions, Archaeology, and History: A Short Reflective History. In A History
of African Archaeology. Peter T. Robertshaw, ed. Pp. 252–270. London: James Currey.
Schrire, Carmel 1988 The Historical Archaeology of the Impact of Colonialism in 17th
Century South Africa. Antiquity 62:214–25.
—— 1992a The Archaeological Identity of Hunters and Herders at the Cape over the Last
2000 Years: A Critique. South African Archaeological Bulletin 47:62–4.
—— 1992b Digging Archives at Oudepost 1, Cape, South Africa. In The Art and Mystery
of Historical Archaeology: Essays in Honor of James Deetz. Anne E. Yentsch and Mary C.
Beaudry, eds. Pp. 361–372. Boca Raton: CRC Press.
—— 1995 Digging through Darkness: Chronicles of an Archaeologist. Richmond: University
of Virginia Press.
Schrire, Carmel, Katherine Cruz-Uribe, and Jane Klose 1993 The Site History of the Historical Site at Oudepost 1, Cape. South African Archaeological Society Goodwin Series
7:21–32.
Schrire, Carmel, and Jeannette Deacon 1989 The Indigenous Artefacts from Oudepost 1, a
Colonial Outpost of the VOC at Saldanha Bay, Cape. South African Archaeological
Bulletin 44:105–13.
Sheriff, Abdul 1987 Slaves, Spices and Ivory in Zanzibar: Integration of an East African
Commercial Empire into the World Economy, 1770–1873. London: James Currey.
Smith, Andrew B. 1986 Excavations at Plettenberg Bay, South Africa of the Camp-Site of
the Survivors of the Wreck of the Sao Goncalo, 1630. The International Journal of
Nautical Archaeology and Underwater Exploration 15:53–63.
Sutton, John A. 1990 A Thousand Years of East Africa. Nairobi: British Institute in Eastern
Africa.
van Vollenhoven, C. Anton 1999 The Military Fortifications of Pretoria 1800–1902: A Study
in Historical Archaeology. Pretoria: Heinekor.
Vansina, Jan 1985 Oral Tradition as History. Wisconsin: Wisconsin University Press.
Wallerstein, Immanuel 1986 Africa and the Modern World. Trenton: Africa World Press.
Werz, Bruno E. J. S. 1993 South African Shipwrecks and Salvage: The Need for improved
Management. The International Journal of Nautical Archaeology and Underwater Exploration 22:237–244.
Chapter 13
Becoming American: Small
Things Remembered
Diana DiPaolo Loren and
Mary C. Beaudry
When historical archaeology in the USA was in its infancy, researchers undertook
their excavations at colonial sites in the Eastern United States with the firm notion
that imperial expansion and colonization involved the wholesale transplantation of
European culture into its settler colonies (Figure 13.1). Historical archaeologists
sought to identify material signatures of “colonial systems” (British, Spanish,
French, etc.) and to trace the ways in which these cultural systems transformed
over time and became increasingly “American” and distinct from the cultures of
the metropoles out of which they arose. Indigenous groups were supposedly swept
along in these transformations, as they acculturated into “Americans.” In this
chapter we use the influential work of one pioneering archaeological theorist of
early American culture change, James Deetz, as a foil and embarkation point for
consideration of the new directions that historical archaeologists are taking in their
exploration of the complexity and variability of actions, interactions, and discourses
involved in the processes of “becoming American.” Our focus will center on the
broader region of Eastern North America.
Deetz and His Influences on Historical Archaeology
James Deetz’s far-reaching influences on historical archaeology are undeniable. For
over thirty years, Deetz was a leading force in methodological and theoretical
advances in historical archaeology. Perhaps his best-known work is In Small Things
Forgotten: The Archaeology of Early American Life (1977), a book assigned to many
undergraduate and graduate archaeology students. In Small Things Forgotten focused
on how artifacts reflected the worldviews or ideologies of people in early America
in this new context. Deetz argued that separation from England led American
252
diana dipaolo loren and mary c. beaudry
Figure 13.1 Map of eastern North America with sites, regions, and features referred to in this
chapter and elsewhere in the volume (shown in italics)
colonists to reformulate their traditional social guiding notions (the medieval world
order) into new structural principles (the Georgian Order) (Burke, this volume).
This cultural re-visioning manifested in mundane material culture, such as tombstones, architecture, and furniture, and occurred over time, marked by increased
isolation from England and regionally diverse folk cultures (Hall 2000:48). Distinct
from archaeological and historical analysts who focused on elites in the “main
house,” Deetz highlighted the lives of ordinary people in the colonial Northeast
(Deetz 1977:28–32).
Included in this focus were African Americans of the Parting Ways community
in Massachusetts, who went through their own process of restructuring in their
transition from enslaved to freed. Deetz posited an “African-American mindset,”
which differed from the “European-American mindset,” as evidenced by differences
in architecture, settlement patterns, and foodways (Deetz 1977:138–154). But this
mindset was not to be interpreted as how African slaves became “Americanized”;
rather, Deetz argued that while the artifacts available to the members of the Parting
Ways community were of necessity almost entirely Anglo-American, they were used
becoming american: small things remembered
253
in ways that were West African (Deetz 1977:148–149). As with the Georgian
mindset, Deetz viewed the African-American mindset as one that began with a
blueprint that immigrants brought with them for re-creating the life that they had
left behind and as one that was transformed into new cultural orders that would
then define America (Hall 2000:49). The ideas put forth by Deetz in his seminal
volume influenced historical archaeology’s focus on how cultural worlds were reconstructed through objects, ethnogenesis, quotidian practices, “small things,” and
disenfranchised peoples in colonial contexts (Stahl 2002:828).
But just as Deetz’s work is familiar, so are critiques to his approach. While Deetz
placed an emphasis on changing worldviews, he gave little attention to why change
occurred. As Hall (2000:50) points out, as with most structural interpretations,
Deetz’s approach tended to be ahistorical, which was at odds with his notion of
shifting mindsets. The conflict, stress, and ethnic, racial, and class strife so inherent
in present-day analyses of colonial situations were left out. Authors such as
Ferguson (1992), Lightfoot (1995), Hall (2000), and Deagan (1988, 1996) have
emphasized how many colonial contexts were plural communities, occupied by
Native Americans, Africans, Europeans, and mixed-bloods (creolized individuals of
mixed racial parentage, such as mestizas). Identity construction and reconstruction
in these contexts were not straightforward processes (“I am American”) but rather
were endlessly complex (St. George 2000). Imperial goals of racial differentiation
and sexual control fed into these notions of identity construction, adding further
complexity as colonial leaders and administrators tried to define and control their
subjects within their colonies while at the same time competing with other colonial
powers. Were worldviews adopted by all members of colonial communities, including people of the middling and lower sorts? Why would common people adhere to
an essentially upper class worldview in troubled times? Would you expect people of
non-European descent, particularly those subjugated, to share the same perspectives? The answers to these questions are negative and serve to underscore the fact
that the outcome of ahistorical structuralist analyses like Deetz’s is that the colonial
context of early colonial life gets overlooked. Recent scholarship attempts to foreground the experience of colonialism on the part both of colonizers and the colonized in understanding how new identities were forged in cross-cultural engagements
of short or intermittent duration as well as in established settler colonies (Hall 2000;
Loren 2004; Lyons and Papadopoulos 2002; St. George 2000; Silliman 2005;
Torrence and Clarke 2000).
Further, the “small things” remembered by Deetz alluded to worldviews (here,
the Georgian Order) and the large things (architecture, headstones, etc.) people
used to constitute their identities (Beaudry 2002). Deetz’s approach to these categories of material culture was symmetric, without the noise or diversity one would
expect from complex colonial contexts. He gave little attention to small finds – the
tiny objects (such as buttons and glass beads) found in the archaeological record
that one might presume to be the “small things.” Traditionally, small finds have
been overlooked as a viable interpretive category in historical archaeology, often
because they are relegated to static functional categories, such as “personal adornment” (Beaudry 2002; Yentsch 1996).
254
diana dipaolo loren and mary c. beaudry
Understanding the process of “becoming” must also be highlighted, rather than
downplayed as it has traditionally been in historical archaeology. Imbalances of
power and cultural plurality were just some of the daily difficulties in early America
that fed into the process of becoming American (St. George 2000). In early America,
distinct cultural traditions met and reshaped through new social, sexual, and political interactions. Existing and newly created identities were malleable, subject to
politicization in different contexts. Throughout the colonial period, different identities were asserted and reasserted, whether they were preexisting identities or newly
formulated ones (Pauketat 2001:7–8). This process of becoming occurred largely
through material culture (what people wore, what they ate, what their houses looked
like, etc.) and was ongoing in different American colonies. The differential experiences of colonial subjects shaped how they used material culture to construct and
reconstruct their identities in an often unstable world. In this chapter, we attend to
the process of “becoming American” by focusing on the small things used in daily
life (but often ignored in archaeological analysis) to constitute one’s identity in the
colonial world.
Interpreting Small Things
Ceramics, glass, clay pipes, and animal bones have excited more interest among
historical archaeologists than many other sorts of finds, and these same archaeologists have developed useful conventions for presenting, analyzing, and interpreting
these categories of material culture. Nevertheless, large gaps remain in our knowledge of the material culture of medieval, early modern, and modern times. The
frequent reprinting of Ivor Noël Hume’s Guide to Artifacts of Colonial America
(1969), the recent publication by the Society for Historical Archaeology of a volume
devoted to artifact studies (Karklins 2000), the issuing of a second edition of its
collection of artifact studies reprinted from its journal, Historical Archaeology
(Brauner 2000), and Deagan’s two volumes on the artifacts of Spanish colonial
America (1987, 2002) are ample proof that the field is still working toward greater
knowledge of the sorts of artifacts found at historical sites in order both to identify
and to interpret them.
In North America, archaeologists have tended to approach small finds by categorizing artifacts according to function, based on assumptions about how an artifact
was supposed to be used. The set of categories most commonly employed is the
one developed by Stanley South in the 1970s as part of his effort to systematize
and objectify how historical archaeologists approached artifact analysis (South
1977). Despite critiques of this rigid scheme, many historical archaeologists continue to classify their finds according to South’s categories. Unfortunately, this
analytical framework rules out consideration of finds according to their archaeological or use contexts and prevents exploration of the ways in which many objects
have multiple uses as well as multiple meanings for their users.
Not even Deetz’s In Small Things Forgotten (1977) deals with genuinely small
finds: he focuses on architecture, ceramics, gravestones, African-American material
becoming american: small things remembered
255
culture, and the material culture of music. Deetz was always a humanist and always
interested in real people and real lives, but his theoretical approach took his archaeological musings toward abstraction and generalization; he always went after the big
picture of culture and insisted that culture imbued its members with a consistent
and coherent worldview. Other scholars have taken the title of Deetz’s book closer
to heart to pursue research into small finds, especially items almost wholly neglected
by historical archaeologists – for example Skip Stewart-Abernathy’s (1992) perceptive analysis of how mass-produced consumer items like canning jars can be culturally transformed into icons of traditional values.
The conventions that North American historical archaeologists have developed
for presenting and analyzing their finds have strongly affected not only the ways in
which they think about artifacts but the ways that they can think about artifacts.
The situation improves only marginally when one lumps small artifacts like sewing
tools or buttons and buckles into catch-all categories like “Activities” or “Personal”
or if one denies that artifacts can be deployed by cultural actors in a manner at
variance with some, largely imaginary, dominant worldview or idealized cultural
system. Rigid artifact categories do not allow us to consider the character and
qualities of “Activities” or “Personal” artifacts that vested them with special meanings and import beyond the purely practical or the ideologically universal. Readymade classificatory categories are deliberately de-contextualized ways of rendering
data, of providing free-floating and ultimately meaningless abstractions about a past
that was not abstract but lived, real, human, and diverse.
America: Becoming from Negotiating
The words “becoming American” evoke a process by which people in early America
created (using material culture, of course) identities that could be described as
American. In this chapter, we use this term not as a reference to a larger process of
assimilation or to hark back to the 1970s (and earlier) popular notion of America
as a melting pot. Becoming American does not refer to how we all became the same;
that one corporate identity was forged through the actions of like-minded people
who identified themselves as American. As Lightfoot notes, “colonial settlements
were pluralistic entrepôts where peoples of diverse backgrounds and nationalities,
lived, worked, socialized, and procreated” (Lightfoot 1995:201). We use the phrase
“becoming American” to capture some of these complexities, to highlight processes
of identity formation and differential experiences of occupants of early America:
Native American, European, African, and mixed-blood women and men from different social and economic groups in Eastern North America (St. George 2000:4).
Within American historical archaeology, the current emphasis on diverse colonial
identities emerged from an earlier focus on European elite men (Ferguson 1992:5–
6; see also Delle et al. 2000; Lightfoot 1995). While Deetz and others have discussed
the process of “becoming” in early colonial America – indeed that was the focus of
In Small Things Forgotten – until very recently little attention has been paid to how
“becoming” was a negotiative process. Mindfulness of negotiation can be found in
256
diana dipaolo loren and mary c. beaudry
the work of those who consider the pluralistic nature of many colonial communities
and draw out how cultural practices were negotiated and articulated with other
distinct practices to form new ones (Deagan 1996; Hall 2000; Lightfoot 1995;
Loren 1999, 2001b; Mills 2002).
The colonization of present-day Eastern North America by Spanish, British,
French, and Dutch imperial powers in the 17th and 18th centuries put into place
hierarchies of class, ethnicity, race, and gender in concert with those already existing in indigenous communities. Sexual relations between and among these groups
brought further layers of complexity into colonial communities with the emergence
of racial labels, such as quadroon. But new and existing categories of race, class, and
gender were flexible and subject to manipulation (Nassaney 2003). The negotiation
of colonial identities is outlined in recent research that stresses the inconsistencies
of colonial rule, the differential experiences of colonial individuals, and the asymmetries of race, gender, and status that were intrinsic to all colonial communities
(Hall 2000; Loren 1999, 2001b; Stahl 2002; Stoler 1989; Upton 1996).
Yet despite attention to shifting identities in colonial contexts, researchers still
commonly do not emphasize more than one aspect of colonial identities as identity
is often envisioned as a single variable. For example, numerous articles and volumes
within historical archaeology focus almost exclusively on race (Orser 2001) or
gender (Seifert 1991; Voss, this volume), and still others bring status and class to
the fore of their interpretations (Wurst, this volume; Wurst and Fitts 1999). But
highlighting just one identity, or one aspect of becoming, can be problematic as
individuals often must negotiate multiple or conflicting identities in any contexts
(Fisher and Loren 2003). Identifying particular identities in the archaeological
record also leads to the essentializing trap of linking artifacts to particular ethnic
or gender groups (Stahl 2001:33; Upton 1996). For example, sewing objects are
often equated with women, following the assumption that all women (and perhaps
only women) sew (Beaudry 2002). What is missing from these analyses is the recognition that objects often have multiple meanings in identity constructions (Beaudry
et al. 1991; Beaudry 2002; see also Hall 2000; Meskell 1999).
This is not to say, however, that we can never seek to draw out or highlight unique
identities, but rather that the process of becoming American should be understood
as identity formations that emerged out of shifting contexts. That means that analysis of identities is context-dependent – no one singular American identity emerged
from Spanish, French, British, or Dutch colonial communities in Eastern North
America. Rather, the identities that emerged were diverse and distinct as people drew
from unique configurations of material culture to construct identities (Thomas
1994:9). Identity formation must be understood within local communities but
located within the larger surrounding conversations or discourse that impacted how
people created identities and how others viewed them within colonial society.
The process of becoming American drew on the knowledge of these different
identities and involved the strategy of purposeful manipulation of material culture
to represent oneself in a particular fashion for personal, sexual, economic, or
political reasons. Architecture, dress, and ceramics comprised just some of the ways
in which one could pull from the universe of colonial expressions to identify oneself
becoming american: small things remembered
257
in the world. But, in the world of historical archaeology, the methodological focus
has continued to center on the big things – larger material culture such as architecture and ceramics used in identity construction (Beaudry 2002). So, while the
theoretical focus of becoming American has changed since Deetz’s time, the things
we use to construct our stories have not. However, not all categories of material
culture are appropriate to investigating nuanced processes such as human agency,
resistance, and negotiations of gender, race, and status (Deagan 2002:4). As Deagan
notes, small finds – buckles, bracelets, beads, and thimbles – are often imbued with
“a great deal more information about gender, beliefs, value systems, social opportunities and social identities” (Deagan 2002:4). We share with Deagan the conviction that small finds can lead to more nuanced understandings of how people used
material culture in the process of becoming American.
In the following case studies from English colonies in New England and Spanish
and French colonies in the Southeast, we demonstrate ways in which “small finds
remembered” can be contextualized and analyzed in ways that reveal the important
roles they played in the construction and negotiation of new American identities.
Small Things and the Negotiation of Identities in 17th-Century
New England
Thimbles are frequently reported among the small finds from historical sites, and
they have received plentiful attention from historical archaeologists in terms of
identification and chronology (Hill 1995; Deagan 2002:197–206). Archaeologists
justifiably report on and illustrate thimbles as part of sewing assemblages and associate them with women, without giving much consideration to the cultural values
linked to their purchase, exchange, and use. A close contextual examination of
thimbles found at colonial sites offers much more than mere identification and
dating, however, and can provide insight into colonial ideologies and the construction and negotiation of personal identity in the fluid social arenas of colonial settler
colonies (Beaudry 2006).
Propagating the gospel and civilizing the natives: thimbles for Magunco
In the 17th century, New England was not a distinctive region of the Americas
controlled by a single European power; rather, it constituted a number of settler
colonies established by different groups for different reasons. The present-day Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the 17th century was divided into the colonies of
Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay, their leaders often at odds with one another over
religious, political, and economic issues and in disagreement about how to interact
with the indigenous Algonkian-speakers who continued to reside in what had
become “English” territory and who had their own cultural differences.
Excavations under the direction of Stephen A. Mrozowski at Magunco Hill, in
Ashland, Massachusetts, produced evidence both of cultural transformation and
258
diana dipaolo loren and mary c. beaudry
resistance based on the analysis of Indian use of European materials in this late
17th- and early 18th-century “Praying Indian Town” (Brown and Priddy 2000;
Fiske Center 2004). Magunco was established ca. 1674 by missionary John Eliot
for Christianized Nipmuc Indians (Herbster 2005). Eliot was a Puritan minister
who sought to Christianize the Indians of the Massachusetts Bay Colony through
his preaching as well as through translation of a catechism, the Bible, and other
religious tracts into Algonkian; he also spearheaded the effort to resettle Indian
converts in their own towns, where they could continue to speak (and to read and
write) their own language and follow their own laws while nevertheless subscribing
to the values of Christianity and Puritan culture by living in English-style houses
and adopting European dress and material culture (Bragdon 1988; Cogley 1999).
At Magunco, archaeologists recovered a number of identical copper alloy
thimbles, likely of English manufacture; all were small, “maid’s” or child’s size.
Interpreting these thimbles merely as sewing tools seems insufficient. While often
archaeologists write about thimbles that have been altered by Native Americans for
use as personal adornment or as tinklers affixed to fringed clothing, none of the
Magunco thimbles had holes drilled through their crowns. Indeed, they displayed
no apparent use-wear. It is possible that the Magunco thimbles represent another
front in the battle waged by John Eliot to Christianize the indigenous people of
Massachusetts. As such, they can be interpreted as gifts with a hidden agenda, as
prestation in service of ideology – in this case, the ideology of colonialism. A massproduced and globally distributed object such as a thimble represents more than
an attempt to draw Native Americans into the world system of capitalist exchange.
Thomas (1991:18) notes that such a good becomes an “alienated thing” when put
into circulation and is far more than just a commodity. It may become imbued with
new meaning and new significance, and it may embody a complicated set of values
that are not inherent to the object but seen as arising out of qualities that its “appropriate” use are thought to impart or inculcate.
To the colonizer and missionary, thimbles (and, presumably, needles, thread, and
textiles – all less likely than thimbles to be found archaeologically) were a perfect
medium for conveying a suite of values that linked together ideals of femininity and
womanhood, cleanliness, and Godliness (Parker 1984), as well as the production
of proper, modest, European-style dress. The Magunco thimbles would have been
diminutive yet powerful tools of the missionaries in their efforts to instill Christian
values, for the very act of sewing incorporated many values espoused in Christian
teachings: it required clean hands, self-sacrifice, and self-discipline. Skill in sewing
was an imperative for European women and girls of all ages and social stations –
always having “work” at hand prevented idleness that might lead to inappropriate
behavior. Hence missionaries through the ages have stressed instruction in sewing
and needlework along with Biblical instruction. Indeed, sewing schools and missions have often made Bible verses or Biblical scenes the required subjects of samplers and embroidered pictures produced by their pupils.
It seems likely that if the thimbles were to serve their purpose, female English
missionaries would have been sent to instruct young Indian women and girls in
sewing and needlework. Because the Magunco thimbles are all too small for adult
becoming american: small things remembered
259
use, it further appears that missionaries targeted the younger female converts as
potentially more receptive than adult women to instruction in European techniques
of sewing.
While we can provide a context for understanding why missionaries might have
thought thimbles as effective as Bibles for their purpose of conveying Western, Christian ideals to converted Indians, it is impossible to assess the degree to which Indian
women embraced this new skill and the values associated with it. As noted above,
little if any wear can be detected on the thimbles, and we have no indication that the
thimbles were re-appropriated by the Christianized Indians for purposes other than
those for which they were intended. Perhaps they were simply discarded?
Whatever the explanation, we cannot assume that the presence at Magunco of
English thimbles, in numbers large or small, is by any stretch of the imagination
an index to “acculturation” or the wholesale adoption by Christianized Nipmucs
of the value system such items represented to Europeans. As one of the more “subtle
ploys” of colonialism (Thomas 1991:84), the thimbles alert us to the intentions of
the colonizers and missionaries and leave us to speculate as to as to the actions and
responses of their “congregation.”
Grace Stout’s silver thimble: a tiny weapon in one woman’s struggle for self-definition
In 1682, in Ipswich, Massachusetts, Grace Stout was convicted as a petty thief; a
thimble served as the instrument of her downfall (Essex Institute 1913, 4: 279–
283). The court-recorded depositions reveal that Moses Pengry, Jr. complained that
Grace had stolen seven shillings and some linen from him:
His reasons were because she sometimes watched with his wife in the same room where
these things were; because she passed daily by his house morning and evening to
Goodwife Foster’s where she worked, and when the theft was committed his wife was
gone from home . . . , and he also was away often; because they found a woman’s thimble
near the place where the linen was. (Essex Institute 1913, 4:280, emphasis added)
How could a woman’s thimble found at the scene serve as conclusive evidence that
Grace Stout was the thief? Other depositions provide clues to the line of reasoning
the court followed in convicting Grace. A former employer claimed that he had
caught her red-handed attempting to steal money from him; townspeople eyed her
suspiciously even before this incident was widely reported. Several testified that she
professed to have no money, but somehow produced cash to purchase such things
as a carved box with a drawer in it and two locks, linen cloth, a silver waistcoat
hook, lace, ribbon, stockings, and a silver rump hook; when Nathaniel Knoulton
went to Boston she gave him money to buy her a silver thimble, a bodkin, and three
yards of ribbon.
Grace’s duties as housemaid involved mending, sewing, and perhaps she did
fancier work as well: she received money “for work” or “for work . . . and for a pair
of gloves,” and for knitting stockings (Essex Institute 1913, 4:280). The court
260
diana dipaolo loren and mary c. beaudry
calculated how much she had earned against how much she had spent since coming
to Ipswich. They concluded she had spent more money than she could have come
by honestly and that she was spending above her means. Grace’s purchases, both
with her earnings and with her purportedly ill-gotten gains, included several items
that related to her needlework and that may have allowed her better to ply her skills.
This suggests she took pride in her work; it was an element of her definition of self.
But a housemaid was not supposed to own a silver thimble, at least not by the
standards of late 17th-century Massachusetts. Grace Stout may have sought to
strengthen and confirm her identity as a needlewoman by taking pleasure in the
seemingly innocent ownership of a few especially fine sewing implements and
materials – and perhaps an elegant carved box to keep them in – but her overt
consumption and display of expensive objects and articles of clothing, beyond her
means and above her station, made her contemporaries uneasy and suspicious. Her
attempts at self-identification involved the appropriation not just of items but of
symbols of the social station occupied by the “better sorts” of Ipswich women, and
the people of the town were at pains to punish her for the arrogance and disrespect
they read in her actions. Grace may have tried to engineer for herself a new social
identity, but the good citizens of Ipswich saw her social position as fixed and
non-negotiable.
That is how in this instance a woman’s thimble became “matter out of place” in
a deeply felt social sense as well as a clue leading to the conviction of a thief. Grace’s
perceived self-impeachment through ownership of a silver thimble illustrates how
objects become highly charged with import and send messages that seem confusing
because they say more than we expect them to. The message for the archaeologist
may be equally confusing because documentary examples that enable the construction of complex and polyvalent cultural fields for interpreting material culture
underscore the weakness of analytical frameworks that aim to disambiguate artifact
interpretation by slotting objects into grand narratives and systemic programs that
overlook the role that individuals play in the negotiation of personal identity and
the role of symbols in social and cultural life. The episode of Grace Stout reminds
us that any object can be symbolically mobilized in service to the ambitions of an
individual as well as to the enforcement of rules and mores of the collectivity. Even
humble or seemingly inconsequential needlework tools such as thimbles figured
prominently in the construction and negotiation of identity and served as symbols
of status or, conversely, as indicators of behavior or ambitions unbefitting a person’s
perceived or assigned station in life.
th
Mortuary Customs and Identity in the 17 -Century Chesapeake
th
Pins, shrouds, and social difference: treatment of the dead in 17 -century Maryland
Chesapeake archaeologists confront many challenges in examining the emergence
of new, “American” identities, not the least of which is the contrast between an
becoming american: small things remembered
261
often ephemeral record of the region’s earliest colonial years and the emphatic
material signature of its 18th-century “Golden Age.” Hall (1992:374) observes that
the social standing of 18th-century Chesapeake patriarchs was “written in bricks,
mortar, and timber” as well as in ownership and display of expensive goods of all
sorts. Social distinctions that existed in the fledging English colonies in this region
are more difficult to address with archaeological evidence, but close readings of
“small things” associated with the treatment of the dead offer us glimpses of how
new social identities were negotiated even as settlers struggled to maintain traditions
of their homelands.
On the 17th-century Maryland frontier, only elites were buried in coffins, but
over the course of the century coffin use became increasingly common. Most who
died in the colony’s early years were buried in family or plantation burying grounds
rather than in a church and or churchyard, either in simple wooden coffins or in a
shroud or winding sheet (Riordan 2000:2.2–2.3). Shrouds were often sewn together
along their edges; others, however, were fastened wholly or in part with copper alloy
straight pins.
The Patuxent Point Site, in Calvert County, Maryland, was one of many small
plantations along the Patuxent River in the 17th century; it was occupied ca.
1658–ca. 1680. Excavations exposed the remains of a house and related features as
well as a small burying ground – the earliest colonial cemetery yet reported in
Maryland – containing 18 graves. Only seven of the individuals buried here were
placed in coffins before being laid to rest; all but three of the others had been
lowered into their graves in simple shrouds or winding sheets (King and Ubelaker
1996:38–43).
Since shrouds seldom survive in the ground, the evidence for their use is
often circumstantial, usually the presence of pins on, against, or near the skeletal
remains. Indeed, pins are often the only or most common artifacts found in colonial
graves. At the 17th-century cemetery at St. Mary’s City, Maryland, only three graves
had artifacts other than pins (Riordan 2000:5.15–5.17). Copper alloy pins,
pin fragments, and at times green staining from the decay of a pin lying against
bone were found with all but four of the bodies interred in the Patuxent Point
burying ground, and in a single instance a tiny scrap of linen from a shroud survived
because it was attached to a particularly well-preserved pin (Figure 13.2) (King
and Ubelaker 1996:38–40, 42–43). All but one of the individuals buried in coffins
had copper stains indicating they were buried in a shroud or garment fastened
with pins.
In the Chesapeake summer the laying-out period would be brief, which might
explain why some individuals were buried without coffins. The face remained
exposed until the coffin was closed so that the spirit of the deceased could depart.
A chin strap to hold the jaw in place might be pinned to a cap, as might a cloth to
cover the face (Riordan 2000:2.16). The majority of pins found in colonial Chesapeake graves concentrate around the head, and many 17th-century Chesapeake
burials have evidence for the use of face cloths and chin straps, or in later burials
for the use of caps and chin straps (Riordan 2000:5.13–5.14). At Patuxent Point a
13-year-old of indeterminate sex had two well-preserved pins and copper staining
262
diana dipaolo loren and mary c. beaudry
Figure 13.2 Patuxent Point shroud pin. Photograph courtesy of Maryland Archaeological Conservation Lab, Jefferson Patterson Park and Museum
on the sides of the head. The location of the pins suggests the use of a chin strap
or face cloth, though probably not both given the relatively low number of pins
used.
Archaeological evidence for the pinning of shrouds and burial clothing is abundant, but any given burial might have a range of pin sizes. Deagan interprets the
variability in pin sizes found in a late 16th-century or early 17th-century burial in
St. Augustine, Florida, as evidence that the deceased was buried in clothing fastened
with an array of differently sized pins (Deagan 2002:195), suggesting that the burial
customs in the Spanish colonies differed from those of the English. Riordan remarks
on the pronounced difference between the burial customs at 17th-century St.
Mary’s City and those of the Spanish missions during the same time period, concluding that “these differences reflect ethnic rather than religious characteristics
and while the Marylanders may have been Catholic, they were also English”
(Riordan 2000:6.2).
Only one burial at Patuxent Point, a young man of African ancestry, had evidence
of ordinary clothing, a single brass button at the pelvis; there was also a clay pipe.
If he was buried in his clothes, why? Was he singled out for some reason? A single
pin was found in his grave, but there was no copper staining on his bones to suggest
a shroud. Could it be that the body was discovered in such an advanced state of
decay that mourners dispensed with the rituals of preparation for burial? Riordan’s
observation that burial practices reflect cultural differences in often quite subtle
ways provokes speculation about whether here we see differential treatment of the
dead based on cultural or racial distinctions.
The numbers of stains left on the bones of dead from Patuxent Point indicate
that more pins were used than survived to be recovered by archaeologists, but the
number is small. This evidence, combined with the few coffins used, indicates
limited investment in mortuary ritual without much effort to retain post-mortem
social distinctions that were undoubtedly highly important in life. Even so, we can
becoming american: small things remembered
263
read subtle clues of social and perhaps racial distinctions here and see efforts to
perpetuate English customs. More striking, perhaps, is that by looking closely at
pins in graves we can detect variation in burial practices among settler colonies of
different nation states.
Negotiating Identity in the Southeast: 18th-Century French and
Spanish Colonies
The people inhabiting French Louisiana, Spanish Florida, and Spanish Texas in the
18th century included Native Americans (such as the Natchez, Natchitoches, and
Choctaw), Africans, French, Spaniards, and mixed-bloods. Along with a host of
laws regarding trade and political relationships, many French and Spanish policies
were devoted to defining and maintaining the boundaries of racial intermixing. The
French Code Noir and the Spanish concept of limpieza de sangre (purity of blood)
prohibited interracial marriage and sexual relations; despite these laws interracial
marriages and sexual relations were common among colonial inhabitants (Avery
1996:61–62; Usner 1992). How one dressed physically manifested what group one
belonged to, and prohibitions regarding how one should dress (and who they should
not dress like) went hand-in-hand with racial terminology. For example, in 18thcentury New Spain, upper class Spanish men were instructed to wear cut-away
coats, embroidered vests (chupas), silver shoe buckles, and powdered wigs, while
Spanish women’s fashions included powdered wigs and silk and brocade dresses
adorned with gold or silver ribbon and lace (Castelló Yturbide 1990). But as one
can imagine, people rarely followed such strictures, especially in colonial outposts.
Yet, notions of proper dress expressed in these laws and restrictions play into how
small finds related to clothing and adornment found in the archaeological record
are interpreted.
On multiethnic French and Spanish colonial sites, archaeologists have tended to
view small finds relating to dress as either “Indian,” such as glass beads or brass
tinkling cones, or “European,” such as religious medals and brass buttons (e.g.,
Waselkov 1999; Walthall and Emerson 1992). Following from this, small finds
associated with clothing (such as buttons, buckles, bracelets, etc.) are then fitted
into static interpretive categories, most often the functional categories developed
by South over twenty-five years ago. For example, historical archaeologists often
assume that only Native Americans wore glass beads sewn on their clothing and
only European men wore brass buttons on their coats, European women wore
jewelry while African men had none. In such interpretations, little attention is given
to how dress related to active processes of identity construction. Rather than simply
dressing one’s body, presentation of the body through dress and adornment offers
one of the most visual manifestations of one’s identity and self. Small finds associated with dressing then can provide information on processes of “becoming” in
the colonial period, especially when combinations of seemingly disparate “Native
American” and “European” small finds suggest that colonial people fashioned
themselves in unique ways.
264
diana dipaolo loren and mary c. beaudry
Defining categories in the Spanish missions and communities of La Florida
The process of “becoming” is more than just the mere possession of objects;
“becoming” suggests use and meaning. For example, ownership of a crucifix does
not always signify conversion to Christianity, as such an object can be symbolically
mobilized in other ways. Adapting the functional categories developed by South
(1977), Deagan (1983) devised a system for interpreting the combinations of Native
American and European material found at 17th- and 18th-century Spanish colonial
sites. Deagan’s system was influential in speculating how one’s racial heritage (and
corresponding ideologies) impacted on how Spanish and Native American goods
were used in daily activities to constitute new identities, such as mestiza.
While Deagan argued (and continues to argue) against notions of acculturation,
functional frames of analysis have had a lasting impact on the interpretations of the
numerous Spanish missions excavated in the past 20 years (Larsen et al. 2001;
McEwan 1993, 2001; Saunders 1993; Thomas 1993). It is difficult to downplay
the importance of religion in Spain’s colonization goals, yet at the same time, one
wonders if the categories of “converted” and “unconverted” adequately capture the
complex identity negotiations experienced by numerous Florida Indians in the
mission system. The extent of religious conversion is the most common interpretation of combinations of European and Native American small finds recovered from
mission sites, such as Santa Elena and Santa Catalina. But such interpretations
focus on possession rather than how these small items were worn. Does the possession of numerous Christian symbols (saint medals, crucifixes, etc.) in combination
with native religious elements signify that the owner is on his or her way to becoming a convert? Or should we perhaps reflect on how Native Americans wore Christian
symbols in concert with other Native American and European clothing and adornment? Here we must be cognizant of the limitations of functional categories as the
use of Christian symbols was not only about religious expression or conversion, but
when worn in different contexts may have simultaneously spoken to other issues such
as ethnicity, status, or gender. As with the thimbles at Magunco, crucifixes, rosary
beads, and other Christian symbols took on new meanings when Native American
men, women, and children publicly combined these objects with more familiar indigenous items to purposefully and publicly negotiate self in the mission world.
Recent work on Spanish missions openly battles against the constraints of functional categories (Saunders 1993). Deagan herself acknowledges that while pattern
recognition was useful in the past, it limits explorations of gender, beliefs, and
identity and how objects were used by individuals in processes of Spanish–Native
American–African syncretism during the colonial period (Deagan 2002:4).
(Un)common combinations in Spanish Texas
Combinations of small finds recovered from the site of Presidio Los Adaes, located
along the eastern border of 18th-century Spanish Texas, suggest that what were
becoming american: small things remembered
265
understood to be European and Native American fashions were often mixed in
practice by Spanish and mixed-blood inhabitants of the site (Gregory 1973, 1983,
1984; Loren 1999, 2001a). For example, one household contained large numbers
of seed beads and brass tinkler cones (pieces of brass pots cut and hammered
into cone shapes that were sewn on clothing) along with scraps of gold lace, holy
medals, jewelry, necklace beads, and patterned buckles and buttons (Figure 13.3)
(Gregory 1984).
While one could argue that such combinations of small finds within sites resulted
from people each dressing in their own proper fashions, visitors to the presidio would
not agree. Official government agents and noble travelers, such as Field Marshal
Marqués de Rubı´ and Pierre Marie François De Pagés, visited Los Adaes in the
1760s and 1770s. Both visitors complained that both men and women, Spanish
and non-Spanish alike, dressed in buckskin as well as European style coats with
different combinations of adornments that included seed beads and religious medals
(Pagés 1791; Jackson 1995: 129–30). While these hybrid fashions were no doubt
influenced by what was available to settlers along the frontier, individuals accrued
some advantage in mixing European and native fashions. Dressing in such a way
may have been a strategy to purposefully confuse others and may have allowed both
upper and lower class to move into other social, political, and economic realms
usually denied to them under New Spain’s strict racial system.
Crossing over in French Louisiana: glass beads and brass buttons
The practice of mixing different colonial fashions also occurred over the border in
French Louisiana. Like Spanish officials, French colonial officials and missionaries
often lamented in historical accounts about those French inhabitants who had
“gone native” (that is, dressed like Native Americans), and conversely those Native
Americans who dressed like the French (Rowland and Saunders 1929:27–28,
56–58, 72, 169, 226–227; Rowland et al. 1984:73). Archaeological evidence suggests that this practice was common at many multiethnic sites in the colony. Excavations at communities such as Fort St. Pierre, Old Mobile, and the Grand Village
of the Natchez Indians revealed mixtures of small finds: buckles, buttons, cufflinks,
bone and glass beads, shoe heels, brass tinkler cones, glass beads, gun parts and
knives (Brown 1979:939–1015; Neitzel 1983:106–117; Waselkov 1999). These
combinations suggest that at least some of the site residents mixed different dress
styles in daily practice.
Excavations at the Bloodhound Site, located in the vicinity of the confluence of
the Red and Mississippi Rivers, by the Lower Mississippi Survey in 1977 revealed
several 18th-century Tunica burials that suggest the ways some colonial individuals
chose to dress (Brain 1988:162–174). Each burial yielded artifacts that suggested
European-style dress – brass buttons, buckles, and metal jewelry – in addition to
artifacts that suggested Native American-style dress – glass beads and brass tinkling
cones. While these combinations of small finds hint at practices of mixing different
fashions, one burial deserves further reflection. One adult female was buried wearing
266
diana dipaolo loren and mary c. beaudry
Figure 13.3 Artifacts from Presidio Los Adaes. Photograph by Diana DiPaolo Loren
columella shell ear pins and a European frock coat with wide leather cuffs with
brass buttons; several matching brass buttons found near the pelvis suggest she was
wearing trousers, and glass beads found to the right of the head imply that beads
were woven into her hair (Brain 1988:170–171).
It would be tempting to interpret the dress of this Tunica woman at death as an
anomaly – Tunica women didn’t wear trousers, did they? – since her attire was
unique from what other indigenous women, and perhaps all other women in French
Louisiana, wore. But the pattern of mixed small finds, together with historical
accounts of people who dressed in mixed fashions, intimates that the pairing of
seemingly disparate clothing styles was more likely the norm rather than the exception in many colonial contexts. Rather than being constrained by limited options,
colonial individuals could choose from a vibrant wardrobe to move through complex
and socially restrictive colonial landscapes to create new identities in processes of
“becoming.” The small finds related to clothing and adornment often overlooked
or downplayed in most archaeological interpretations stand out here as a way to
understand these processes and the choices made by individuals experiencing and
negotiating the colonial world.
becoming american: small things remembered
267
Conclusions
In this chapter, we used the work of James Deetz as a touchstone to explore
how American historical archaeologists have interpreted and continue to interpret
“small finds.” Here we have examined ways in which “small things” become deeply
implicated in the process characterized by St. George as “conversing by signs”
(1998; see also Ulrich 2001:418) and hence play powerful roles in the construction
and negotiation of colonial identities. We argue that if archaeologists hope to
comprehend the full complexity and variety of processes of “becoming American,”
they must attend to the mnemonic power of goods and to observe closely the field
or ground – the cultural contexts – in which their finds once were deployed and
to attempt to reconstruct the discourses in which they once figured so potently.
REFERENCES
Avery, George 1996 Annual Report for the Los Adaes Station Archaeology Program. Natchitoches, LA: Department of Social Sciences, Northwestern State University.
Beaudry, Mary C. 2002 “Re-vision”: Filling Gaps and Silences in How We Think and Write
about Small Finds. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Historical
Archaeology, Mobile, Alabama, January 10.
—— 2006 in press. Findings: The Material Culture of Needlework and Sewing. New Haven:
Yale University Press.
Beaudry, Mary C., Lauren J. Cook, and Stephen A. Mrozowski 1991 Artifacts and Active
Voices: Material Culture as Social Discourse. In The Archaeology of Inequality. Randall
H. McGuire and Robert Paynter, eds. Pp. 150–191. Oxford: Blackwell.
Bragdon, Kathleen 1988 The Material Culture of Christian Indians of New England, 1650–
1775. In Documentary Archaeology in the New World. Mary C. Beaudry, ed. Pp. 126–131.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Brain, Jeffrey P. 1988 Tunica Archaeology. Papers of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology
and Ethnology, 78. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University.
Brauner, David R., ed. 2000 Approaches to Material Culture Research for Historical
Archaeologists. 2nd edition. Tucson, AZ: Society for Historical Archaeology.
Brown, David, and Katherine Lee Priddy 2000 Looking for a Needle in a Haystack: Addressing the Presence of Native Americans at Undocumented Sites through Material Culture.
Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology, Québec,
January 7.
Brown, Ian W. 1979 Early 18th Century French–Indian Culture Contact in the Yazoo Bluffs
Region of the Lower Mississippi Valley. Ph.D. dissertation, Brown University.
Castelló Yturbide, Teresa 1990 La Indumentaria de las Castas del Mestizaje. La Pintura de
Castas, Artes de Mexico 8:74–78.
Cogley, Richard W. 1999 John Eliot’s Mission to the Indians before King Philip’s War. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Deagan, Kathleen 1983 Spanish St. Augustine: The Archaeology of a Colonial Creole Community. New York: Academic Press.
268
diana dipaolo loren and mary c. beaudry
—— 1987 Artifacts of the Spanish Colonies of Florida and the Caribbean, 1500–1800,
Volume 1: Ceramics, Glassware, and Beads. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution
Press.
—— 1988 Neither History nor Prehistory: The Questions that Count in Historical Archaeology. Historical Archaeology 22(1):7–12.
—— 1996 Colonial Transformations: Euro-American Cultural Genesis in the Earliest Spanish
Colonies. Journal of Anthropological Research 52(2):135–160.
—— 2002 Artifacts of the Spanish Colonies of Florida and the Caribbean 1500–1800,
Volume 2: Personal Portable Possessions. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution
Press.
Deetz, James 1977 In Small Things Forgotten: The Archaeology of Early American Life.
New York: Anchor Books.
Delle, James A., Stephen A. Mrozowski, and Robert Paynter, eds. 2000 Lines That Divide:
Historical Archaeologies of Race, Class, and Gender. Knoxville: University of Tennessee
Press.
Essex Institute 1913 Records and Files of the Quarterly Courts of Essex County, Massachusetts, 4. Case of Grace Stout. Pp. 279–283. Salem, MA: Essex Institute.
Ferguson, Leland 1992 Uncommon Ground: Archaeology and Early African America, 1650–
1800. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Fisher, Genevieve, and Diana DiPaolo Loren 2003 Embodying Identity in Anthropology and
Archaeology. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 13(2):225–230.
Fiske Center (Center for Cultural and Environmental History and Andrew Fiske Center
for Archaeological Research at the University of Massachusetts, Boston) 2004 Center
Projects: Magunco Hill, Ashland, MA. Electronic document, http://www.fiskecenter.
umb.edu/proj.html/, accessed August 16, 2004.
Gregory, Hiram F. 1973 Eighteenth-Century Caddoan Archaeology: A Study in Models and
Interpretations. Ph.D. dissertation, Southern Methodist University.
—— 1983 Los Adaes: The Archaeology of an Ethnic Enclave. Geoscience and Man 23:53–
57.
—— 1984 Excavations 1982: Presidio de Nuestra Señora del Pilar de Los Adaes. Natchitoches, LA: Northwestern State University.
Hall, Martin 1992 Small Things and the Mobile, Conflictual Fusion of Power, Fear, and
Desire. In The Art and Mystery of Historical Archaeology. Anne Elizabeth Yentsch and
Mary C. Beaudry, eds. Pp. 373–399. Boca Raton: CRC Press.
—— 2000 Archaeology and the Modern World: Colonial Transcripts in South Africa and the
Chesapeake. London: Routledge.
Herbster, Holly 2005 A Documentary Archaeology of Magunkaquog. Unpublished M.A.
thesis, University of Massachusetts, Boston.
Hill, Erika 1995 Thimbles and Thimble Rings of the Circum-Caribbean Region, 1500–1800:
Chronology and Identification. Historical Archaeology 29(1):84–92.
Jackson, Jack 1995 Imaginary Kingdom: Texas as Seen by the Rivera and Rubı´ Military
Expeditions, 1727 and 1767. Austin: Texas State Historical Association.
Karklins, Karlis, ed. 2000 Studies in Material Culture Research. Tucson: Society for Historical Archaeology.
King, Julia A., and Douglas H. Ubelaker, eds. 1996 Living and Dying on the 17th Century
Patuxent Frontier. Crownsville: Maryland Historical Trust Press.
Larsen, Clark Spencer, Mark C. Griffin, Dale L. Hutchinson, Vivian E. Noble, Lynette
Norr, Robert F. Pastor, Christopher B. Ruff, Katherine F. Russell, Margaret J.
Schoeninger, Michael Schultz, Scott W. Simpson, and Mark F. Teaford 2001 Frontiers
becoming american: small things remembered
269
of Contact: Bioarchaeology in Spanish Florida. Journal of World Prehistory 15(1):69–
123.
Lightfoot, Kent 1995 Culture Contact Studies: Redefining the Relationship between Prehistoric and Historical Archaeology. American Antiquity 60(2):199–217.
Loren, Diana DiPaolo 1999 Creating Social Distinction: Articulating Colonial Policies and
Practices along the 18th-Century Louisiana/Texas Frontier. Ph.D. dissertation, State University of New York at Binghamton.
—— 2001a Manipulating Bodies and Emerging Traditions at the Los Adaes Presidio. In
The Archaeology of Traditions: Agency and History Before and After Columbus. Timothy
R. Pauketat, ed. Pp. 58–76. Gainesville: University of Florida Press.
—— 2001b Social Skins: Orthodoxies and Practices of Dressing in the Early Colonial Lower
Mississippi Valley. Journal of Social Archaeology 1(2):172–189.
—— 2004 Creolization in the French and Spanish Colonies. In North American Archaeology.
Timothy R. Pauketat and Diana DiPaolo Loren, eds. Pp. 297–318. London and Malden:
Blackwell Publishers.
Lyons, Claire L., and John K. Papadopoulos, eds. 2002 The Archaeology of Colonialism.
Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute.
McEwan, Bonnie G. 2001 The Spiritual Conquest of La Florida. American Anthropologist
103(3):633–644.
McEwan, Bonnie G., ed. 1993 The Spanish Missions of La Florida. Gainesville: University
Press of Florida.
Meskell, Lynn 1999 Archaeologies of Social Life: Age, Sex, Class et cetera in Ancient Egypt.
Oxford: Blackwell.
Mills, Peter R. 2002 Hawai’i’s Russian Adventure: A New Look at Old History. Honolulu:
University of Hawai’i Press.
Nassaney, Michael S. 2003 The Material Lives of Native Men and Women in SeventeenthCentury Southeastern New England. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society
for Historical Archaeology, Providence, RI, January 14.
Neitzel, Robert S. 1983 The Grand Village of the Natchez Revisited: Excavations at the
Fatherland Site, Adams County, Mississippi 1972, Archaeological Report No. 12. Jackson:
Mississippi Department of Archives and History.
Noël Hume, Ivor 1969 A Guide to Artifacts of Colonial America. New York: Alfred A.
Knopf.
Orser, Charles E., ed. 2001 Race and the Archaeology of Identity. Salt Lake City: University
of Utah Press.
Pagés, Monsieur Pierre Marie François 1791 Travels Round the World in the Years 1767,
1768, 1769, 1770, and 1771. London: J. Murray.
Parker, Rozsika 1984 The Subversive Stitch: Embroidery and the Making of the Feminine.
London: Women’s Press.
Pauketat, Timothy R. 2001 A New Tradition in Archaeology. In The Archaeology of
Traditions: Agency and History Before and After Columbus. Timothy R. Pauketat, ed.
Pp. 1–16. Gainesville: University of Florida Press.
Riordan, Timothy B. 2000 Dig a Grave, Both Wide and Deep: An Archaeological Investigation of Mortuary Practices in the 17th-Century Cemetery at St. Mary’s City, Maryland.
St. Mary’s City Archaeology Series, 3. St Mary’s City, MD: Historic St. Mary’s City
Commission.
Rowland, D., and A.G. Saunders, trans. and ed. 1929 Mississippi Provincial Archives, French
Dominion, Volume 2, 1701–1729. Jackson: Mississippi Department of Archives and
History.
270
diana dipaolo loren and mary c. beaudry
Rowland, D., A.G. Saunders, trans. and ed., and Patricia K. Galloway, ed. 1984 Mississippi
Provincial Archives, French Dominion, vol. 4, 1729–1748. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State
University Press.
St. George, Robert Blair 1998 Conversing by Signs: Poetics of Implication in Colonial New
England Culture. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
—— 2000 Introduction. In Possible Pasts: Becoming Colonial in Early America. Robert Blair
St. George, ed. Pp. 1–32. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Saunders, Rebecca 1993 Architecture of the Missions Santa Marı´a and Santa Catalina de
America. In The Spanish Missions of La Florida. Bonnie G. McEwan, ed. Pp. 35–61.
Gainesville: University Press of Florida.
Seifert, Donna, ed. 1991 Theme issue, “Gender in Historical Archaeology.” Historical
Archaeology 25(4).
Silliman, Stephen W. 2005 Culture Contact or Colonialism? Challenges in the Archaeology
of Native North America. American Antiquity 70(1):55–74.
South, Stanley 1977 Method and Theory in Historical Archaeology. New York: Academic
Press.
Stahl, Ann B. 2001 Making History in Banda: Anthropological Visions of Africa’s Past.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
—— 2002 Colonial Entanglements and the Practices of Taste: An Alternative to Logocentric
Approaches. American Anthropologist 104(3): 827–845.
Stewart-Abernathy, Leslie C. 1992 Industrial Goods in the Service of Tradition: Consumption and Cognition on an Ozark Farmstead Before the Great War. In The Art and Mystery
of Historical Archaeology: Essays in Honor of James Deetz. Anne Yentsch and Mary C.
Beaudry, eds. Pp. 101–126. Boca Raton: CRC Press.
Stoler, Ann L. 1989 Rethinking Colonial Categories: European Communities and the
Boundaries of Rule. Comparative Studies in Society and History 31(3):134–161.
Thomas, David Hurst 1993 The Archaeology of Mission Santa Catalina de Guale: Our First
15 Years. In The Spanish Missions of La Florida. Bonnie G. McEwan, ed. Pp. 1–34.
Gainesville: University Press of Florida.
Thomas, Nicholas 1991 Entangled Objects: Exchange, Material Culture, and Colonialism
in the Pacific. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
—— 1994 Colonialism’s Culture: Anthropology, Travel and Government. Princeton:
Princeton University Press.
Torrence, Robin, and Anne Clarke, eds. 2000 The Archaeology of Difference: Negotiating
Cross-Cultural Engagements in Oceania. London: Routledge.
Ulrich, Laurel Thatcher 2001 The Age of Homespun: Objects and Stories in the Creation
of an American Myth. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Upton, Dell 1996 Ethnicity, Authenticity and Invented Traditions. Historical Archaeology
30(2):1–7.
Usner, Daniel H. 1992 Indians, Settlers and Slaves in a Frontier Exchange Economy: The
Lower Mississippi Valley before 1783. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Walthall, John A., and Thomas E. Emerson, eds. 1992 Calumet & Fleur-de-lys: Archaeology
of Indian and French Contact in the Midcontinent. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Waselkov, Gregory A. 1999 Old Mobile Archaeology. Mobile: University of South Alabama,
Center for Archaeological Studies.
Wurst, LouAnn, and Robert K. Fitts, eds. 1999 Theme issue, “Confronting Class.” Historical Archaeology 33(1).
becoming american: small things remembered
271
Yentsch, Anne 1996 Beads as Silent Witnesses of an African-American Past: Social Identity
and the Artifacts of Slavery in Annapolis, Maryland. In The Written and the Wrought:
Complementary Sources in Historical Archaeology. Mary Ellin D’Agostino, Elizabeth
Prine, Eleanor Casella, and Margot Winer, eds. Pp. 45–60. Kroeber Anthropological
Society Papers, 79. Berkeley: Department of Anthropology, University of California.
Chapter 14
Missions, Furs, Gold, and
Manifest Destiny: Rethinking
an Archaeology of Colonialism
for Western North America
Kent G. Lightfoot
Introduction
How did Native entanglements with colonial powers influence the creation of
modern Indian tribes on the Pacific Coast of North America? With the passage of
NAGPRA (Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act) in 1990
archaeologists have become increasingly involved in the study of Native American
histories and the formation of modern Indian nations and tribal organizations. By
participating in decisions about the cultural affiliation of archaeological materials
to living descendants of tribal groups, we navigate the often turbulent waters of
defining tribal boundaries, identities, and cultural practices that underwent transformations over the past few centuries. Most archaeologists working in North
America have been or will be asked their opinion about tracing prehistoric or historical material culture recovered from archaeological sites to specific contemporary
tribal groups as part of the repatriation process.
However, after more than a decade of NAGPRA-related research, I see significant shortcomings in the historical archaeology of Native Americans and our ability
to make informed decisions about tribal histories and cultural affiliations. While
“prehistoric” archaeology remains the backbone of most archaeological research,
and culture contact studies on early encounters between Natives and Europeans
are becoming increasingly sophisticated, there is surprisingly little work on later
colonial entanglements with American colonists. This later period is crucial for
understanding what happened to many Indian tribes on the Pacific Coast and for
making linkages to the past; yet it essentially remains a black box with regard to
archaeological research on Native peoples. How are we to track NAGPRA claims
made by modern tribes back through time or trace the histories of contemporary
families and groups if the archaeological record is largely blank for this crucial
mission, gold, furs, and manifest destiny
273
period? Despite the federally mandated NAGPRA legislation, we have made little
progress in the development of an archaeology of colonialism that examines the full
implications of Native confrontations with colonial worlds.
This paper presents a brief synthesis of historical archaeology on the Pacific
Coast of North America that has emphasized culture contact research centering on
early colonial settlements (missions, presidios, ranchos, fur trade outposts, etc.)
(Figure 14.1). I then raise the question of why archaeologists rarely extend historical studies of Native peoples beyond initial encounters with European explorers
and colonists. In addressing this question, I explore the potential for creating a more
sophisticated archaeology of colonialism that considers the historical roots of
modern Indian tribes in California and the Pacific Northwest. While culture contact
research provides a strong foundation to build on, I believe some fundamental
changes will need to be made in contemporary archaeological practices to construct
a more vibrant approach to the study of colonialism.
Brief History of Colonial Encounters on the Pacific Coast
The history of colonial encounters on the Pacific Coast is complex and covered in
detail elsewhere (Gutiérrez and Orsi 1997; Suttles 1990). For the purposes of this
paper, I briefly outline three major pulses of colonization that had significant implications for indigenous populations.
The first pulse involved initial European exploration and contact between 1542
and 1603, when Spanish and English ships (i.e., Cabrillo-Ferrelo, Drake, Unamuno,
Cermeño, and Vizcaíno voyages) visited the southern and central coasts of
California, possibly sailing as far north as Oregon before turning back to New Spain
or England. Occasional contacts probably took place with the crews of Manila galleons who followed the northern Japanese Current from the Philippine Islands to
the coast of North America, where they turned south to follow favorable winds to
the Port of Acapulco in New Spain.
The second pulse took place more than a century after the initial period of
exploration, when colonists from Spain (later Mexico), Russia, England, and
America descended on the Pacific Coast from all directions. From the south came
the Spanish. The Spanish Crown commenced the colonization of Alta California
in 1769 to shore up its defense of New Spain and to back up its territorial claim
on the Pacific Coast. A string of military forts and Franciscan missions was established along the coastal zone. By the early 1820s, after an independent Mexico took
over administration of the Alta California colonies from Spain, the colonial system
consisted of 21 Franciscan missions, four military presidios, and three civilian
pueblos that stretched from San Diego to the greater San Francisco Bay. The 1830s
and 1840s witnessed a proliferation of private Mexican ranchos that took over the
majority of agricultural and livestock production from the missions once they were
secularized.
From the west came the Russians. Russian expansion from Siberia into the North
Pacific followed the celebrated 1741–42 voyage of Vitus Bering and Alexeii Chirikov
274
kent g. lightfoot
Figure 14.1 Map of western North America with sites, regions, and features referred to in this
chapter and elsewhere in the volume (shown in italics)
whose accounts of rich waters teaming with fur-bearing mammals unleashed a “fur
rush” that drove Russian fur companies ever eastward in search of sea otters, fur
seals, and other mammal pelts that could be traded in China and Europe for substantial profits. The fur companies, which were consolidated into the monopolistic
Russian-American Company in 1799, established more than 60 fur trade outposts
along an extensive arc of the North Pacific Rim from the Kurile Islands, the Aleutian
and Kodiak archipelagos, to coastal and interior Alaska. The Russians also extended
mission, gold, furs, and manifest destiny
275
their tentacles down to California, where they established Colony Ross (a.k.a. Fort
Ross) in 1812 (Figure 14.2), and turned their attention briefly to the Hawaiian
Islands, where they founded Fort Elisabeth (on Kaua’i Island) in 1816–17.
From the east came the British and Americans. The entrance of English speakers
to the Pacific Coast initially came from the sea, but this was only a prelude to their
more aggressive and prolonged western expansion across the Rocky Mountains and
into the Pacific Slope. After Captain James Cook’s voyage to the Northwest Coast
in 1778, when sea otter pelts obtained from the Nootkans of Vancouver Island were
sold the following year in Canton for phenomenal prices, British and American
merchants entered the maritime fur rush. They dispatched floating emporiums to
the Pacific Coast that enticed local Indians to trade valued furs and skins to sea
merchants for European/American goods. While trade regulations kept most British
skippers from trading directly in China, the American captains transported their
furs to Canton, where they converted their cargos into tea, spice, silk, porcelain,
and nankeen. The sea merchants turned a tidy profit by shipping the Asian goods
back home for distribution to European and American consumers.
However, the founding of permanent British and American settlements on the
Pacific Coast took place as part of the terrestrial, rather than maritime, fur trade.
The westward expansion of trade outposts took place with amazing rapidity as the
commercial exploitation of beaver and other valued animal pelts devastated faunal
populations from local rivers and creeks. Following the Lewis and Clark saga of
1804–06, the Americans created the first toehold on the coast with the founding of
Astoria by John Jacob Astor’s Pacific Fur Company in 1811–12, and two other
interior trade outposts (Fort Spokane and Fort Okanogan). But by 1813, the Pacific
Fur Company was forced to sell its coastal assets to the British North West Company
which had outflanked American and Russian competitors in developing a fur trade
empire in the interior Northwest Coast and Plateau country. North West Company
traders were the first non-Indians to explore the beaver streams of western Canada
in the late 1700s and early 1800s, which led to the establishment of trade settlements on the MacKenzie, Peace, Liard, Fraser, and upper Yukon Rivers. After the
merger of the North West Company with the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1821, the
British shored up their claim to the Columbia Basin and coastal trade by establishing Fort Vancouver (1824) and Fort Langley (1827) as anchors in a network of
coastal and interior trade posts.
The third pulse of colonial encounters was that of a full-scale American invasion
of Indian lands that began in the 1840s. With the opening of the Oregon and
California trails, thousands of foreigners began moving westward to establish farms
and ranches. The United States followed its Manifest Destiny policy to dominate
and control continental North America by appropriating the American Southwest
and California from Mexico (1846–48), and negotiating the 1846 treaty with Great
Britain that gave it undisputed jurisdiction of Oregon Country south of 49° north
latitude, which eventually gave rise to the states of Oregon, Washington, and Idaho.
With American territorial expansion and the discovery of gold, first on the
American River in California in 1848, and only a few years later in Oregon Country
(Rogue River; also on the Clark Fork near Fort Colville) and what would become
276
kent g. lightfoot
Figure 14.2 Russian stockade at Colony (Fort) Ross, Sonoma County coast, California. Photograph
by Roberta Jewett
British Columbia (Fraser and Thompson Rivers), the Pacific West would be fundamentally altered forever.
Culture Contact Research of Early Encounters
Archaeologists are examining the first pulse of colonial encounters that took place
when European explorers first stepped ashore on the Pacific Coast of North
America in the mid-1500s and 1600s. Their research is contributing to a better
understanding of how contacts between local Indians and early voyagers during
landfalls resulted in the exchange of food and other goods, the unleashing of deadly
pathogens, and even the incorporation of the European strangers in indigenous
ceremonies and rites (Erlandson and Bartoy 1995; Lightfoot and Simmons 1998;
Preston 1996; Walker and Hudson 1993:20–23). But most of the historical archaeology that considers Native and foreigner interactions on the Pacific Coast has
focused on the initial phase of European colonization (late 1700s and early 1800s)
primarily at Spanish and Mexican missions, presidios, and ranchos, and Russian,
British, and American fur trade outposts.
Archaeological research at early colonial settlements of the Pacific Coast, an
endeavor spanning more than a half century, has become increasingly sophisticated
and integrative in its theoretical approaches. The initial investigations of missions,
ranchos, and fur trade outposts tended to involve restoration work at functioning
churches or site reconstructions at state and national parks. These investigations
entailed “ground truthing” the specific locations of historic settlements, evaluating
the nature and condition of building foundations, and collecting representative
assemblages of archaeological materials. Archaeologists delimited the spatial distribution of colonial stockades, mission buildings, and houses that could be integrated
into restoration plans or site reconstructions. They also excavated privies and
midden deposits that yielded stratigraphic information on archaeological deposits
mission, gold, furs, and manifest destiny
277
and recovered artifacts that could be used for interpreting specific structures in
museum displays.
Historical archaeology in California cut its teeth on major reconstruction projects
of mission or rancho complexes, such as the extensive archaeological work at
Mission La Purísima in the 1930s that provided critical information for the reconstruction of the mission buildings (Hageman and Ewing 1991). Archaeological work
was also undertaken to rectify earlier abortive restoration efforts that were more
fanciful than real, such as the archaeological work in 1953 and 1954 at Mission
San Francisco Solano (Bennyhoff and Elsasser 1954) (see Thomas 1991 for an
excellent discussion of mission restorations and archaeology). Archaeological
research was also initiated in 1953 at Fort Ross State Historic Park in northern
California to evaluate the authenticity of previous restoration work and to examine
the location and construction methods of Russian architectural features for later
reconstruction by California State Parks (Treganza 1954). Early research on the
fur trade outposts of the Pacific Northwest, exemplified by Louis Caywood’s work
at Fort Spokane and Fort Vancouver in the late 1940s and early 1950s, also involved
the detection of stockade walls and associated buildings as part of the planning
process of park reconstructions (Caywood 1954, 1955).
Given that the primary purpose of this pioneering work was to facilitate the
preservation or restoration of colonial sites, archaeologists tended to focus on the
core elements of European buildings and associated activity areas – mission quadrangles, rancho adobes, and stockade complexes. But from the outset, historical
archaeologists on the Pacific Coast showed an interest in the broader colonial hinterland, specifically sites used by Native people. For example, the earliest work at
Mission La Purísima involved the excavation of outlying Indian neophyte quarters
(Figure 14.3) (Hageman and Ewing 1991:8, 35), as well as irrigation features,
workshops, and other outbuildings; the 1953 investigations at Fort Ross included
a survey of nearby Indian habitation sites (Treganza 1954:18); and the initial work
near Spokane House considered an outlying depression that was thought to be a
Native structure (but it turned out to be a boat shed) (Caywood 1954:18–20).
Historical archaeology underwent significant changes in the 1970s and 1980s
with the rise of Cultural Resource Management (CRM). By funding mitigation
projects linked to development outside colonial centers, it allowed (or even forced)
archaeologists to move beyond the restoration or reconstruction of European or
Mexican buildings and to focus on the investigation of historical sites in the colonial
hinterland. For example, work outside the Fort Vancouver stockade complex was
facilitated by freeway construction that provided funds for investigating the Hudson
Bay Company’s riverside complex and Kanaka Village, where many Native and
working class laborers resided (Carley 1982). At Mission San Buenaventura in
southern California, the local redevelopment agency funded significant work around
the mission complex that included excavations at the 1787–90 church and detailed
investigations of the neophyte quarters (Greenwood 1975).
The combination of CRM and the advent of acculturation studies laid the
groundwork for culture contact research in California and the Pacific Northwest.
As exemplified by James Deetz’s (1962–63) study of Indian neophytes at Mission
278
kent g. lightfoot
Figure 14.3 Neophyte quarters at La Purisíma Mission, Lompoc, California. Photograph by Roberta
Jewett
La Purísima, acculturation research evaluated the overall effects that European
colonialism had on Native peoples by examining the ratio of European and Native
artifacts in specific colonial contexts. The underlying assumption was that Native
foods, technology, and other material culture would eventually be replaced by
European cultural practices and that archaeologists could track this change by
examining the rate at which Native people incorporated European materials into
their lives. The approach allowed historical archaeologists to integrate the study of
colonial centers (mission quadrangles, rancho adobes, fur trade stockade complexes) with outlying sites representing the residences and work spaces of Native
and other multiethnic workers and to examine the overall magnitude and direction
of culture change taking place in diverse colonial places.
While acculturation research may be criticized today for its simplistic assumptions about Native adoption of European cultural practices and its reliance on crude
artifact ratios, it provided a starting point for the empirical investigation of Native
and European entanglements on the Pacific Coast. The initial experimentation with
acculturation research led to many refinements in both the theory and method of
culture contact research. Artifact ratios became ever more sophisticated. Native
responses were recognized as being varied and situational, and the spatial configuration of the archaeological record became increasingly important for examining
transformations in colonial and Native cultural practices (Farnsworth 1992; Hoover
1992; Lightfoot 1995; Pyszczyk 1997). The latest manifestation of culture contact
mission, gold, furs, and manifest destiny
279
research incorporates tenets of practice theory in order to examine how Native
people negotiated and manipulated colonial policies and practices (see below).
The popularity of culture contact research today stems from a number of factors.
A significant factor is the ability of scholars and land managers to identify conspicuous indigenous sites and to problematize the very concept of “Native” using
archaeological materials. Although European powers unleashed a diverse spectrum
of missionary and mercantile colonial programs on the Pacific Coast in the late
1700s and early 1800s, they shared a common practice of integrating colonized
people into their workforces. As a consequence of prior experiences of founding
colonies in the Americas and elsewhere, the European administrators recognized
the advantages of exploiting Native peoples to work in colonial enterprises. Ohlone,
Esselen, Chumash, Gabrielino, and other Native Californians built and maintained
the extensive mission complexes that became the economic engines for colonial
Alta California. Russian fur traders initially conscripted and later employed Unangan
and Alutiiq men from the Aleutian and Kodiak archipelagos and Prince William
Sound as specialized sea mammal hunters, and they also used local Kashaya
Pomo and Coast Miwok people as day laborers at Fort Ross. The managers of the
Hudson’s Bay Company depended on Eastern Woodland tribes, including Iroquois,
Cree, Nipissing, and Abenaki, as contract laborers who worked in trapper brigades
as boatmen, hunters, camp tenders, etc. Both the Hudson’s Bay Company and the
North West Company depended on local Tlingit, Tsimshian, Haida, Kwakiutl,
Central and Southern Coast Salish, Southwestern Coast Salish, Chinookans, and
others to supply them furs and provisions and to work at their trade outposts as
day laborers.
The colonial systems imported to the Pacific Coast and modified over time were
uncompromisingly hierarchical in structure, with European managers at the top
and local Native laborers at the bottom. But they did create spaces for indigenous
communities. The Spanish (and later Mexican), British, and Russian colonial programs employed relatively few Europeans as administrators and laborers, but
recruited many other Native and Creole people (mixed European and Native ancestry) from across the North Pacific and the Americas to work in the colonies as
middle managers, clerks, skilled craftsmen, and laborers. The colonial settlements
that grew up on the Pacific Coast evolved into stratified, multiethnic communities
that incorporated local Native workers into polyglot, international social arenas.
Hierarchy and ethnicity influenced these colonial spaces. Consequently, settlements
were spatially segregated into distinct ethnic compounds or neighborhoods.
The creation of multiethnic colonial communities has had a significant impact
on the development of culture contact research in archaeology. It has facilitated the
identification of “Native” places within broader colonial spaces. Most investigations
of Native interactions with colonists focus on various archaeological manifestations
of multiethnic communities, be they neophyte quarters in the missions, Native villages associated with fur trade posts, Indian rancherias on Mexican ranchos, or
outlying Native settlements in the hinterland of the European colonies. For example,
excavations have now been conducted at every Franciscan mission in Alta
California, and some projects provide excellent details on the churches, padre
280
kent g. lightfoot
quarters, Indian neophyte villages, craft shops, and agricultural systems (Allen 1998;
Farnsworth 1992; Farris and Wheeler 1998; Hoover and Costello 1985). Comprehensive research is now being undertaken on the Spanish presidios (Voss 2002).
The study of Mexican ranchos provides great promise for examining the rancho
laboring system and comparing the lives of the Indian workers and the rancho
owners (Greenwood 1989; Silliman 2004a).
The investigation of multiethnic communities has been a hallmark of the archaeology of Russian America. For example, the archaeological investigation at Three
Saints Harbor on Kodiak Island, Alaska, revealed the remains of Shelikhov’s Log
House, where the elite Russian managers lived and worked, as well as a barabara
or promyshlennik barracks, where Russian workers probably lived with local Qikertarmiut women (Crowell 1997). Other work includes details on the spatial layout of
the Korovinski settlement on Atka Island (Veltre 2001), the ethnic neighborhoods
of Colony Ross in California (Farris 1989; Lightfoot et al. 1998), and the star-shaped
fort and associated hinterland that comprised Fort Elisabeth, Hawaii (Mills 2002).
Field research at Fort Vancouver exemplifies the kind of work being done on the
hierarchy and spatial layout of the multiethnic communities that grew up around
British trade posts (Figure 14.4). Considerable research has focused on the stockaded enclosure containing the Chief Factor’s residence, storehouses, blacksmith
and carpenter shops, trade shop, administrative offices, and the residences of other
important Company administrators (Caywood 1955; Hoffman and Ross 1973).
Archaeological investigations have also been undertaken at the outlying Company
Village (a.k.a. Kanaka Village) where the majority of the workers resided. Here more
than 600 Scots, Irish, French Canadians, Métis, Hawaiians, and Indians from more
than thirty different Native American tribes resided, probably dispersed into loosely
organized ethnic neighborhoods (Carley 1982; Thomas and Hibbs 1984). Ongoing
field work by the National Park Service, Portland State University, and Washington
State University is continuing to excavate features within the stockade complex as
well as examining the spatial organization of the Kanaka Village where specific
households are being targeted for detailed investigations.
Another factor in the popularity of culture contact research is that it tends to be
well supported by government agencies and private sources. Many of the places
where colonial institutions first came into contact with Native peoples in the Pacific
West (missions, fur trade outposts, presidios, large ranchos) are now preserved as
parks or historical monuments by federal and state agencies (e.g., National Park
Service, Parks Canada, California State Parks) or protected by non-profit organizations (e.g., the Catholic Church, The Santa Barbara Trust for Historic Preservation). Just as the earliest historical archaeological projects were funded to assist in
the reconstruction of colonial places, today research on European colonial places
continues to be facilitated by government and private agencies that assist in the
permit process, in housing crews, and in funding. While field work underlying site
preservation and reconstruction continues (e.g., for buildings at Fort Vancouver
and Fort Ross), funding is now being increasingly devoted to the development of
outreach and education programs that interpret archaeological remains to the
broader public.
mission, gold, furs, and manifest destiny
281
Figure 14.4 View of blockhouse, Fort Vancouver, Oregon coast. Photograph by Roberta Jewett
Finally, the popularity of culture contact research stems from the rich suite of
research issues that can be evaluated in early multiethnic communities on such
topics as colonial labor practices, inter-ethnic cohabitation, gender politics, hierarchy, and ethnogenesis (for example, see papers in Cusick 1998; Silliman 2004b).
By linking together prehistory and history, a diachronic baseline can be constructed
for critically evaluating both culture change and continuity in Native material
culture, foodways, social organization, etc. (Lightfoot 1995). In tracing developments from late prehistory through early colonial times, researchers examine the
processes of culture contact that unfolded among Native polities when they were
still relatively autonomous and recognizable entities. In such a manner, researchers
can evaluate the effects that foreign diseases had on Native populations, the incorporation of European trade goods into Native spaces, and the ways that indigenous
societies first negotiated and mediated the policies of mercantile and missionary
colonies. An exciting avenue for future work is exploring the consequences of social
interactions that took place between indigenous peoples and non-local Native and
mixed heritage people recruited from across North America and Mexico. Since the
daily encounters of most indigenous people in Spanish, Mexican, British, and
Russian colonies revolved primarily around “other” Native laborers, rather than the
limited number of European managers and overseers, the study of these “nativeto-native interactions” may provide new insights on the dynamics of culture transformation and continuity in multiethnic colonial communities (Lightfoot 2003).
The Study of Later Colonialism
In contrast to the current appeal of culture contact research, the third pulse of
colonial encounters following American annexation has received little attention by
historical archaeologists. In writing a recent synthesis on colonial California, I was
surprised by the paucity of archaeological investigations focusing on Native peoples
in the American period. This is not a new observation (Chartkoff and Chartkoff
282
kent g. lightfoot
1984: 296–299; Schuyler 1978:78). While there is a plethora of excellent studies
on the archaeology of urbanism and capitalism, immigrant communities, and ranching and mining technology in the western United States (e.g., Praetzellis and
Praetzellis 1990; Hardesty 1988 and others), Native peoples comprise only a minor
component of this research, if they are present at all. In contrast to the wealth of
information on indigenous encounters with European explorers and colonists,
Native peoples essentially disappear from the archaeological literature with the
advent of American colonialism.
Significantly, the focus on early contact times is not unique to the Pacific Coast,
but characterizes a broader trend in historical archaeology. In a recent paper,
Silliman (2005) notes that the archaeology of indigenous people in post-Columbian
times is shaped largely by culture contact research that emphasizes short-term
encounters over long-term entanglements. By examining the effects of culture
contact early in the process of colonization, these studies focus their attention on
Native societies when they remained powerful, autonomous, and recognizable political entities. Most archaeologists do not dwell on Native societies in later episodes
of colonization when destructive, and often violent, power differentials come into
play in most regions of the Americas (see also Hill 1998).
There is no question that the archaeological investigation of indigenous populations in later colonial times is a challenging endeavor. The American colonial
program left little room on the late 19th-century landscape for Native peoples and,
consequently, the archaeological record is more fragmented, less obvious, and much
more difficult to study. An extensive literature examines the complex entanglements
that took place between Indian people and Euro-American settlers and miners
during the period of 1846 through the 1870s (Beckham 1990; Castillo 1978; Cook
1976; Hurtado 1988). While it is probably imprudent to generalize, the near exclusion of Indian peoples from American society sets this colonial program apart from
all others on the Pacific Coast. The upshot of the policies and practices of American
colonialism is that the study of Native people during this period will involve a much
more fragmented and less recognizable archaeological record. Archaeologists will
need to shift their focus away from the villages and neighborhoods of multiethnic
communities, where Native peoples lived and worked in relatively large numbers
in European colonies, to another kind of archaeology on the fringes of white society.
Depending on the specific historical circumstances, the study of Native Californians
during the early American period (mid-to-late 19th century) will need to consider
three different domains: the abodes of Indians who worked for Euro-Americans,
refuges established away from white settlements, and federal reservations.
Some Indians served as agricultural laborers for Euro-American family farms,
ranches or vineyards, or as domestic servants/day laborers in Euro-American cities
and towns (Hurtado, 1988; Phillips 1980:442–448). What distinguishes this labor
system from previous European colonial programs is that rarely did more than a
few Indians live and work together, and the men and women were often segregated
into separate living quarters. Hurtado’s (1988:193–210) analysis of the 1860 census
for California demonstrates this point. While the residential patterns of Indians
varied across the state, it is clear that many Indians lived in isolation in non-Indian
mission, gold, furs, and manifest destiny
283
households (often as live-in domestic servants), resided in small Indian family
households, or occupied “no-family” residences (separate living spaces for men and
women). Hurtado (1988:209) emphasizes that Indian men outnumbered women
and that Euro-American household arrangements discouraged Indian marriage and
child rearing. Thus, Native participation in the American labor market system
tended to split apart many large Indian communities and fragment them into isolated family and non-family households.
Indians did reside in small to moderate-sized enclaves or barrios near urban areas
in coastal California, but these tended to be relatively short lived as Native families
were forced to forsake their homes when Euro-Americans made claims to the property. After mission secularization some Indians established communities near the
old Franciscan missions that lasted into the American period. Johnson (1995, 1997)
describes several of these settlements in the near hinterland of Mission San
Fernando, Mission San Buenaventura, and Mission Santa Barbara. For example,
Kamexmey (near San Buenaventura) and Qwa’ (near the Goleta Estero) were
established as “traditional” Indian communities with tule houses, sweatlodges,
acorn granaries, and shrines. Many of these remained active communities until
terminated by land sales and population loss.
A few Indian families were able to purchase land or remain together as coherent
communities on uncontested property through much of the 19th and early 20th
centuries, although this was not common near areas of urban development. For
example, Schneider (2003:15) describes a Coast Miwok man, William Smith, who
was able to acquire land near Bodega Bay and develop a successful commercial
fishing business that remained in existence until the 1970s. The Kashaya Pomo
remained in the nearby vicinity of old Colony Ross until the late 1860s, when many
of the group moved to Haupt’s ranch near Stewarts Point. Married to a local Indian
woman, Charles Haupt allowed the Kashaya to establish the thriving village of Potol
on his property. Other Kashaya families continued to reside in the greater Ross region
in small rancherias, where they worked as seasonal loggers and agricultural workers,
and still maintained many of their hunting, fishing, and gathering activities.
Other coastal California Indians distanced themselves from non-Indian settlements by residing in rugged, rural locations. Breschini and Haversat (2002) propose
that southern Ohlone- and Esselen-speaking peoples took advantage of the rugged
southern Coast Ranges to establish refuge communities. Farther to the north at
least one thousand ex-neophytes moved to an extensive refuge area in the East Bay
region in the 1840s that extended north from the old Mission San Jose to the town
of San Leandro. Here they established an extensive settlement system of villages
containing mission survivors (Field et al. 1992:424). Eventually some of the native
people retreated into the far eastern hinterland of the San Francisco Bay, settling
in the Diablo Range and Livermore Valley, and later aggregating at the Alisal rancheria on the Bernal ranch.
Indian settlements on early federal reservations remain a significant, but largely
untapped, study area in archaeology. In California, most of the reservations established prior to the mid-1870s were small, short-lived military reserves lasting only
a few years before being sold or abandoned. The initial attempt by three federal
284
kent g. lightfoot
Indian commissioners to establish 18 reservations in 1851–52 began the abortive
process (Phillips 1997). After signing treaties with the Indian commissioners, some
Native groups moved to new homes on the Tejon, Fresno, Kaweah, Kings River,
Merced, San Joaquin, and Stanislaus Reservations. Here they received meager
rations and awaited the promised assistance and protection of the federal government. But the United States Senate never ratified the 18 treaties, given the vocal
resistance mounted by California politicians to the granting of supposedly good
agricultural and mining lands to the Indians. Only two of these reservations were
used for any time: the Merced Reservation for a one and a half year stint and the
Fresno Reservation until 1859 (Phillips 1997:189).
The next phase of reservation building in California was launched with the creation of the Tejon Pass military reserve in 1852–53. The brainchild of the first
superintendent of Indian Affairs in California, Edward Beale, it instituted a pattern
begun previously at the Fresno Reservation where military companies were stationed nearby to keep Indians on the reservations and unwanted whites out
(Phillips 1997:98–99, 185). While other military reserves were opened in the 1860s,
most were closed and abandoned. Significantly, by 1869 only three reservations remained
operational in the state: the Hoopa Valley Reservation in Humboldt County, Round
Valley in Mendocino County, and Tule River in Tulare County (Rawls 1984:158).
The current configuration of federal Indian lands in California did not really
take shape until the 1870s, 1890s, and early 1900s when the United States Congress
authorized funds to purchase land grants for “homeless” California Indians
(Castillo 1978:114–118). But similar to the reserves in Oregon and Washington,
the size and configuration of federal trust lands have continued to vary in relation
to the complex, ever-changing, and often mysterious federal Indian policies. Since
the creation of reservations on the southern Northwest Coast in the 1850s, some
have been abandoned, others moved, and most reduced in size by land cessions,
land allotments, and the selling of “surplus” allotment lands to whites (Beckham
1990:180–188; Marino 1990:174–175). The upshot of this discussion is that future
archaeological investigations of Indian reservation communities will need to be
conducted not only on lands now currently held by tribal sovereignties, but also on
non-Indian lands. In fact, many archaeological remains relating to Indian life on
federal reserves in the mid-to-late 19th century are probably found outside the
boundaries of present-day trust lands. Interestingly, in contrast to the landscapes
of European colonies, there has been no concerted effort by government or private
agencies to preserve or set aside these symbols of early American colonialism as
parks or historic places.
Beyond Culture Contact Studies: Toward an Archaeology
of Colonialism
How can culture contact research be integrated into a more broadly conceived study
of indigenous populations that transcends European and American colonialism?
The creation of a more inclusive study of colonialism, which expands our horizons
mission, gold, furs, and manifest destiny
285
beyond early multiethnic colonial communities to include American-period Native
households in urban settings, refugee communities, and reservation settlements,
will require four fundamental changes in contemporary archaeological practices.
1 The study of multi-colonialism. Current research on Native and colonial encounters usually involves specialization in a particular European colonial program, be it
Spanish, Mexican, Russian, or British. The historical archaeologist typically begins
with a detailed consideration of the colonial program and then evaluates how pertinent colonial institutions (missions, ranchos, fur outposts) impacted local populations. Consequently, these studies tend to be constrained by the spatial and
temporal borders of the specific colonial program under study. Alternatively, what
I advocate here is to foreground Native people as the primary object of study, and
follow their entanglements with various colonial programs and colonial institutions
through time. Rather than terminating the study at a specific mission, fur trade
outpost, or rancho, we need to trace the movements of Native peoples beyond their
initial integration into multiethnic colonial communities and through their later
colonial experiences on the fringes of American settlements, in refugee communities, or on reservations.
The current practice of forging strong specializations in colonial archaeology is
understandable given the tremendous learning curve involved in mastering the
pertinent literature, material culture, language, and history of each colonial endeavor.
However, while such specialized know-how may work well in culture contact
research, it is not really suited to the study of multi-colonialism. We have created
sharp spatial and temporal boundaries in our perception of the colonial world that
probably did not exist for Native peoples. Native history on the Pacific Coast is
noteworthy because many indigenous populations tangled with multiple colonies
and colonial institutions. Colonial frontiers were fluid, cross-cutting zones of social
interactions with Native peoples shifting back and forth between different colonies
and into the outlying hinterland depending on their motivations, opportunities, and
the broader geopolitical processes at work (Lightfoot and Martinez 1995). For
example, some Coast Miwok Indians were incorporated into the Franciscan missions of the greater San Francisco Bay, other Coast Miwoks chose to live in multiethnic residences at the Russian mercantile colony of Ross, while a considerable
number decided to stay unattached in the frontier zone between Spanish California
and Colony Ross or were later integrated into Mexican ranchos, such as Rancho
Petaluma. Sequential colonialism also forced many Indians to confront a diverse
range of colonial policies and practices over time. Some Indians of central and
southern California negotiated Spanish, Mexican, and American colonial structures, while others faced Russian, Mexican, and subsequent American colonialism.
Indians of the Northwest Coast endured varying combinations of British, Russian,
American, and even a brief stint of Spanish imperialism.
The spatial and temporal borders of our projects need to be reconceptualized to
take multi-colonialism into account. With a few notable exceptions, most historical
archaeologists who focus on either Spanish or Mexican Alta California do not cross
the colonial divide to work on the adjacent Russian colony of Ross. Fur trade
specialists tend to work only on Russian or British outposts (often specializing in
286
kent g. lightfoot
specific companies) and they rarely have much expertise in Hispanic colonial
archaeology. And most archaeologists who conduct culture contact research in early
European colonies have logged precious few hours working on Native sites that date
to the American period. Ultimately, a more explicit comparative approach is needed
to consider how local peoples negotiated and mediated the varied policies and
practices of these different colonial programs.
2 Multi-sited archaeology. The residential mobility of Pacific Coast Indians presents a significant challenge to the creation of a more inclusive study of colonialism.
When Pacific Coast archaeologists envision models of residential movements, we
think primarily about precontact fisher-hunter-gatherers. For example, in coastal
California the popular “tribelet” model visualizes seasonal rounds taking place
within a relatively constrained geographic area, be it a watershed or valley. Yet
mobility was a critical strategy of Pacific Coast peoples throughout the colonial
period, and over time they probably traveled much broader spaces than any of their
late prehistoric ancestors. Native men, women, and their families might choose (or
be coerced) to live in multiethnic communities with European colonists as spouses
in pluralistic households, as seasonal laborers, or as members of mission congregations. But when work became unbearable or relations soured, they could just as
quickly slip away to join kinsmen in the distant hinterland. For example, I recently
argued that by establishing a network of villages and residences both “near” and
“far” from the colonial settlements, some Native Californian populations maintained the necessary flexibility to rotate back and forth between the “front lines” of
colonial interactions and to disappear into the back country (Lightfoot 2005).
A multi-sited approach is especially critical in the American period as the spread
of Euro-American settlers and miners continually forced indigenous people to
reposition themselves across the landscape. Native peoples moved between work
in urban settings, practiced seasonal rounds as itinerant agricultural laborers,
married into non-Indian Hispanic families, concealed themselves in outlying refuge
communities where mixed hunting/gathering and horticultural activities might be
undertaken, and shifted on and off reservations (Hurtado 1988; Moss and Wasson
1998:324–325). Some or all these strategies might be implemented by Native
groups over the course of a year or more. As Hurtado notes
Some Indians, like the Monos, moved constantly from the reservation to private
ranchos to hunting and gathering grounds, making use of all available opportunities
to create a new seasonal round. Other native people chose one survival strategy or
another and lived or died with it. (Hurtado 1988:214)
Clearly, our archaeological investigations need to be comprehensive enough to
consider the multiple places and sites used by “historical” Indians that comprised
the broader settlement system of these “new” seasonal rounds.
3 Practice theory approaches. The difficulties of tracing Native peoples across
colonial boundaries and following their residential movements in time and space
are severe enough, but they may be exacerbated in social settings where Indian
identities were deliberately masked or hidden from public view. This challenge is
mission, gold, furs, and manifest destiny
287
especially pertinent for the American period when discriminatory legislation,
removal to reservations, and outright extermination practices made it very unhealthy
to be an Indian, especially during the years of 1846–80. This was a time when many
Native groups went underground, carefully concealing their identities from an
unsympathetic Euro-American society. And not surprisingly, this is the time when
some Native groups disappear from the written record, when they supposedly
“melted away” or submerged themselves into Hispanic Californian communities,
prompting some later historians and anthropologists, such as Alfred Kroeber, to
declare that these tribes went extinct.
I believe historical archaeology has a critical role to play in reevaluating the myth
of tribal extinctions on the Pacific Coast. By taking an inclusive, landscape approach
to the study of new kinds of historical seasonal rounds, and employing the tenets
of practice theory, we can examine the development of modern Indian tribes from
late prehistory through early and late colonial times to the present. By examining
the habitus of Indian peoples as enacted through their daily practices and routines,
we may examine Native actions in both private and public arenas (Lightfoot et al.
1998; Silliman 2001, 2004a). In such a manner, we may understand better how
Indians negotiated colonialism in different kinds of social settings. By considering
the organization of space and the built environment, the performance of mundane
tasks, and the use of material culture, we may observe how Indian identities were
constructed, maintained, and transformed behind closed doors in the seclusion of
their own spaces. The challenge, of course, will be identifying the archaeological
remains of Native residences on the fringes of Euro-American society in the midto-late 19th centuries.
4 Collaborative research. An integrated study of colonialism will require some
rethinking of how we organize and conduct archaeological research. Culture contact
studies tend to be directed by one or two scholars with specialization in a
particular colonial program. But the study of Pacific Coast Indians who were
entangled on the edges of multiple colonial programs or who endured sequential
colonial regimes will require multidisciplinary research teams with expertise that
cuts across various European and American colonial institutions. Seminars and
conferences that integrate scholars working on Spanish, Mexican, Russian, British,
and American colonization on the Pacific Coast would be a step in the right direction rather than the current practice of segregating colonial specialists into separate
symposia at regional and national meetings. Ultimately, members of research
teams will need to be carefully selected depending on the specific histories of
the tribes under consideration and the range of colonial programs and institutions
they encountered. A crucial role will be played by scholars with the expertise
to interrogate ethnohistorical sources so as to identify potential sites of Native
residences, especially during the American period (Johnson 1995, 1997). There
is also the need to develop better communication and collaboration between
scholars in the CRM and academic sectors concerning the historical archaeology
of Native Americans, as the former are more likely to unearth the remains of
mid-to-late 19th-century Indian residences during the course of routine mitigation
research.
288
kent g. lightfoot
Another critical component of the collaborative team will be tribal elders and
scholars. Rather than simply hiring Indians as “most likely descendants” to monitor
sensitive artifacts and human remains, Native peoples should participate in all
stages of the research to insure the full integration of tribal oral traditions and oral
histories into the project. Native stories on the whereabouts and activities of their
mid-to-late 19th-century family members will be crucial sources of information for
locating residential places and reconstructing annual rounds. The ability to undertake joint archaeological work on historical sites, especially 19th-century reservation
settlements on and off federal trust lands, will depend largely on the building of
confidence and trust between Pacific Coast tribes and archaeologists. A model for
how this kind of collaboration can be successfully implemented is exemplified by
the recent work on the prehistory and history of southwestern Oregon by scholars
from the University of Oregon, Southern Oregon University, the Coquille Indian
Tribe, and the Confederated Tribes of Coos, Lower Umpqua, and Siuslaw Indians
(Moss and Wasson 1998; Tveskov 2003; Younker 2003).
Conclusion
The question of how Native peoples negotiated their colonial pasts and grappled
with modernization is not a trivial matter. Indian peoples must make “legitimate”
claims to the past to enjoy the perks of federal recognition (i.e., housing assistance,
job training programs, prerogative of establishing Indian gaming facilities), employment on CRM contracts, and the repatriation of ancestral cultural materials. Tribal
groups who remain unacknowledged by government agencies receive none of the
benefits and are treated as second class citizens. Yet despite the crucial importance
of these issues to contemporary Native communities, and the passing of NAGPRA
legislation more than ten years ago, the field of archaeology has made few substantive contributions to the study of the historical roots of contemporary tribes on the
Pacific Coast of North America. I have yet to see a new synergy take place in the
historical archaeology of Native Americans that traces contemporary tribal groups
through the past two to three centuries of colonial entanglements and beyond. But
I feel our ability to contribute to Indian history and to make linkages between
modern tribal groups and the past will be limited so long as the later period of
American colonialism remains an archaeological blank page.
This chapter has explored some of the reasons why a fully integrated archaeology
of colonialism for the Pacific Coast has not yet materialized. By focusing primarily
on culture contact research in the early colonial period, we have gained a much
greater appreciation for how Native peoples negotiated their initial encounters with
European explorers and colonists. Yet it is now time to take the next step in considering the implications of long-term entanglements between Indians and settlers,
especially during the post-1846 American period. I believe that culture contact
research can serve as a foundation for a more inclusive study of colonialism, but it
will require some rethinking of how we go about the practice of archaeology.
Whether we can implement a new kind of approach that breaks down the borders
mission, gold, furs, and manifest destiny
289
between scholars of the colonial past, that fully comprehends the residential mobility of many historical Native groups, that employs a more practice-oriented perspective, and that welcomes tribal scholars as equal partners in research enterprises
remains to be seen.
REFERENCES
Allen, Rebecca 1998 Native Americans at Mission Santa Cruz, 1791–1834: Interpreting the
Archaeological Record. Los Angeles: Institute of Archaeology, UCLA, Perspectives in
California Archaeology, vol. 5.
Beckham, Stephen D. 1990 History of Western Oregon since 1846. In Handbook of North
American Indians: vol. 7, Northwest Coast. Wayne Suttles, ed. Pp. 180–188. Washington,
DC: Smithsonian Institution.
Bennyhoff, James A., and Albert B. Elsasser 1954 Sonoma Mission: An Historical and
Archaeological Study of Primary Constructions, 1823–1913. University of California
Archaeological Survey Reports No. 27. Berkeley: Archaeological Research Facility.
Breschini, Gary S., and Trudy Haversat 2002 The Esselen Refuge Response to Spanish
Intrusion. In A Gathering of Voices: The Native Peoples of the Central California Coast.
Linda Yamane, ed. Pp. 37–47. Santa Cruz: The Museum of Art and History, Santa Cruz
County History Journal No. 5.
Carley, Caroline D. 1982 HBC Kanaka Village/Vancouver Barracks 1977. Seattle: Office of
Public Archaeology, Reports in Highway Archaeology 8. Institute for Environmental
Studies, University of Washington.
Castillo, Edward D. 1978 The Impact of Euro-American Exploration and Settlement. In
Handbook of North American Indians: vol. 8, California. Robert F. Heizer, ed. Pp. 99–127.
Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution.
Caywood, Louis 1954 Archaeological Excavations at Fort Spokane 1951, 1952 and 1953.
San Francisco: United States Department of Interior, Region Four Office.
—— 1955 Final Report, Fort Vancouver Excavations. San Francisco: United States Department of Interior, Region Four Office.
Chartkoff, Joseph L., and Kerry K. Chartkoff 1984 The Archaeology of California. Stanford:
Stanford University Press.
Cook, Sherburne F. 1976 The Conflict Between the California Indian and White Civilization.
Berkeley: University of California Press.
Crowell, Aron L. 1997 Archaeology and the Capitalist World System: A Study from Russian
America. New York: Plenum Press.
Cusick, James G., ed. 1998 Studies in Culture Contact: Interaction, Culture Change, and
Archaeology. Carbondale: Center for Archaeological Investigations, Southern Illinois University.
Deetz, James 1962–63 Archaeological Investigations at La Purísima Mission. Annual Reports
of the University of California Archaeological Survey 5:161–244. Los Angeles: University
of California.
Erlandson, Jon M., and Kevin Bartoy 1995 Cabrillo, the Chumash, and Old World Disease.
Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology 17(2):153–173.
Farnsworth, Paul 1992 Missions, Indians, and Cultural Continuity. Historical Archaeology
26(1):22–36.
290
kent g. lightfoot
Farris, Glenn J. 1989 The Russian Imprint on the Colonization of California. In Columbian
Consequences, vol. 1: Archaeological and Historical Perspectives on the Spanish Borderlands West. David H. Thomas, ed. Pp. 481–498. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution
Press.
Farris, Glenn J. and Elise Wheeler 1998 The Neophyte and Infirmary at La Purísima Mission
SHP: A Review and Mapping of the Site. Sacramento: California Department of Parks
and Recreation.
Field, Les, Alan Leventhal, Dolores Sanchez, Rosemary Cambra 1992 A Contemporary
Ohlone Tribal Revitalization Movement: A Perspective from the Muwekma Costanoan/
Ohlone Indians of the San Francisco Bay Area. California History 71(3):412–432.
Greenwood, Roberta S., ed. 1975 3500 Years on One City Block: San Buenaventura Mission
Plaza Project Archaeological Report, 1974. Ventura: Redevelopment Agency of the City
of San Buenaventura.
Greenwood, Roberta S. 1989 The California Ranchero: Fact and Fancy. In Columbian
Consequences: vol. 1, Archaeological and Historical Perspectives on the Spanish Borderlands West. David H. Thomas, ed. Pp. 451–465. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution
Press.
Gutiérrez, Ramon A., and Richard J. Orsi, eds. 1997 Contested Eden: California Before
the Gold Rush. Berkeley: California Historical Society and University of California
Press.
Hageman, Fred C., and Russell C. Ewing 1991 An Archaeological and Restoration Study
of Mission La Purísima Concepción. Reports Written for the National Park Service. Prepared and Edited for Publication by Richard S. Whitehead. Santa Barbara: Santa Barbara
Trust for Historic Preservation.
Hardesty, Donald L. 1988 The Archaeology of Mining and Miners: A View from the Silver
State. Society for Historical Archaeology, Special Publications Series No. 6.
Hill, Jonathan D. 1998 Violent Encounters: Ethnogenesis and Ethnocide in Long-Term
Contact Situations. In Studies in Culture Contact: Interaction, Culture Change, and
Archaeology. James G. Cusick, ed. Pp. 146–171. Carbondale: Occasional Paper No. 25.
Center for Archaeological Investigations, Southern Illinois University.
Hoffman, J. J. and Lester A. Ross 1973 Fort Vancouver Excavations – IV, Chief Factor’s
House and Kitchen. Vancouver: Department of Interior, National Park Service, Fort
Vancouver National Historical Site.
Hoover, Robert L. 1992 Some Models for Spanish Colonial Archaeology in California.
Historical Archaeology 26(1):37–44.
Hoover, Robert L., and Julia G. Costello 1985 Excavations at Mission San Antonio, 1976–
1978. Los Angeles: Monograph XXVI, Institute of Archaeology, UCLA.
Hurtado, Albert L. 1988 Indian Survival on the California Frontier. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Johnson, John R. 1995 The Chumash Indians after Secularization. Bakersfield: California
Mission Studies Association.
—— 1997 The Indians of Mission San Fernando. Southern California Quarterly 79(3):249–
290.
Lightfoot, Kent G. 1995 Culture Contact Studies: Redefining the Relationship between
Prehistoric and Historical Archaeology. American Antiquity 60(2):199–217.
—— 2003 Russian Colonization: The Implications of Mercantile Colonial Practices in the
North Pacific. Historical Archaeology 37(4):14–28.
—— 2005 Indians, Missionaries, and Merchants: The Legacy of Colonial Encounters on the
California Frontiers. Berkeley: University of California Press.
mission, gold, furs, and manifest destiny
291
Lightfoot, Kent G. and Antoinette Martinez 1995 Frontiers and Boundaries in Archaeological Perspective. Annual Review of Anthropology 24:471–492.
Lightfoot, Kent G., Antoinette Martinez, and Ann M. Schiff 1998 Daily Practice and
Material Culture in Pluralistic Social Settings: An Archaeological Study of Culture
Change and Persistence from Fort Ross, California. American Antiquity 63(2):199–
222.
Lightfoot, Kent G., and William S. Simmons 1998 Culture Contact in Protohistoric
California: Social Contexts of Native and European Encounters. Journal of California
and Great Basin Anthropology 20(2):138–170.
Marino, Cesare 1990 History of Western Washington since 1846. In Handbook of North
American Indians: vol. 7, Northwest Coast. Wayne Suttles, ed. Pp. 169–179. Washington,
DC: Smithsonian Institution.
Mills, Peter R. 2002 Hawai’i’s Russian Adventure: A New Look at Old History. Honolulu:
University of Hawai’i Press.
Moss, Madonna L., and George B. Wasson 1998 Intimate Relations with the Past: The Story
of an Athapaskan Village on the Southern Northwest Coast of North America. World
Archaeology 29(3):317–332.
Phillips, George H. 1980 Indians in Los Angeles, 1781–1875: Economic Integration, Social
Disintegration. Pacific Historical Review 49:427–451.
—— 1997 Indians and Indian Agents: The Origins of the Reservation System in California,
1849–1852. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
Praetzellis, Mary, and Adrian Praetzellis 1990 For a Good Boy: Victorians on Sacramento’s
J Street. Rohnert Park: Anthropological Studies Center, Sonoma State University.
Preston, William 1996 Serpent in Eden: Dispersal of Foreign Diseases into Pre-Mission
California. Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology 18(1):2–37.
Pyszczyk, Heinz W. 1997 The Use of Fur Trade Goods by the Plains Indians, Central and
Southern Alberta, Canada. Canadian Journal of Archaeology 21:45–84.
Rawls, James J. 1984 Indians of California: The Changing Image. Norman: University of
Oklahoma Press.
Schneider, Tsim D. 2003 An Object Lesson: Photographic Representation and the Role of
Archaeology among the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria, Marin and Sonoma
Counties, California. Master of Arts, University of Texas, Austin.
Schuyler, Robert L. 1978 Indian-Euro-American Interaction: Archaeological Evidence from
Non-Indian Sites. Handbook of North American Indians: vol. 8, California. Robert F.
Heizer, ed. Pp. 69–79. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution.
Silliman, Stephen W. 2001 Agency, Practical Politics, and the Archaeology of Culture Contact.
Journal of Social Archaeology 1(2):190–209.
—— 2004a Lost Laborers in Colonial California: Native Americans and the Archaeology of
Rancho Petaluma. Tucson: The University of Arizona Press.
—— 2004b Social and Physical Landscapes of Contact. In North American Archaeology.
Timothy R. Pauketat and Diana DiPaolo Loren, eds. Pp. 273–296. London and Malden:
Blackwell.
—— 2005 Culture Contact or Colonialism? Challenges in the Archaeology of Native North
America. American Antiquity 70(1):55–74.
Suttles, Wayne, ed. 1990 Handbook of North American Indians: vol. 7, Northwest Coast.
Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution.
Thomas, Bryn, and Charles Hibbs Jr. 1984 Report of Investigations of Excavations at Kanaka
Village/Vancouver Barracks, Washington, 1980/1981. Vols 1 and 2. Olympia: Washington
State Department of Transportation.
292
kent g. lightfoot
Thomas, David Hurst 1991 Harvesting Ramona’s Garden: Life in California’s Mythical
Mission Past. In Columbian Consequences: vol. 3, The Spanish Borderlands in PanAmerican Perspective, David H. Thomas, ed. Pp. 119–157. Washington, DC: Smithsonian
Institution Press.
Treganza, Adan 1954 Fort Ross: A Study in Historical Archaeology. Reports of the University of California Archaeological Survey 23:1–26. Berkeley: Archaeological Research
Facility.
Tveskov, Mark A. 2003 Household, Landscape, Persistence, and Revitalization: Social Identity and Culture on the Southern Northwest Coast. Paper presented at the Symposium
on Dialogues Between the Disciplines: History and Anthropology, Organized by Arif
Dirlik, University of Oregon, Eugene.
Veltre, Douglas W. 2001 Korovinski: Archaeological and Ethnohistorical Investigations of a
Pre-and Post-Contact Aleut and Russian Settlement on Atka Island. In Archaeology in the
Aleut Zone of Alaska. Don Dumond, ed. Pp. 187–213. Eugene: University of Oregon
Anthropological Papers 58.
Voss, Barbara L. 2002 The Archaeology of El Presidio de San Francisco: Culture Contact,
Gender, and Ethnicity in a Spanish-Colonial Military Community. Ph.D. Dissertation,
Department of Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley.
Walker, Phillip L., and Travis Hudson 1993 Chumash Healing: Changing Health and
Medical Practices in an American Indian Society. Banning: Malki Museum Press.
Younker, Jason 2003 Challenging Infallible Histories: A Miraculous Revival of Dead Indians.
Paper presented at the Symposium on Dialogues between the Disciplines: History and
Anthropology, Organized by Arif Dirlik, University of Oregon, Eugene.
Chapter 15
Pacific Encounters, or Beyond
the Islands of History
Jane Lydon
Introduction
For European explorers of the 16th to 18th centuries, the Pacific was thought to
be another world – remote, unknown, and populated by aliens. An intense curiosity fueled their encounters with the diverse cultures of the region, a fascination
enhanced by their island setting. Even before Darwin’s publication of the Origin of
Species in 1859, the Pacific islands seemed to offer a kind of laboratory of culture,
preserving the purity of local forms untainted by external forces and demonstrating
the processes of natural and cultural evolution. The Pacific region provided a challenging new theater of experience and imagination, serving as the basis for developing scientific theories about life on the planet. For European society, representations
of the region’s peoples functioned to define themselves.
In turn, these European encounters with the Pacific have appealed to more recent
observers concerned with cultural process and human identity, pondering the
tension between culture and historical transformation:What keeps societies together?
How do they change? How do they define each other in the process of cultural
contact? The Pacific region has seen migration, traffic, and exchange between
diverse peoples throughout its human occupation, yet the period of interaction
between indigenous communities and the colonial powers of Europe remains of
central importance to its contemporary societies, still experiencing its effects every
day. In this chapter I consider how these exchanges resulted in local forms of
culture, examining how historical archaeology has been implicated in colonialism,
as well as its more recent use by indigenous groups in shaping contemporary identities. I review some examples from a selection of Pacific contexts before turning
to a more detailed analysis of the Australian situation, with the aim of revealing the
systematicity of relations between these modern states and their differing colonial
histories. For example, the reluctance of neo-colonial settler societies such as
New Zealand and Australia to acknowledge the recent colonial past is reflected in
294
jane lydon
systematic lacunae within the discipline of archaeology, as painful or unwelcome
aspects of the colonial encounter are forgotten by focusing on either pre-colonial
indigenous or European history. By contrast, for island states such as New
Caledonia moving toward independence, European colonialism tends to occupy a
less significant role in views of the past, since it is seen simply as the most recent
phase in a long process of cultural exchange and transformation and linked to a
longitudinal archaeological tradition. As I explore, it is clear that a range of strategies is emerging across the region that explicitly aims to “de-colonize” archaeology,
transforming the public’s and indigenous people’s use of the discipline by representing more diverse understandings of the colonial past.
There are 7,500 islands in the Pacific, the largest such geographical feature in
the world, covering more than eleven million square miles and comprising thirteen
island nations (Figure 15.1). The region is often disaggregated into the broadly
defined geo-cultural entities of Melanesia, Micronesia, Polynesia, and Australia,
despite archaeological and linguistic research which has demonstrated the artifi­
ciality and inadequacy of these terms to express the relationships of its peoples,
connected by travel and exchange throughout its human occupation. Hence representations of the Pacific as tiny and lonely islands, perched atop coral reefs and
defined by isolation and remoteness from one another, unfortunately tend to
obscure more salient features such as their interconnectedness and resilience (Terrell
1998). The long tradition of traffic and movement, and the navigational skill which
made the sea a link rather than a spatial boundary between islands, is better
expressed by the term “Oceania,” conjuring a sea of islands with their inhabitants
(Hau’ofa 1993).
Despite the independence achieved by many states during the 1960s and 1970s,
the settler nations of Australia, New Zealand, and the United States remain influential powers in the Pacific, and their indigenous peoples lack cultural autonomy.
Independence is still a political issue in New Caledonia and French Polynesia,
Bougainville (in Papua New Guinea), and Irian Jaya (under Indonesian rule). The
diverse histories and modern political contexts which constitute the region place
detailed investigation beyond the scope of this chapter. Nonetheless, such variability also serves as a useful heuristic device, allowing comparisons to be made of the
processes of imperialism and identity-formation within these different societies.
Islands of History: Cultural Identity and the Critique of Essentialism
Analysis of cultural process and exchange in the Pacific must inevitably make reference to anthropologist Marshall Sahlins’ (1981, 1985) classic studies of the relationship between culture (viewed as structure) and history, which showed how actions
express a system, but in doing so risk transformation, in turn altering the system
and giving it a history. This process is enacted most dramatically in the process
of cultural contact, as the conceptual structures of one society are transformed
following an encounter with another, such as a new colonial power. In asserting
that the peoples of the Pacific indeed had a history, Sahlins effectively displaced
pacific encounters, or beyond the islands of history
295
Figure 15.1 Map of the Pacific with sites, regions, and features referred to in this chapter and
elsewhere in the volume (shown in italics)
attention from the timeless ethnographic moment of structural anthropology and
its interest in “pristine” cultures conceived as static and isolated, and instead showed
how indigenous, local societies changed in the course of cultural process.
Sahlins was also influential in re-focusing scholarly attention upon the event,
construed as sign, and so an index of the world (e.g., Dening 1980). But the emphasis on culture as structure has more recently been the focus of sustained critique,
casting doubt on the notion of culture itself as a system of shared and stable meanings. Feminist and postcolonial critiques in particular have posed a powerful challenge to the singular perspective of structuralist analysis, made possible only by
suppressing alternative or marginal voices and concealing political interest. The
essentialism of categories such as “Hawaiian” or “Fijian” has become untenable, as
differences within such groups are as evident as what is shared by them. At the level
of the individual, the humanist view of a fixed, coherent, unitary self has also been
displaced by notions of subjectivity as fluid, negotiated, and contingent as well
as shaped by gender, class, race, and other axes of social differentiation. Identity is
produced within specific sites and discourses, and as Stuart Hall argues, “is never
complete, always in process, and always constituted within, not outside representation” (Hall 1990:222, and see Hall 1996). Nonetheless, anthropologists and indigenous peoples continue to emphasize local distinctiveness and explain identities in
terms of cultural principles.
296
jane lydon
Within relations of imperial power, such representations of indigenous peoples
have undeniably served a functional purpose for the West, allowing them to be
“known” and justifying colonial rule (Said 1978). Images of Pacific peoples provided the materials for Western identity-making, as the diverse cultures of Oceania
were fundamental to a developing 19th-century European anthropology charting
humanity according to increasingly rigid categories of biological race. Explorers’
accounts of these “savages” formed a counterpoint to a European identity that was
modern, rational, and progressive – everything they were not (e.g., Fabian 1983).
But in the South Pacific local discourses of kastom (custom, tradition) have
always been produced to describe and reify traditional ways of life. Following colonialism and the attendant process of labor migration, this objectification of culture
and identity was stimulated by the intensification of cultural contact between
different Melanesian peoples and whites (see contributions to Jolly and Thomas
1992:241–242). Although legitimated by appeal to an idealized past, “custom” is
manufactured and reworked every day, as it always has been. However, kastom
became a matter of contention between indigenous activists and anthropologists
during the 1970s and 1980s as most Melanesian islands moved toward independence, and as sovereignty movements developed in places such as New Caledonia
and Hawaii which are still under colonial rule. In this context, intellectual trends
which emphasize the mutability and contingency of identity have been perceived
as undermining indigenous assertions of culture (Keesing 1989; Trask 1991).
Such tension is perhaps most visible within the settler societies of Australia and
New Zealand, where indigenous peoples are often required to demonstrate the
continuity of their connections to place and culture and to meet expectations of
“authenticity.” In New Zealand, for example, Hanson (1990) argued that certain
key elements of Maori oral tradition stemmed from European anthropology,
prompting angry reactions from Maori and Pakeha (white) scholars (Wilford 1990).
In the Australian context, criticisms of Aboriginality as “inauthentic” have also been
contentious (e.g., Merlan 1991). “Strategic essentialism” – choosing what is useful
in essentialist discourse and then finding its limits in practice – has proved empowering to indigenous peoples, especially at a collective level (Spivak and Grosz
1990:10–12). Critique which imposes academic standards upon non-academic
representations is not simply inappropriate (or ethnocentric) but fails to see that
the meaning and effect of such representations are determined by specific political
contexts and that these, too, are mutable and fluid (Thomas 1994: 187–190). For
example, mainstream Australian society’s increasing understanding of indigenous
culture has begun to be expressed in a series of “mimetic shifts,” as certain supposedly “traditional” Aboriginal ways are adopted by whites (Gelder and Jacobs
1998; Ireland and Mackay 2002).
Archaeology and Cultural Identity
Recent theorizing of identity problematizes its relationship with material culture,
posing archaeologists a number of specific challenges. Within the discipline, the
pacific encounters, or beyond the islands of history
297
notion of identifying human groups through their material remains has always
played a central role, from the cultural-historical paradigm to processualism’s
conceptualization of culture as a system (Trigger 1989:163–167, 294–328). Yet as
Sahlins showed, people’s assessment of functional utility is determined by their
cultural framework, and the signification of identity is generated by historically
specific conceptual schemes which determine all aspects of social relations. Hence
archaeological analysis of interaction and cultural identity must consider internally
generated symbolic schemes through a historical and contextual understanding of
the relations that underlie the structure of the material record (Jones 1997; Lydon
1999). Rather than seeing imperialism as a process of globalization wherein artifacts
and social practices are taken as unchanging essences, indigenous peoples incorporated European goods into strategies of sameness and difference, mediation and
alterity.
A central question in the analysis of colonialism remains the degree of power
attributed to colonizers: some critics have argued for the fallibility of the colonial
project in various parts of the Pacific. The anthropologically informed governmentality associated with British Fijian “indirect rule,” for example, was prone to fail
because of the colonizer’s inefficiency, indigenous resistance, and because it “actually empowered and enabled new forms of indigenous action” (Thomas 1999:274–
275). But in settler nations such as Australia, colonial discourse continues to shape
cultural and disciplinary frameworks. While encounters on “the beach” may provide
drama and seeming analytical clarity, it is the longer-term effects of colonialism
which need to be understood in explaining current circumstances, as the violence
and brutality of many “frontier” clashes gave way to more disciplined, disciplining
regimes (see also Lightfoot, this volume).
Oceania: A Comparative Perspective
Since the 1970s, across the Pacific region’s contemporary societies, whether settler
nation, independent state, or dependency, a wave of political critique stemming
from indigenous activism as well as academic analysis has implicated archaeology
as a colonial project. Despite the diversity of the region’s political and cultural
contexts, a broad distinction may be made in terms of the relationship between past
forms of colonial rule in each society, in turn governing the degree of independence
of its indigenous peoples today, and the place of archaeology in shaping local
identities. In those societies still administered by neo-colonial governments (e.g.,
settler-states such as Australia and New Zealand, and the American territories of
Hawaii and Guam), struggles between colonists and Indigenes over control of the
past continue, whereas those states which have achieved or are moving toward
independence have begun to view archaeological narratives as materials for identitybuilding.
In New Zealand, for example, which became a British colony after the Treaty
of Waitangi in 1840, a disciplinary schism has existed between the archaeological
reconstruction of pre-European Maori life and historical archaeologists’ focus upon
298
jane lydon
settler heritage. This disjunction has been shaped by the perception – common in
settler views of indigenous peoples – that Maori culture had been destroyed by
invasion (Bedford 1996). The Maoritanga (“Maori Renaissance”) of the 1980s and
a policy of biculturalism caused Pakeha (white) archaeologists to question their role
in this field (Green 1989; Smith 1991; for a Maori view see O’Regan 1990). Recent
research has tended to emphasize survival and adaptation, as new cultural forms
or goods were incorporated into traditional structures or persisted side by side with
Pakeha society (e.g., Bedford 1996:423–427). Archaeological research in New
Zealand features a strong tradition of regional studies, recently applied to the Maori
experience of colonialism. Caroline Phillips (2000a), for example, traces landscapewide transformation following European settlement, focusing on the lower Waihou
River on the North Island. She skillfully integrates a range of evidence to reconstruct traditional organization of Maori socio-politics, before the taking up of
muskets led to intensified conflict and the reconfiguration of Maori political forces,
including the depopulation of some areas. More intensive interaction between
Maori correlates with an accelerating use of European goods, loss of earlier settlements’ “richness and variety,” and a decreased population (Ballara 2003:395–402;
Phillips 2000a:92–94, 2000b). Chiefly power waned, and new economic relations
led to the contraction of traditional exchange networks, but Phillips points out that
many comparable transformations were known within traditional society (see also
Davidson 1984; Prickett 2002).
The former Kingdom of Hawaii, overthrown in 1893 and subsequently annexed
by the United States of America, has also seen a strong indigenous people’s
self-determination movement. While research initially followed the larger pattern
of North American archaeology (Kirch 1985:1–21, 1999:62–64), the “Hawaiian
Renaissance” of the 1970s (Hasager and Friedman 1994) forced archaeologists to
consider the impact of their work in the present, and from the early 1990s practitioners have made a range of formal changes to their practice, including consultation with local communities and the presentation of results in an accessible form
(Spriggs 1990). For Native Hawaiians, the restoration of sites’ cultural use is more
important than preservation, and regarding the remains of ancestors as sources of
scientific knowledge damages “the ancestral foundation,” inflicting “physical and
spiritual harm” upon people and land. As a result, they continue to work for culturally appropriate preservation legislation (Cachola-Abad and Ayau 1999).
The “Hawaiian Renaissance” has also seen Native Hawaiians themselves draw
upon archaeology in preserving their cultural heritage, such as monumental stone
heiau (temples), a central symbolic element of Hawaiian culture and cosmology
(Chapman 1996), restoration of Kaho’olawe Island (Cachola-Abad and Ayau
1999:79), reestablishing a community based on traditional values in the Kahikinui
District of Maui (Kirch 1999:71), or re-appropriating the 1816 Fort Elisabeth, sited
in an older sacred landscape on Kaua’i, for ritual and political purposes (Mills
2002). Nonetheless, tension surrounds “archaeology facilitated cultural loss” – for
example at Kukuiok¯ane Heiau, identified by archaeologists as a dry-land agricultural terrace and leveled for development (Cachola-Abad and Ayau 1999:75–76;
Trask 1993:172–73).
pacific encounters, or beyond the islands of history
299
In the same way, the Chamorro people of Guam, a non-self-governing and nonincorporated U.S. territory in the Mariana Archipelago (Micronesia), have begun
to draw upon archaeology in arguing for land rights and self-determination. Activists have used evidence for early occupation (around 3500 B.P.) to assert a foundational cultural tradition and have protested the desecration of ancestral sites for
development (Rainbird 2000:159–160). Elsewhere in the region, however, indi­
genous people have not actively opposed archaeological research (Rainbird
2004:61).
In general across Oceania’s island nations, a strong archaeological tradition of
longitudinal studies has explored the long-term history of humans in the region
(Spriggs 1997; Kirch and Green 2001). The classic integrationist study Anahulu
(Kirch and Sahlins 1992) has remained influential, especially in stimulating archaeological approaches to evolutionary theory. Combining archaeology and social
anthropology to construct a history of the Anahulu Valley in northwestern O’ahu,
the principal island of Hawaii, Volume 1 shows the distinctive ways the Hawaiian
people culturally organized the experience, from the Hawaiian Conquests (A.D.
1778–1812) to the mid-19th century. Volume 2 examines the material record of
patterns of change which undermine the idea of a timeless ethnographic present,
tracing the role that agricultural intensification played within the early Sandwich
Islands kingdom. The study integrates a range of evidence for the dramatic social,
political, and economic transformations that swept the former kingdom during its
integration into the World System. Such research has created trajectories of longterm change, reflecting the region’s history of prehistoric colonization, traffic, and
exchange.
De-Colonization?
By contrast with the conflict characterizing archaeological practice in the neo­colonial Pacific states, within those moving toward or which have achieved independence the discipline has provided indigenous peoples the means for building
new visions of community and the future, while scholars are developing a range of
strategies which now explicitly aim to “de-colonize” archaeology.
Evidence for islanders’ engagement with the World System following contact
with Europeans is often posited as simply the most recent set of transformations in
a long history of exchange and contact. One effect of archaeology’s longitudinal
perspective may be to reveal the destruction and loss caused by colonialism.
For example, Matthew Spriggs argues that archaeological evidence across the
Melanesian Islands reveals massive disruption and population decline attendant
upon European contact, prompting islanders’ current concerns with repopulation
and reestablishing rightful families on traditional lands. But a longitudinal
Melanesian perspective may also emphasize continuity and resilience, showing that
the seeming threat of modern environmental damage is illusory, as archaeological
evidence charts worse degradation after the inception of agriculture around 3,000
years ago (Spriggs 1997:271–274).
300
jane lydon
In New Caledonia, annexed by France in 1853 but now moving toward independence, archaeology has come to be seen as a resource for rebuilding pre­colonial tradition. For example, Christophe Sand and Kanak researchers Jacques
Bolé and André Ouetcho aim to reconstruct “traditional” or pre-contact Kanak
culture using archaeological evidence for social organization prior to European
contact, so that “modern Kanaks searching for their social and cultural origins”
can correct the “distorted” picture based upon later transformations (Sand
2000a:51, see also Sand 2000b; Sand et al. 2003). Using archaeological evidence
for subsistence intensification, Sand proposes a much higher population density in
some regions and a society of sedentary groups organized into large political entities. This approach emphasizes the profound disruption caused by European
contact for some clans, contrasting with those who stress continuity (e.g., Bensa
and Leblic 2000). In this context a contrast drawn between pre-colonial “authenticity” and colonial “decay” is used by Kanaks as the basis for building a strong
post-colonial identity, which is defined against Western innovation. Yet these relationships are complex and mutable; while traditional culture was initially promoted
by Kanaks as a means of asserting their political claims, more recently this interest
has been displaced by economic needs. Many Kanak youth instead are leaving their
traditional lands to move to urban centers. By contrast, the Caldoche (European
descendants) have gained a new awareness of the hardship and oppression of the
convict period, which is now generally recognized as the basis for many contemporary problems. Nonetheless, Caldoche conserve convict remains and have come
to value Kanak cultural material, appropriating it as a shared symbol of their home
island (Sand 2000b).
Similarly, in Fiji, archaeologists are working with the indigenous community
to identify and protect archaeological heritage as a cultural resource. Following
independence from British rule in 1970, the objectification of Fijian tradition saw
the development of rigid class relationships between chiefs and commoners which
served to maintain elite power. The chiefs control the land and lease it for cash
return through tourism, forestry, and tourism, all of which are environmentally
unsustainable and which alienate ethnic Fijians from vaka vanua (the way of the
land). Andrew Crosby argues that indigenous Fijians in traditional villages, for
example, have forgotten or dismissed traditional attachments to ancestral sites,
while the Fijian heritage system favors protection of colonial-era sites on government land (Crosby 2003:365–366). However, archaeological and architectural evidence at sites such as Levuka, Fiji’s first capital and principal historic site, reflect
the emergence of complex local identities following colonialism (Purser 2003).
Archaeological development projects have been initiated by rural communities
who see this heritage as a means of cohering community and promoting tourism,
assisted by global heritage networks working with local representatives to develop
heritage management skills. Currently, for example, Deakin University’s Cultural
Heritage Centre for Asia and the Pacific is coordinating a heritage training project on
behalf of Australia ICOMOS (International Council on Monuments and Sites) and
the UNESCO Cultural Heritage Division (http://www.deakin.edu.au/arts/centres/
CulturalHeritage_Centre/Pacific_heritage/).
pacific encounters, or beyond the islands of history
301
The Great Australian Silence
In Australia, colonized by Britain in 1788, the relationship between the country’s
Aboriginal people and European descendants remains a central social issue. This
colonial past continues to structure the discipline of archaeology, and critics have
shown its complicity in representing indigenous peoples in ways that sustain colonial inequalities. Where 19th-century conceptions of Aboriginal society as static and
primitive, unchanged since earliest occupation, placed them on the bottom rung of
the ladder of civilization with Europeans at its pinnacle, Aborigines were made to
represent humanity’s childhood – an alterity characterized by stasis, primordiality,
and spirituality, as they were subsumed within the natural world (Lattas 1990). It
has been argued that the discourse of Australian archaeology has facilitated this
essentializing strategy, for example in promoting an Aboriginal identity characterized as ancient and primitive. Implicated are disciplinary paradigms such as
structural-functionalism and its static conception of culture, which saw the uncritical application of ethnographic accounts of Aboriginal society to interpreting
ancient remains, suppressing suggestions of variability across time and space
(Murray 1992; Russell 2001).
This formulation was readily appropriated into a national framework as a counterpoint to a mainstream modern identity and as a solid temporal foundation for a
“new” settler nation. By contrast with Aboriginal culture, which was perceived to
be disappearing, Aboriginal material remains could seemingly be preserved in
authentic purity, helping to create an image of a distinctive nation with “deep foundations” (Byrne 1996:99–100; see Allen 1988). Hence Australia’s conception of
itself drew heavily upon representations of Aboriginal culture’s distinctiveness and
longevity, appropriating it into a unified national framework.
By contrast with this stereotypical conception of Aboriginal people, until recently
Australian historical archaeologists simply ignored the indigenous experience following colonization. The disciplinary schism marked by European and Aboriginal
cultural heritage as respective objects of study saw the investigation of the Aboriginal past up until “first contact” labeled “prehistory,” while their story afterward
was almost entirely overlooked. This divide continues to be expressed in academic
curricula and qualifications, legislation, administrative institutions, and all aspects
of practice, including fieldwork and publishing. It is fundamentally the result of the
nation’s colonial history which continues to structure many aspects of Australian
society today. The conditions in which modern Aboriginal people lived, their
ex­perience following colonization, and their concerns and objectives were of no
interest to white Australia until well into the 20th century. When anthropologist W.
E. H. Stanner called for an end to the “Great Australian Silence,” a “cult of forgetfulness practiced on a national scale” (Stanner 1968:25), he signaled the need for
a changing view of the nation’s past which acknowledged the rights of its indigenous
people.
But archaeologists have been slow to respond. One factor is the persisting
assumption of Aboriginal culture’s supposed destruction (Beckett 1988; Colley and
302
jane lydon
Bickford 1996). Another is the largely unrecognized national framework within
which historical archaeology developed, one that valued most those remains pertaining to its foundation and the development of a national character. Colonialist
narratives of national development, of “opening up” the land through exploration
and industrialization, were the basis for identifying “historic sites” (Ireland 2002).
However, since the 1970s a critical stream within Australian historical archaeology has been animated by an interest in the historically marginal – women, convicts,
migrants, the working classes – aiming to challenge elite, documentary accounts by
recovering the experience of these groups (e.g., Burke 1999). This “history from
below” was shaped by Marxist and feminist perspectives, and is allied to a consciousness of the political effects of such analysis in the present. Feminists, for
example, have shown that contemporary notions of appropriate gender roles structured processes such as urbanization and gold-mining in fundamental ways, destabilizing masculinist accounts of the Australian past (Lydon 1995, Lawrence 2000).
During the 1990s a policy of multiculturalism promoted an inclusive model of
community and led to a growing awareness of Australian society’s cultural diversity.
This trend has also been expressed in aspects of heritage management which seek
to address migrant heritage (Thomas 2002).
Yet even now “ethnicity” and “culture” are only ascribed to minorities who
continue to be defined against a mainstream Anglo identity (Hage 1998). Perceptions that a new and dangerous cultural diversity threatened the nation’s unity was
one factor leading to a resurgence of racism around 1996–97 which sought to
restrict Asian immigration (Gray and Winter 1997). Notions of an Australian identity founded on a monolithic, shared culture remains a feature of conservative
political forces. By contrast, historical archaeologists have shown that the Australian
colonies were always characterized by cosmopolitanism, and even during periods
when racial tension was acute, interaction at a local level established alliances and
understanding across cultures which were enacted through material goods and
practices (Lydon 2000). Recently they have begun to explore the differing cultural
orientations that shaped the colonial project, for example by exploring the British
“diaspora” (Lawrence 2003).
Archaeologists began to break the “great Australian silence” in the late 1980s,
as a few practitioners began to explore Aboriginal–European interaction (McBryde
1989; Mulvaney 1989), following an emerging historiography of the “frontier” and
beyond (Rowley 1970). This work reflects a sea-change in mainstream Australian
attitudes toward the country’s colonial past in general and an interest in the identity
of its indigenous peoples in particular. Since the late 1960s, Aboriginal activism,
coupled with the academic critique of colonialism, has revealed the tensions within
the inclusive, pluralist model of nationhood which claimed to represent all citizens
equally (Beckett 1988). An Aboriginal “strategy of refusal” has fractured consensual
narratives of the nation, such as that promoted by the 1988 Bicentennial, a turningpoint which revealed the gap between incommensurable views of the past for all to
see (Healy 1997). Since the 1970s, attempts by indigenous peoples to gain control
of their heritage and its representation have prompted direct and headline-grabbing
conflict with archaeologists, as well as wide-ranging negotiation at all levels of
pacific encounters, or beyond the islands of history
303
heritage management, leading to a transformation of disciplinary practice (for
recent accounts of this process see Colley 2002; Smith 2004). Projects which are
conceived, developed, and conducted with Aboriginal people have become the
criterion of best practice, exploring places of significance to the Aboriginal community – such as sites looming large in oral tradition (e.g., Brady et al. 2003;
Davidson et al. 1995; Gill et al. 2003; Harrison 2004).
Since the early 1990s, the intellectual critique of colonialism has flourished,
aiming to deconstruct European discourse about Aboriginal people in showing its
contingency and systematicity (Attwood and Arnold 1992). During the 1990s a
series of events revealed new aspects of colonialism and its continuing effects to the
Australian public, including the 1991 Royal Commission on Aboriginal Deaths in
Custody, the High Court’s 1992 Mabo judgment which overturned the legal doctrine
of terra nullius, and the 1997 Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission
report on the separation of Aboriginal children from their families. The public consequence of a growing awareness of the injustices of colonialism, and its continuing
effects in the present, is the intense anxiety which now characterizes the articulation
of Australian identity. Many Australians feel profound uncertainty as a result of
knowing that their present prosperity is founded on Aboriginal misfortune.
Some continue to deny this difficult past, condemning it as “black armband”
history (Blainey 1993). Heritage has been shown to be complicit with a structured
process of forgetting, erasing painful episodes from public consciousness (Byrne
1997), while recent attempts to reject or diminish historical events such as frontier
violence or assimilationist government policy have provoked heated debate (Manne
2003). Yet questions about the place of indigenous peoples within society are now
central to Australians’ conception of themselves. A growing number of scholars
insist upon the ambivalences and contradictions in Australian and New Zealand
myths of national origin and the role played by archaeology in telling them (McNiven
and Russell in press; Lydon and Ireland 2005).
Landscape Studies
A range of historical archaeological studies has now begun to emerge, stimulating
debate regarding appropriate conceptual and methodological approaches. For
example, participation in the cattle industry has been shown to have offered Aborigi­
nal people a means to remain in traditional country in coexistence with settlers,
maintaining traditional kin relations (Paterson 2000). Some prehistorians urge the
benefits of large-scale, landscape-level analysis in revealing social networks (Torrence and Clarke 2000). This approach draws from Carmel Schrire’s (1972) study
of the social landscape of Arnhem Land, northern Australia, which demonstrated
that indigenous settlement patterns were radically altered following European invasion, as Aboriginal people gravitated toward European centers and became relatively sedentary. In this vein, archaeologists have shown how access to traditional
sites was restricted following colonization (Frederick 2000) or how use of sites
beyond the European purview intensified or altered (Head and Fullager 1997).
304
jane lydon
Such an approach also brings into view sites which have not been recognized by
historical archaeologists who define their data according to their importance in
European processes or simply according to the presence of European material
culture (Rubertone 1996:78). In attending to cultural expressions that “lie beyond
the imperial net” and revealing local situations where people remain unaware of or
indifferent to Western representations, analysis may counter the tendency of postcolonial criticism to amplify imperial power (Thomas 1997:272–273).
However, in Australia the question of colonial authority is complex, where
its form and effects have been uneven across the continent. Editors of a recent
collection of Oceanic case studies emphasize continuity in the face of radical
changes across the Pacific (Torrence and Clarke 2000:24), but their focus, mostly
examining landscapes remote from European settlement, prompts the ques­tion
of whether this is a consequence of their analytic scope. Consideration of
southeastern Australia, which saw earlier and more intense white settlement, cannot
downplay the fundamental disruption caused by colonialism if it is to account for
the current plight of its indigenous peoples. Where it is often asserted that the
indigenous people of the southeast have “lost culture” and are therefore inauthentic, an emphasis on continuity rather than transformation may have concrete
negative consequences. The Native title process, for example, which demands
demon­stration of continuous connection to land, has illustrated the difficulties for
claimants in such circumstances (Lilley 2000), and may require us to address
transformation in its full complexity rather than affirming the maintenance of
tradition.
Contextual Studies
In addition, while such large-scale approaches show great potential for tracing the
long-term structuring trajectories which saw indigenous participation in economic
processes such as pastoralism, especially in “remote” Australia, they say little of the
everyday experiences of socially heterogeneous communities, nor do they explain
responses to specific historical circumstances. As many have noted, here historical
archaeology has the potential to produce fine-grained, nuanced accounts of social
organization and identity (Hall 1999; Lightfoot 1995; Schmidt and Patterson 1996).
Further, in contrast with the history of remote Australia, most Aboriginal people
in the southeast were confined to reserves from the 1860s, and it is at such places
that we may expect to find substantial evidence of their experiences after this
time.
A sizeable historiography has sought to explore the role of reserves in shaping
residents’ lives, some arguing for the success of missionaries in changing Aboriginal
people (Attwood 1989:29), others showing that traditional aspects of culture such
as attachments to place and kin survive or even strengthen within an institutional
context (Trigger 1992; L’Oste-Brown et al. 1995). Hence archaeological investigations of such environments potentially challenges missionary accounts and reveals
the Aboriginal experience more precisely. This is accomplished in reconstructing
pacific encounters, or beyond the islands of history
305
the everyday life of different groups within and across the Aboriginal community,
exploring the role of social categories such as gender organization in the colonial
process, and tracing transformation as well as continuity. Approaches to exchange
which explore the changing contexts and valuations given material culture may help
explain its specific role in constructing sameness or difference, establishing alliances
or transforming practices and identity.
Living Culture
Where archaeological representations once stressed the pastness and stasis of
Aboriginal culture, they now foreground the remarkable regional and temporal
variation within Aboriginal culture over the past 60,000 years, historicizing the
understandings of Aboriginality. Recently, for example, Bruno David (2002) has
shown that the apparent timelessness of the Dreaming only began to approach its
current forms within Aboriginal society about 1,400 years ago. Using archaeological evidence for “Dreaming-mediated” places, rituals, and symbols, he shows that
this historically specific framework of knowledge has a material history.
One challenge is to accommodate the fundamental differences between
Aboriginal and Western notions of the past, identity, and culture. Tim Murray has
argued for a concept of “shared histories” (1996a:203), which might advance the
cause of Reconciliation, a formal policy of the Australian government between 1991
and 2001. As he states, this is “the archaeology of dispossession, assimilation,
multiculturalism and reconciliation. The archaeology of relationships between black
and white Australia and properly the heritage of both” (Murray 1996a:210). This
remedial framework represents a considerable advance in making the Aboriginal
experience following invasion an integral part of the Australian story. Such acknowledgement and inclusion, rather than the denial of Aboriginal survival and transformation, have been the focus of recent initiatives taken by agencies such as the
National Parks and Wildlife Service of New South Wales (Harrison 2004).
However, it also poses some difficult questions: first, as several scholars have
argued, cultural difference undermines inclusive universal schemes of significance
and research, as Aboriginal notions of the past are sometimes incommensurable
with those of archaeologists. For example, where archaeologists value sites and
material as evidence about the past, Aboriginal people assess their significance
within a contemporary, living landscape (McBryde 1995; Ross et al. 1996). Second,
it is important to acknowledge that historical processes such as colonialism were
experienced in diverse ways by different historical actors, and it may not be possible to accommodate these varied perspectives within a single framework. Moreover, Aboriginal people have vehemently rejected European claims to speak on their
behalf (Moreton-Robinson 2000); such a “strategy of refusal” has contested consensual narratives of the nation. Third, it is difficult to assume that Aboriginal and
archaeological representations of the past will be given equal voice in Australian
society. Where Murray argues for a “post-Mabo” archaeology which is “polyvocal,”
allowing “the Australian public to make an informed choice between competing
306
jane lydon
accounts of the past; one that will not be founded on the censorship of unpopular
views” (Murray 1996b:77), others fear the silencing yet again of an Aboriginal
voice (e.g., McNiven and Russell in press). While Aboriginal people are being
given increasing control over their cultural heritage, especially as custodians of sites
and data, their articulation of identity and history remains contested in many
quarters.
Conclusion: Relics of Colonialism
The current academic concern with the rootless, deterritorialized character of
identity has replaced essentializing conceptions in pursuing themes such as displacement and dislocation (e.g., Appadurai 2001). Yet as a number of scholars have
pointed out, Oceania has always been characterized by processes of migration,
colonization, and diaspora, leading to calls for a rediscovery of these transnational
contexts. Oceanic self-definition can be seen as a response to long-term exchange,
as well as to more recent structures of global capitalism, migration, cultural tourism,
and their apparent threat of homogeneity. Kastom remains a potent force in the
Pacific. Where an earlier historiography had stressed the “fatal impact” of European
encounters in the Pacific, analysis now emphasizes the diversity, adaptability,
and autonomy of local forms of culture, and the agency of indigenous peoples. Of
course, such an emphasis has its limitations as it diminishes an appreciation of the
power asymmetry of colonialism, a tension which continues to structure analysis.
Anthropology and archaeology have been central in constructing national identities. Within colonialism, material culture has been amenable to creating representations of static, temporally distant, indigenous traditions and justifying colonial
rule. By contrast with the “post-colonial” states, in the settler nations of the Pacific
a clear colonial legacy is evident in the disciplinary configuration around “prehistory” and settler heritage. This binary formation, with its inherent reluctance to
address the transformation of indigenous society and its experience of colonialism,
is only now dissolving, although not in a straightforward or predictable way. I argue
for an approach that stresses the shifting, multiple meanings of material culture as
it moves across different cultural schemes. Approaches that explore the fluid and
multiple meanings of material culture, including its use in constructing identity in
varied contexts, reveal a more complex and diverse past, as well as showing how
people have come to understand themselves in the present. Archaeologists must
aim to open up new ways of understanding both settler and indigenous experience
through such means if they are to avoid complicity with the enduring forces of
colonialism.
But for the post-colonial nations of the Pacific, the reified visions of collective
identity offered by archaeology are perceived to be liberating and empowering for
indigenous peoples in “reconstructing” traditional society. In such strategic objectifications, long a feature of the region’s rich and complex interactions, archaeology
furthers the project of independence, providing materials for alternative visions
of kastom largely built in opposition to Western colonial culture. Here that same
pacific encounters, or beyond the islands of history
307
solidity and endurance may provide a necessary corrective to racist visions of decay
and extinction. Forms once used by colonists to denigrate indigenous people
may be redeployed to positive political effect. Such typifications have always been
characteristic of the human ebb and flow across Oceania’s seas, intensified by the
tide of colonialism; as it recedes, colonialism’s relics in the form of archaeological
representations are being rebuilt into new forms of local culture.
REFERENCES
Allen, Harry 1988 History Matters – a Commentary on Divergent Interpretations of Australian History. Australian Aboriginal Studies 2:79–89.
Appadurai, Arjun 2001 The Globalisation of Archaeology and Heritage. Journal of Social
Archaeology 1(1):35–49.
Attwood, Bain 1989 The Making of the Aborigines. Sydney: Allen and Unwin.
Attwood, Bain, and John Arnold, eds. 1992 Power, Knowledge and Aborigines. A special
edition of the Journal of Australian Studies. La Trobe University Press and Monash
University.
Ballara, Angela 2003 Taua, “Musket Wars”, “Land Wars” or Tikanga? Warfare in Maori
Society in the Early Nineteenth Century’. Auckland: Penguin Books.
Beckett, Jeremy 1988 Past and Present: The Construction of Aboriginality. Canberra: Aborigi­
nal Studies Press.
Bedford, Stuart 1996 Post-contact Maori: The Ignored Component in New Zealand Archaeology. The Journal of the Polynesian Society 105(4):411–39.
Bensa, A. and I. Leblic, eds. 2000 En Pays Kanak: Ethnologie, Linguistique, Archeologie,
Histoire de la Nouvelle-Caledonie. Paris: Editions de la Maison des sciences de
l’Homme.
Blainey, Geoffrey 1993 Drawing Up a Balance Sheet of Our History. Quadrant 37(7–8):10–
15.
Brady, Liam M., Bruno David, Louise Manas, and the Mualgal (Torres Strait Islanders
Corporation) 2003 Community Archaeology and Oral Tradition: Commemorating and
Teaching Cultural Awareness on Mua Island, Torres Strait. Australian Journal of Indigenous Education 31:41–49.
Burke, Heather 1999 Meaning and Ideology in Historical Archaeology: Style, Social
Identity and Capitalism in an Australian Town. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum
Publishers.
Byrne, Denis 1996 Deep Nation: Australia’s Acquisition of an Indigenous Past. Aboriginal
History 20:99–100.
—— 1997 The Archaeology of Disaster. Public History Review:17–29.
Cachola-Abad, C. K¯ehaunani, and Edward Halealoha Ayau 1999 He Pane Ho’om¯alamalama:
Setting the Record Straight and a Second Call for Partnership. Hawaiian Archaeology
7:73–81.
Chapman, W. 1996 Hawaiian Perspectives on Historic Preservation and Cultural Resource
Management. Cultural Resource Management 19(8):4–7.
Colley, Sarah 2002 Uncovering Australia: Archaeology, Indigenous People and the Public.
Sydney: Allen and Unwin.
308
jane lydon
Colley, Sarah, and Anne Bickford 1996 “Real” Aborigines and “Real” Archaeology:
Aboriginal Places and Australian Historical Archaeology. World Archaeological Bulletin
7:5–21.
Crosby, Andrew 2003 Archaeology and Vanua Development in Fiji. World Archaeology
34(2):363–78.
David, Bruno 2002 Landscapes, Rock-Art and the Dreaming: An Archaeology of Preunderstanding. London and New York: Leicester University Press.
Davidson, Iain, Christine Lovell-Jones, and Robyne Bancroft, eds. 1995 Archaeologists and
Aborigines Working Together. Armidale: University of New England Press.
Davidson, Janet 1984 The Prehistory of New Zealand. Auckland: Longman Paul.
Dening, Greg 1980 Islands and Beaches: Discourse on a Silent Land, Marquesas, 1774–
1880. Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii.
Fabian, Johannes 1983 Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Itself. New York:
Columbia University Press.
Frederick, Ursula 2000 Keeping the Land Alive: Changing Social Contexts of Landscape
and Rock Art Production. In The Archaeology of Difference: Negotiating Cross-Cultural
Engagements in Oceania. Robin Torrence and Anne Clarke, eds. Pp. 300–30. One World
Archaeology Series 38. London: Routledge.
Gelder, Ken, and Jane Jacobs 1998 Uncanny Australia: Sacredness and Identity in a Postcolonial Nation. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press.
Gill, Nicholas, Alistair Paterson, and Murphy Kennedy 2003 Hidden Landscapes. Cultural
Survival Quarterly 26(2):37–38.
Gray, Geoffrey, and Christine Winter, eds. 1997 The Resurgence of Racism: Howard, Hanson
and the Race Debate. Melbourne: Monash Publications in History.
Green, Roger 1989 Suggestions towards a System for Integrating Maori Perspectives with
Those of Archaeologists Interested in Site Protection. Archaeology in New Zealand
32(2):97–100.
Hage, Ghassan 1998 White Nation: Fantasies of White Supremacy in a Multicultural Society.
Annandale: Pluto Press.
Hall, Stuart 1990 Cultural Identity and Diaspora. In Identity: Community, Culture,
Difference. Jennifer Rutherford, ed. Pp. 222–37. London: Lawrence and Wishart.
—— 1996 Introduction: Who Needs “Identity”? In Questions of Identity. Stuart Hall and P.
Du Gay, eds. Pp. 1–17. London: Sage.
Hall, Martin 1999 Subaltern Voices? Finding the Spaces between Things and Words. In
Historical Archaeology: Back from the Edge. Pedro Funari, Martin Hall, and Siân Jones,
eds. Pp. 193–203. One World Archaeology series no. 31 London: Routledge.
Hanson, F. A. 1990 The Making of the Maori: Cultural Invention and its Logic. American
Anthropologist 91:890–920.
Harrison, Rodney 2004 Shared Landscapes: Archaeologies of Attachment and the Pastoral
Industry in New South Wales. Sydney: University of New South Wales Press.
Hasager, Ulla, and Jonathan Friedman, eds. 1994 Hawai’i: Return to Nationhood. Copenhagen: International Work group for International Affairs.
Hau’ofa, Epeli 1993 Our Sea of Islands. In A New Oceania: Rediscovering Our Sea of
Islands. Eric Waddell, Vijay Naidu, and Epeli Hau’ofa, eds. Suva: University of the South
Pacific and Beake House.
Head, Lesley, and Richard Fullager 1997 Hunter-Gatherer Archaeology and Pastoral Contact:
Perspectives from Northwest Northern Territory, Australia. World Archaeology 28:418–
428.
pacific encounters, or beyond the islands of history
309
Healy, Chris 1997 From the Ruins of Colonialism: History as Social Memory. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Ireland, Tracy 2002 Giving Value to the Australian Historic Past. Australasian Historical
Archaeology 20:15–25.
Ireland, Tracy, and Richard Mackay 2002 The Randwick Destitute Children’s Asylum
Cemetery, Sydney: Issues arising from the Excavation and Re-burial of Nineteenth Century,
Non-Indigenous Human Remains. Paper presented to the Combined Archaeology
Conference, Townsville, December.
Jolly, Margaret, and Nicholas Thomas 1992 Introduction. In The Politics of Tradition in the
Pacific. Theme issue, Oceania 62(4):241–48.
Jones, Siân 1997 The Archaeology of Ethnicity: Constructing Identities in the Past and
Present. London: Routledge.
Keesing, Roger 1989 Creating the Past: Custom and Identity in the Contemporary Pacific.
The Contemporary Pacific 1:19–42.
Kirch, Patrick V. 1985 Feathered Gods and Fishhooks. An Introduction to Hawaiian Archaeology and Prehistory. Hawaii: University of Hawaii Press.
—— 1999 Hawaiian Archaeology: Past, Present, and Future. Hawaiian Archaeology 7:60–
72.
Kirch, Patrick V., and Roger C. Green 2001 Hawaiki, Ancestral Polynesia: An Essay in
Historical Anthropology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kirch, Patrick V., and Marshall Sahlins, with the assistance of Dorothy B. Barrere 1992
Anahulu: The Anthropology of History in the Kingdom of Hawaii. Two volumes. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Lattas, Andrew 1990 Aborigines and Contemporary Australian Nationalism: Primordiality
and the Cultural Politics of Otherness. In Writing Australian Culture. Theme issue, Social
Analysis 27:50–69.
Lawrence, Susan 2000 Dolly’s Creek: An Archaeology of a Victorian Goldfields Community.
Melbourne: Melbourne University Press.
Lawrence, Susan, ed. 2003 Archaeologies of the British: Explorations of Identity
in Great Britain and its Colonies 1600–1945. One World Archaeology 46. London:
Routledge.
Lightfoot, Kent 1995 Culture Contact Studies: Redefining the Relationship between Prehistoric and Historical Archaeology. American Antiquity (60)2:199–217.
Lilley, Ian, ed. 2000 Native Title and the Transformation of Archaeology in the Postcolonial
World. Sydney: University of Sydney.
L’Oste-Brown, S., L. Godwin, with G. Henry, T. Mitchell, and V. Tyson 1995. Living Under
the Act: Taroom Aboriginal Reserve 1911–1927. Brisbane: Queensland Department of
Environment and Heritage.
Lydon, Jane 1995 Boarding-houses in the Rocks: Mrs Ann Lewis’ Privy, 1865. Public History
Review 4:73–88.
—— 1999 Many Inventions: The Chinese in the Rocks 1890–1930. Melbourne: Monash
Publications in History.
—— 2000 The Disturbing History of Sydney’s Rocks, the “Birthplace of a Nation”. World
Archaeological Bulletin 11:94–109.
Lydon, Jane and Tracy Ireland, eds. 2005 Object Lessons: Archaeology and Identity in Australian Society. Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing.
Manne, Robert, ed. 2003 Whitewash: On the Fabrication of Aboriginal History. Melbourne:
Blackinc Press.
310
jane lydon
McBryde, Isabel 1989 “To Establish a Commerce of this Sort”: Cross Cultural Exchange
at the Port Jackson Settlement. In J. Hardy and Alan Frost, eds. Pp. 169–82. Studies
from Terra Australia to Australia. Australian Academy of the Humanities Occasional Paper
No. 6.
—— 1995 Dream the Impossible Dream? Shared Heritage, Shared Values, or Shared Understanding of Disparate Values? Historic Environment 11(2–3):8–14.
McNiven, Ian J., and Lynette Russell In press Towards a Post-Colonial Archaeology of
Indigenous Australia. In Handbook of Archaeological Theory. Christopher Chippindale
and Herbert D. G. Maschner, eds. Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press.
Merlan, Francesca 1991 The Limits of Cultural Constructionism: The Case of Coronation
Hill. Oceania 61:341–52.
Mills, Peter 2002 Hawai’i’s Russian Adventure: A New Look at Old History. Honolulu:
University of Hawai’i Press.
Moreton-Robinson, Aileen 2000 Talkin’ up to the White Woman: Aboriginal Women and
Feminism. St Lucia: University of Queensland Press.
Mulvaney, D. M. 1989 Encounters in Place: Outsiders and Aboriginal Australians, 1606–
1985. St Lucia: University of Queensland Press.
Murray, Tim 1992 Aboriginal (Pre)History and Australian Archaeology: The Discourse of
Australian Prehistoric Archaeology. In Power, Knowledge and Aborigines. Theme issue,
Journal of Australian Studies: 1–19.
—— 1996a Towards a Post-Mabo Archaeology of Australia. In In the Age of Mabo. Bain
Attwood, ed. Pp. 73–87. Sydney: Allen and Unwin.
—— 1996b Contact Archaeology: Shared Histories? Shared Identities? In SITES. Nailing
the Debate: Interpretation in Museums. Museum of Sydney. Pp. 199–213. Sydney:
Historic Houses Trust of NSW.
O’Regan, S. 1990 Maori Control of the Maori Heritage. In The Politics of the Past. Peter
Gathercole and David Lowenthal, eds. Pp. 95–106. London: Unwin Hyman.
Paterson, Alistair 2000 Situating Belonging: The Role of Historical Archaeology in Locating
Cultural Relationships Using Examples from Australian Pastoral Domains. Balayi: Culture,
Law and Colonialism 2:109–131.
Phillips, Caroline 2000a Post-Contact Landscapes of Change in Hauraki, New Zealand. In
The Archaeology of Difference: Negotiating Cross-Cultural Engagements in Oceania.
Robin Torrence and Anne Clarke, eds. Pp. 79–103. One World Archaeology 38. London:
Routledge.
—— 2000b Waihou Journeys: The Archaeology of 400 Years of Maori Settlement. Auckland:
Auckland University Press.
Prickett, Nigel 2002 Landscapes of Conflict: A Field Guide to the New Zealand Wars.
Auckland: Random House.
Purser, Margaret 2003 The View from the Verandah: Levuka Bungalows and the Trans­
formation of Settler Identities in Later Colonialism. International Journal of Historical
Archaeology 7:293–314.
Rainbird, Paul 2000 The Non-Use of Archaeology in Chamorro Land Rights: A Comparison
with Aboriginal Australia. In Native Title and the Transformation of Archaeology in the
Postcolonial World. Oceania Monograph 50. Ian Lilley, ed. Pp. 153–63. Sydney: University
of Sydney.
—— 2004 The Archaeology of Micronesia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ross, Anne, and members of the Quandamooka Aboriginal Land Council 1996 Aboriginal
Approaches to Cultural Heritage Management: A Quandamooka Case Study. Tempus
6:107–112.
pacific encounters, or beyond the islands of history
311
Rowley, Charles 1970 The Destruction of Aboriginal Society. Ringwood, Vic: Penguin Books
Australia.
Rubertone, Patricia 1996 Matters of Inclusion: Historical Archaeology and Native
Americans. World Archaeological Bulletin 7:77–86.
Russell, Lynette 2001 Savage Imaginings: Historical and Contemporary Constructions of
Australian Aboriginalities. Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing.
Sahlins, Marshall 1981 Historical Metaphors and Mythical Realities: Structure in the Early
History of the Sandwich Islands Kingdom. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press,
Association for Social Anthropology in Oceania.
—— 1985 Islands of History. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Said, Edward 1978 Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient. London: Routledge and
Kegan Paul.
Sand, Christophe 2000a Reconstructing “Traditional” Kanak Society in New Caledonia:
The Role of Archaeology in the Study of European Contact. In The Archaeology of Difference: Negotiating Cross-Cultural Engagements in Oceania. Robin Torrence and Anne
Clarke eds. Pp. 51–78. One World Archaeology Series 38. London: Routledge.
—— 2000b Archaeology as a Way to a Shared Future in New Caledonia? In Native Title and
the Transformation of Archaeology in the Postcolonial World. Oceania Monograph 50. Ian
Lilley, ed. Pp. 164–80. Sydney: University of Sydney.
Sand, Christophe, Jacques Bole, and André Ouetcho 2003 Prehistory and its Perception
in a Melanesian Archipelago: The New Caledonia Example. Antiquity 77(297):505–
519.
Schmidt, Peter, and Thomas Patterson, eds. 1996 Making Alternative Histories: The Practice
of Archaeology in Non-Western Settings. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press.
Schrire, Carmel 1972 Ethnoarchaeological Models and Subsistence Behaviour in Arnhem
Land. In Models in Archaeology. David Clarke, ed. Pp. 67–93. London: Methuen.
Smith, Ian 1991 The Development of Historical Archaeology in New Zealand, 1921–1990.
Australian Journal of Historical Archaeology 9:6–13.
Smith, Laurajane 2004 Archaeological Theory and the Politics of Cultural Heritage. London:
Routledge.
Spivak, Gyatri, with Elizabeth Grosz 1990 Criticism, Feminism and the Institution. In The
Post-Colonial Critic: Interviews, Strategies, Dialogues. S. Harasym, ed. Pp. 10–12. New
York: Routledge.
Spriggs, Matthew 1990 God’s Police and Damned Whores: Images of Archaeology in Hawaii.
In The Politics of the Past. Peter Gathercole and David Lowenthal, eds. Pp. 118–29.
London: Unwin Hyman.
—— 1997 The Island Melanesians. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.
Stanner, W. E. H. 1968 After the Dreaming: Black and White Australians: An Anthropologists
View. Boyer Lectures 1968. Sydney: The Australian Broadcasting Commission.
Terrell, John 1998 The Prehistoric Pacific. Archaeology 51(6):56–63.
Thomas, Mandy 2002 Moving Landscapes: National Parks and the Vietnamese Experience.
Hurstville, NSW: NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service.
Thomas, Nicholas 1994 Colonialism’s Culture: Anthropology, Travel and Government.
Melbourne: Melbourne University Press.
—— 1997 In Oceania: Visions, Artifacts, Histories. Durham: Duke University Press.
—— 1999 Becoming Undisciplined: Anthropology and Cultural Studies. In Anthropological
Theory Today. Henrietta Moore, ed. Pp. 262–79. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Torrence, Robin, and Anne Clarke 2000 Negotiating Difference: Practice Makes Theory for
Contemporary Archaeology in Oceania. In The Archaeology of Difference: Negotiating
312
jane lydon
Cross-Cultural Engagements in Oceania. Robin Torrence and Anne Clarke, eds. Pp. 1–31
One World Archaeology Series 38. London: Routledge.
Trask, Haunani-Kay 1991 Natives and Anthropologists: The Colonial Struggle. The
Contemporary Pacific 3:159–67.
—— 1993 From a Native Daughter: Colonialism and Sovereignty in Hawai’i. Monroe:
Common Courage Press.
Trigger, Bruce 1989 A History of Archaeological Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Trigger, David 1992 Whitefella Comin’: Aboriginal Responses to Colonialism in Northern
Australia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wilford, J. N. 1990 Anthropology Seen as Father of Maori Lore. New York Times, February
20: C1, 12.
Chapter 16
The Tide Reversed: Prospects
and Potentials for a
Postcolonial Archaeology
of Europe
Matthew Johnson
The purpose of this chapter is to discuss some of the major dimensions and themes
of historical archaeology as they relate to the development of Europe during the
“modern” period. My brief is to focus on a neglected theme in European historical
archaeology. Hitherto, historical archaeology has very much focused on the impact
of Europe on other peoples. It has taken up the theme of the impact of processes
of colonialism and modernity both on European settlers and on the people and
territories that Europeans have colonized. What has been neglected, then, at least
in archaeological circles, is the topic of how processes of colonialism in particular
came to transform the lives of ordinary Europeans who stayed “at home.” As a
result, we have some idea of how colonialism and modernity transformed the lives
and cultures of colonizer and colonized around the world, but less archaeological
grasp of related transformations in Europe.
In this chapter, I first focus on some of the reasons why this has been the case –
why the archaeology of Europe after A.D. 1500 has tended to neglect the question
of the colonial transformation of Europe itself. I then go on to consider “the tide
reversed” – how we might begin to write an archaeology of colonialism in Europe.
This latter part of the chapter is necessarily a tentative research agenda rather than
an authoritative statement.
Two major deficiencies exist in this chapter. First, though I draw examples from
across Europe, the reader may well feel that a disproportionate number of the
examples I give come from the British Isles, and from the period before 1800. There
are several reasons for this: it follows my primary research specialization and knowledge. However, it should be borne in mind also that Britain, with Spain, built up
the widest network of colonial exchange, influence, and empire. Also, for various
reasons (in part political, to do with issues surrounding multiculturalism, 20thcentury migration into Europe from the former colonies, consciousness of the
legacy of the British Empire, and the politics of identity and “race”), there has been
314
matthew johnson
a more extended and explicit scholarly debate over these issues in Britain than in
many other European countries. They are discussed as a “cultural problem” in
France by Braudel (1986:203–220). Second, this chapter is more of an essay on
the potential of archaeological study of Europe than on what has been done.
Much, therefore, is written in the future tense, and much is a synthesis of work by
scholars outside archaeology, but with archaeological potential.
European Historical Archaeology: An Introduction
I want to argue that different disciplinary and theoretical trends have (in part unwittingly) conspired to underplay or gloss over the impact of colonial relations on
Europe itself. However, it is important first to distinguish the European use of the
term “historical archaeology” from that elsewhere. European archaeologists tend to
use this designation to refer generically to archaeology in periods for which we have
texts, though in practice “historical archaeology” is used to refer to the archaeology
of the period after the fall of the western Roman Empire around ca. A.D. 400. A
European historical archaeologist might well specialize in the early medieval archaeology of Goths, Vandals, and Vikings. In this essay I use “historical” in the post-1500
sense of the rest of this volume.
A parallel lack of clarity rests in the use of terms like “colony” and “empire.”
Again, Europe has seen colonies and empires from the Classical world onward.
These have ranged from the settler “coloniae” of the Greeks to the organized redistributive and urban networks of the Roman Empire to the medieval political and
religious confederacy of the Holy Roman Empire (which, as every schoolchild
studying European history knows, was neither Holy nor Roman nor an Empire) to
the feudal structures of domination deployed, for example, by Crusader kingdoms
in the Holy Land, but also by Anglo-Norman lords in Ireland and the Franks and
others in Greece. It can be argued that the sense of “colonialism” common in
historical thought, and accepted as common currency in historical archaeology,
is a late and particular form of commercial/capitalist colonialism, which does
not necessarily share many features with earlier imperial forms (Ashcroft et al.
1998:122–123).
An ongoing debate exists among Classical scholars as to how far models developed in postcolonial studies can be usefully deployed for these earlier periods, a
debate complicated by the fact that European colonial administrators and apologists
for Empire self-consciously used Classical education, imagery, parallels, and rhetoric to frame 19th-century imperialist ideology (Hingley 2000). One could go further
and trace how the 19th- and 20th-century experience of Empire has framed the
explanations of Classical archaeologists. For an earlier generation, a simple narrative
of Roman expansion was enough; the benefits of Empire to an uncivilized Europe
were self-evident. The development of processual models by a generation of Roman
archaeologists can be seen as an attempt to explain the growth of the Empire,
something that had not needed explanation in terms other than an untheorized and
self-evident “progress” for an earlier generation (Millett 1990:xv).
the tide reversed
315
“Postmedieval” archaeology in Europe usually defines itself as the archaeology
of the period after 1500. It differs as to its end date, with more traditional scholars
stopping before the later 18th century and the Industrial Revolution, while others,
predominantly a younger generation of academics, insist that archaeologies of the
“later historic” period go on to the present (Tarlow and West 1999). It overlaps
with the thematic classification of “industrial archaeology” (Palmer and Neaverson
1998). Both postmedieval and industrial archaeology are relatively young, emergent
sub-disciplines, and as such have yet to develop the theoretical base seen in much
of North American historical archaeology in particular.
Different countries and areas of Europe have different levels of development of
historical archaeology, ranging from countries with a core group of academics and
professionals and teaching well integrated into the university curriculum to countries where “postmedieval archaeology” is virtually non-existent. In northwestern
Europe – Britain, Ireland, Scandinavia, the Low Countries – established societies
and journals deal with the post-1500 period. The Irish Society for Post-Medieval
Archaeology has only just been formed. The situation is sketchier in much of
central and Mediterranean Europe, though it is difficult to generalize between
countries.
In all these countries, post-1500 archaeology is nevertheless a recent development, and even in the more established areas, relatively few academic posts exist
in the specific field of historical archaeology. Most academics practicing in this area
either have primary specializations in areas that are thematic (materials technology,
scientific dating) or in adjacent periods (most notably, high medieval archaeology).
The number of specifically post-1500 appointments remains very small. Many
practitioners in this area are “heritage” or museum based, or involved in “contract
archaeology.” As such, their primary professional responsibilities are curatorial or
contractual, rather than reflective or synthetic. Traditionally, historical archaeology
has been seen as the “poor relation” to the more established fields of prehistoric
and Classical archaeology, and many undergraduate courses still “fade out” at ca.
1500 or even earlier (Gerrard 2003:170; O’Sullivan 1999).
This lack of academic input is compounded by a disciplinary fragmentation.
Many of the key figures who might be cited in a survey of European historical
archaeology would not recognize themselves as such. For example, the field of
vernacular architecture is one in which social and economic historians, architectural historians, folklife specialists, and many others play central roles. In France,
the key publications on vernacular architecture and related topics such as household and farm equipment are produced by the Musée des Arts et Traditions Populaires (cf. Bucaille and Levi-Strauss 1980; Borel-Leandri n.d.), and a similar
situation and publication pattern exists in Greece with the series of volumes on
vernacular architecture (Filippidis 1983–90). Similarly, much relevant work on
glass and ceramics is undertaken by art and design historians rather than archaeologists as such (Willmott 2002); I was told as a student working in one European
museum that “whole pots are sent to the Art History Department, broken ones
to the archaeologists.” Discussion of the postmedieval landscape has primarily
been the preserve of “landscape history,” a field which self-consciously defines
316
matthew johnson
itself as interdisciplinary but which tends to be dominated in practice by the needs
and concerns of documentary historians of the most traditional stripe (Johnson
forthcoming).
This patchy and fragmented situation is changing rapidly, particularly in the
north and west of the continent, but this historical legacy continues to structure
the nature and pattern of current research into buildings, landscape, and material
culture. It needs to be borne in mind when considering the theoretical development
of historical archaeology in Europe.
Models in European Historical Archaeology
It is difficult, then, to point to a core body of distinctively archaeological knowledge
and skills as a foundation upon which explicitly theoretical models can be based.
However, in this second section I nevertheless want to turn from practice to theory.
I argue that the theory underlying European historical archaeology, whether implicit
or explicit, has tended often to militate against explicit consideration of things
colonial. This has been such a dominant and implicit position in most of the
literature that Europe, and even countries and regions within Europe, could be
mistaken for hermetically sealed units rather than engaged in a web of social and
material relations that by the end of our period, and arguably soon after the start
of it, stretched across the globe. I want to make it clear that I include much of my
own work in this criticism.
First, I return to the heritage-related and curatorial responsibilities of many of
those working in Europe. These responsibilities tend to emphasize local identities
and influences at the expense of wider questions – curators are employed specifically
to look after local antiquities. A political dimension often underlies these responsibilities. It is difficult, for example, to see how employees of the British Museum
could ever engage in a completely open and self-critical manner with that institution’s nature as a repository of plundered loot from around the world, whatever
their private convictions. Historically, British institutions such as the National Trust
and English Heritage have consciously or unconsciously underplayed ways in which
monuments in their care were embedded in colonial relations. It is only fair to point
out that this situation is rapidly changing in response to initiatives taken by the
British Labour government in the fields of multiculturalism, diversity, and social
inclusion (see below).
Second, many of the controlling models of existing historical work in this period
stress the local and particular. The most obvious example is the study of landscape.
In England, postmedieval landscape archaeology has been dominated by the tradition of W. G. Hoskins, the “father of landscape history.” Hoskins’ great strength
was his detailed and nuanced understanding of particular localities – he quoted
Blake’s axiom that “to generalize is to be an Idiot; to particularize is the alone
distinction of Merit” with approval. Hoskins’ knowledge of, and love for, the smallscale landscapes of provincial England helped to initiate and inspire a generation
of medieval and postmedieval landscape archaeologists (Hoskins 1955; Gerrard
the tide reversed
317
2003:106). It was also central in raising the consciousness of the antiquity of the
landscape in the public at large, and thus laying the foundations for much of the
contemporary popular interest in local history and archaeology. However, I have
searched in vain for references in Hoskins’ work to any kind of connection between
his beloved provincial England and the outside world; even references to Wales,
Scotland, and Ireland are exceedingly rare (though he was influenced by and did
cite the work of the global historian Lewis Mumford on his reading lists and in his
unpublished notes: Johnson forthcoming; Phythian-Adams 1992).
On a broader scale, much of the work within the folklife tradition in Europe has
tended to stress the small-scale, often linking this with notions of enduring or
unchanging structures of traditional, rural life, and particular cultures “rooted in
the soil.” For example, Emyr Estyn Evans, Professor at Queen’s University Belfast,
wrote of Irish culture being rooted in the soil: “People . . . and land go together and
have shaped each other and you cannot understand one apart from the other”
(Evans 1968:2). It has been argued that there was an implicitly political agenda
here – in a divided Ireland, Evans was seeking to naturalize divisions between north
and south by locating them in the natural environment – the unchanging “facts”
of geology and physical geography, rather than in contingent historical and political
circumstances (Stout 1996). However, traditions in many different countries have
tended to link up ideas of the local, the particular, the unchanging (and implicitly,
the “authentic”) in conceptions of “traditional rural life,” for example in France
(Bucaille and Levi-Strauss 1980), Sweden (Gaunt and Lofgren 1985), and Greece
(Aalen 1987).
Where more explicitly theoretical standpoints have been adopted by scholars in
different disciplines, these also have stressed the dynamics of internal development
at the expense of colonial contact. In particular, Marxist models of the transformation of Europe after 1500 have often concentrated on processes of internal evolution. For example, Robert Brenner proposed that the divergent development of
England and continental Europe after 1500 was due in part to the different, contingent outcomes of class struggles in different countries (Brenner 1983). In Europe,
he suggested, peasants won out in the conflicts of the 16th century, leaving European agriculture and markets in what he saw as a stagnant condition. In England,
on the other hand, the victory of an emergent middle class led to the death of the
peasant economy and paved the way for the early emergence of capitalism and the
Industrial Revolution in that country (Brenner 1983). Brenner’s thesis has attracted
much controversy, but this controversy has been between different models of internal development – was it class conflict (within Europe) or economic change (within
Europe) driving the transformation from feudalism to capitalism? It is striking that
while Brenner’s work has attracted some attention from European archaeologists,
the work of Wallerstein on world systems theory has been taken up principally by
prehistorians and has not had any discernible effect on European historical archaeology (cf. Kristiansen and Larsen 1987).
There is, inevitably, a political dimension to this propensity to write the history
of Europe, and particularly of nations within Europe, from within itself. Paul Gilroy
has argued that many of these narratives, written by British left-wing and Marxist
318
matthew johnson
historians, tend to deny or to underplay the ways in which national identity and
consciousness were framed with reference to the colonial and imperial experience.
He writes of Raymond Williams, E. P. Thompson, and other heroes of cultural
studies that in their work “England ceaselessly gives birth to itself, seemingly from
Britannia’s head . . . their predilection for the image of the freeborn Englishman and
the dream of socialism in one country that framed their work are both to be found
wanting when it comes to nationalism” (Gilroy 1993:15).
To summarize, then, most of the existing models in European historical archaeology, albeit proposed from very different theoretical angles, have tended to focus
on processes of internal transformation and on the local, regional, and particular.
I want to stress that there is nothing wrong in this as such – I feel very strongly
that one of the problems with much recent work in historical archaeology is that,
in its urge to say something relevant for a world audience, it has ridden roughshod
over the nuances and particularities of local situations and contexts (Johnson 1999).
This feeling is clearly shared by others (Beaudry et al. 1991; Hall, this volume).
However, the small-scale and the local is only part of the study, just as global
systems and processes are themselves only part of the story. I go on to argue below
that the major task facing European historical archaeology, and indeed historical
archaeology in general, is not to shift focus to an exclusively larger scale, but to
grasp the relationship between the small-scale and local, wider processes of transformation, and the colonial experience.
The Georgian Order Thesis
One model in particular deserves more extensive discussion. The one model derived
from North American historical archaeology that has had a great impact on British
archaeology in particular has been the Deetz/Glassie/Leone explication of the ideas
and processes behind the Georgian Order (see Burke, this volume; Loren and
Beaudry, this volume). The theory has its origins in the work of the folklorist Henry
Glassie (1975). Glassie outlined what he saw as a fundamental transformation in
ordinary houses in Virginia in the 18th century, between traditional, asymmetrical,
pre-Georgian houses and houses built along Georgian principles. The latter were
ordered, symmetrical, and segregated, and reflected a transformation in lifeways to
a more privatized way of life. Deetz’s great achievement was to take this thesis and
show that it applied to a whole series of classes of artifacts – pottery, gravestones,
methods of food preparation and consumption, as well as architecture itself. He
explained this transition in terms of two archaeological “horizons”: the initial 17thcentury English settlement of New England and Virginia, and the mid–18th-century
transformation resulting from the introduction of Georgian principles from Europe
(Deetz 1977).
Mark Leone and his students took this analysis one step further and suggested
that as a set of abstract principles, the “Georgian Order” represented an ideology
of merchant capitalism. The most famous example was Leone’s analysis of the
William Paca Garden in Annapolis, Maryland, where Leone described the princi-
the tide reversed
319
ples of order, symmetry, and segregation as deployed in a formal garden. He related
these to the contradictions underlying Annapolis society – Paca himself, for example
in his signing of the Declaration of Independence, proclaimed the equality of
“mankind” yet owned over a hundred slaves (Leone 1984).
In my work in the 1990s, I proposed that one way forward for European historical archaeology was to take the Deetz/Glassie/Leone thesis and trace the
historical origins of both “pre-Georgian” and “Georgian” lifeways in their place of
origin. It seemed to me that there was a sense, particularly in Deetz’s writing, that
a pristine, completed mental model or worldview arrived in North America in the
heads of English migrants in the early 17th century and that a second mental model
arrived, contained within the pages of London pattern-books, in the mid-18th
century. What I saw, as an archaeologist working in England, was something rather
different. Two “horizons” may have appeared as total systems when they arrived in
North America, but when these pre-Georgian and Georgian worldviews were viewed
within their English context, they appeared not as abstract, completed mindsets,
but as markers of profound economic, social, and cultural conflict. After all, the
reasons the Puritans (and, for that matter, the Virginian settlers) set sail from
the shores of England in the first place were directly tied up with emergent divisions
in English society.
So my contribution to the debate over the Georgian Order thesis discussed the
transformation in agriculture and rural and domestic life in England between
the 15th and 18th centuries. I looked at the emergence of “pre-Georgian” and
“Georgian” ideas within specific social situations and the adoption of different
worldviews by different social classes. For example, I traced the emergence of landscape gardening styles as part of a system of social differentiation (Johnson 1996).
In so doing, I argued for a “process of closure” that worked through all aspects of
social and material life, and for a “bottom-up” view in which these changes were
played out by ordinary individuals and small communities. For example, I discussed
the everyday actions of planning and living in a house, seating arrangements in the
church, and the small acts of piecemeal enclosure.
This analysis is one I still hold strongly, but in the context of this chapter it has
one major flaw. Change in this model, and in my work, is still being presented as
“originating” in Europe and “diffusing outward” to the colonies. Little obvious
room remains in such a model to explore how the colonial experience itself reacted
back on Europe. To argue that European rural communities were small-scale and
local was to miss the point – the English yeomen enclosing their fields were smoking
tobacco; the Irish peasants were planting potatoes; and both were perhaps contemplating emigration to the colonies.
To summarize, then, one of the problems with the Georgian Order thesis
was ironically that it conspired with a rather monolithic and Eurocentric model in
which change started in Europe and fanned out across the globe. This left the
process of change in Europe itself unexamined in the work of Deetz, but while I
attempted to examine it in my work, an underlying model of a Europe responsible
for initiating change, but not itself being transformed by the colonial experience,
was left unquestioned.
320
matthew johnson
Consuming Culture
How might we then begin to attack the question of an archaeology of the European
colonial experience? I have shown above how such an archaeology has hardly begun
to be written, even by more theoretically aware scholars. What I try to do therefore
is not so much present a settled view, as discuss possible elements of a research
agenda, some derived from the work of colleagues in neighboring disciplines, that
might help us assemble a series of relevant elements.
First, we can think about recent historical and interdisciplinary scholarship on
consumption and the meanings of material goods. This area has already been identified by Paul Courtney (1996) as an area where Europeans can contribute, but
recent scholarship on consumption has been broader and deeper in its theoretical
focus than Courtney indicates in that article. Historians have for some time been
focused on material goods, and on consumption; and it is here that the most pertinent scholarship of colonial transformation can be found. Lisa Jardine, for example,
has focused on how the Italian Renaissance produced and consumed objects that
are now considered primarily under the heading of high art, but which in their
day were objects that showed off “conspicuous consumption” in the most vulgar
way. In this process of consumption, goods from outside Europe became symbols
of exoticism and value. For example, ultramarine blue in a picture or altarpiece
could only be obtained by grinding down lapis lazuli, traded from the East; its use
therefore signified extreme luxury and wealth (Jardine 1996:22).
There are two problematic issues with some of this work. First, most of it has
been historical rather than archaeological – in the three volumes on Culture and
Consumption (Bermingham and Brewer 1995; Brewer and Porter 1993; Brewer
and Staves 1995), not one paper is by an archaeologist, and only one paper (Burke
1993:150–151) devotes any space to discussing the potential contribution of archaeology. Second, much work on consumption deals primarily with “high culture” and
with urban centers. There is nothing wrong with studies on such subjects in their
own right, but such a concentration leaves the issue of how the large-scale networks
of trade and social relations impacted the over 80 percent of the population who,
before the 19th century, lived in the countryside.
These 80 percent were clearly and profoundly implicated in the new patterns of
production and consumption. My own work has charted the transformation in
ordinary homes and household goods often termed the “Great Rebuilding” (Johnson
1993; a transformation discussed with reference to Greece below), while the historian Margaret Spufford (1984) has examined a parallel “Great Reclothing” of the
countryside. However, ordinary people and the countryside are often implicitly held
to be following in the wake of the metropolitan areas and of the upper social classes,
often through a process of untheorized “social emulation.” The historian Colin
Campbell (1993) has subjected the concepts of social diffusion and competitive
emulation to a penetrating critique.
It is here that a concept derived from postcolonial thinking – that of mimicry –
has great potential for historians and archaeologists. Postcolonial writers have
the tide reversed
321
stressed how indigenous adoption of the traits and mannerisms of the colonizing
power can be double-edged. On one level, these adoptions stem from a desire to
emulate and an acceptance of colonial ideology, but at other levels they might have
other meanings, even mockery of the colonial order. I suggest we need to learn from
this observation to think in more subtle and nuanced ways about the adoption of
styles in architecture and material culture further down the social scale.
Consciousness of the “Other”
A second strand of use to archaeologists is the interest shown by intellectual historians in the way European peoples dealt with the conceptual challenge of the “discovery” of new worlds. It is commonplace that this challenge gave rise to ideas that
were central to nascent archaeological thought: for example, the idea that perhaps
“we” were once like these “primitive peoples” gave rise to early ideas of social evolution (Trigger 1995). More broadly, historians and New Historicist literary scholars have emphasized how consciousness of a colonial Other framed a developing
consciousness of Europe as a continent, of European cultural superiority, and of
the idea of the nation-state (cf. Helgerson 1992).
Consciousness of the existence of places, peoples, and cultures outside Europe,
however, cannot be assumed to be the preserve of high culture or to be a phenomenon that developed very late. Representations of exotic animals such as elephants
or pelicans were frequent in medieval art at both polite and vernacular levels.
English Morris dancing, Flemish mooriske dans, Dutch moorsche dans, German
moriskentanz, and French danse moresque are known from 1459 onward; Morris was
originally “Moorish,” though the reason for this derivation is uncertain (Hutton
1994:61). The two most famous examples of popular consciousness of the colonial
Other come from Shakespeare’s plays, which were performed before urban audiences of all classes save the very poor. When Shakespeare wrote Othello, for all its
factual inaccuracies, he depended on a wide audience recognition not just of
“Moorish” culture, but of many of the tensions associated with it; and in its plot,
Shakespeare depended on a complexity and ambiguity of audience response to the
black man that clearly went beyond simple racial stereotyping. Again, though The
Tempest is set in the Mediterranean, its plot and in particular its depiction of the
“monster” Caliban depended on audience recognition and understanding at a fairly
sophisticated level of contemporary written accounts of the “savages” of the New
World.
It is important to acknowledge in this context the explosion of recent work that
has stressed just how far Britain in particular has always been a multiracial and
multicultural society. It is difficult to point to parallel work for other European
countries, although some ethnoarchaeological work is ongoing with modern immigrant communities in Dublin. In 1555, five Africans arrived in London to learn
English and thereby facilitate trade; by 1601 a large enough presence of black slaves
resided in London for Queen Elizabeth to commission a Lubeck merchant to
remove them from the country (Gerzina 1995:11).
322
matthew johnson
Many Europeans of all social classes were also aware of a world outside Europe
in a more direct way. Up until the later 18th century, North African ships regularly
raided the Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts for slaves. Linda Colley (2002) has
traced the extensive propaganda surrounding reporting of these raids. Most slaves
were taken from unarmed ships, but frequently raids on coastal settlements were
undertaken. Colley carefully points out that the scale of these depredations on
Europe was tiny compared to what was going on in West Africa (though as a whole
the North African slave trade was huge), but unsurprisingly the cultural effect of
the raids was profound.
I see a role for archaeologists here in the examination of the way discourses and
technologies of colonial domination, and of structures of power within European
nation-states, were framed and developed in parallel. For example, consider the
map (Figure 16.1). Rabasa has traced for the use of the Mercator projection, and
of a Cartesian geography generally, how the map became an instrument of colonial
domination: famously, the Mercator projection presented Europe as “central” and
naturalized Eurocentrism. At exactly the same time as colonial explorers and traders
used the new cartography as a technology of subjugation, the map also operated at
at least two other levels. Maps of individual nation-states were being produced, and
with them new forms of national consciousness. Helgerson memorably comments
that the production of national maps allowed a conceptual space to be opened up
between the kingdom and the monarch, a space that was to grow from its 16thcentury inception and grow to divide armies in civil war and republican revolution
(Helgerson 1992:114).
The direct evidence of material culture is more problematic. Norman Emery
(1999:167) reports that it is not until the later 18th century that the remote and
poor community of St. Kilda in Scotland started using and discarding great numbers
of goods from outside. However, across Europe as a whole, goods and commodities
from the colonies came to have a transforming effect on rural life. In France, the
two crops of potatoes and maize imported from the New World occupied one-eighth
of agricultural land by 1830. Clout (1980:92) estimates that the impact of this crop
had a disproportionate effect on the economy. The effect of the introduction of the
potato into Irish agriculture is as famous as its ultimate consequences were tragic
(see below).
Reading Europe Contrapuntally
Another strategy useful for European historical archaeology is to interpret its material contrapuntally. The classic example and model of a contrapuntal reading comes
from postcolonial criticism. Edward Said (1978:100–116) takes Jane Austen’s novel
Mansfield Park, which deals in part with a great household and estate, the basis of
whose wealth is the slave plantations in Antigua. The human exploitation and misery
that form the basis of this wealth is the subject of what Said sees as a profound and
uncomfortable silence through the whole of the book. Said draws out the way the
novel sets domestic order at home against a colonial order abroad; the “master” of
the tide reversed
323
Figure 16.1 Christopher Saxton’s colored printed map of England and Wales, published in 1579
as part of Lord Burghley’s Atlas. Reprinted with permission of the British Library
the house, Sir Thomas Bertram, leaves during the novel to deal with problems in
Antigua, and on his return has to spend much time sorting out domestic unrest
and disorder created by the absence of a masterly figure in his own home. Said
reads Mansfield Park contrapuntally, drawing out “the casual references to Antigua,
the ease with which Sir Thomas’ needs in England are met by a Caribbean sojourn,
the uninflected, unreflected citations of Antigua . . . They stand for a significance
‘out there’ that frames the genuinely important action here, but not for a great
significance. Yet these signs of “abroad” include, even as they repress, a rich and
complex history, which has since achieved a status that the Bertrams . . . would not
recognize” (Said 1978:112).
As it happens, Mansfield Park is a fictional re-creation of one of thousands of
such parks and estates which are increasingly taking the attention of landscape
historians and archaeologists. From the great Italian Renaissance gardens in
the summer retreats in the hills around Rome, to the huge French gardens that
embody the absolute power of the king in their rigid design and deployment of
radial symmetry (Mukerji 1993), to the “English landscape style” in which the
observer of correct education and social class can discern a planned order behind
324
matthew johnson
the apparently “natural” disposition of grass and trees – all these polite landscapes
have been the subject of extensive research.Yet their interpretation (with the notable
exception of Williamson 1995) has remained largely aesthetic rather than historical
in nature: for most garden historians, gardens are about plants rather than power.
Where social interpretations have been offered, often controversially, they have been
phrased in terms of parks maintaining an ideology in the face of class conflict and
division – in other words, in terms internal to European society. Yet the gardens
themselves often overtly reference colonial relations. For example, Addison in the
new 18th-century magazine The Tatler dispensed advice on gardens: the goddess
Commerce should be seated “in a little island, that was covered with groves of
Spices, Olives and Orange-tress: and in a Word, with the Product of every foreign
Clime” (cited in Hunt and Willis 1975:140).
I am suggesting that there is scope to read these landscapes contrapuntally. To
take one example of many, William Beckford’s great 18th-century “Gothick” house
and estate of Fonthill Abbey (Figure 16.2), now largely destroyed but with one wing
remaining in ruins, has been the subject of intense interest, in part due to Beckford’s
homosexuality (Davis 2000). However, the source of the vast wealth – slavery – that
was the basis of Beckford’s building and lifestyle remains largely uncommented
upon. Robert Beckford, a Black British man, commented on the ruins:
This is part of English heritage but they’re not telling the full story. There isn’t anything
within the building or anything within the restoration that deals with the slave past
and the fact that this was a slave-holding family who took millions of pounds from
slaves in the plantations in Jamaica . . . It’s really a partial and myopic view of English
heritage . . .
What makes the Beckford story unique is that there are lots of Beckfords in Jamaica
and white Beckfords in England . . . there’s a good possibility that the White Beckfords
who are here are in some way related to the Black Beckfords in the Caribbean. So
we’re really talking about the history of a family that is both Black and White and living
in Britain, but unaware of that fact. . . . (cited in Martin 1999:60, 166; see also Williams
1964:87–88)
Beckford’s comments isolate the most obvious candidate for a contrapuntal reading,
namely the archaeology of slavery.
The Atlantic slave trade was started by Spain and Portugal in the 15th century,
and was then taken up by Britain and the Netherlands (Thomas 1997; see Pikirayi,
this volume); its impact on the development of European capitalism was the subject
of a famous thesis by Eric Williams (1964), and since that date the relationship
between slavery and European economic development has been closely debated by
historians (cf. Inikori and Engerman 1992). However, monuments like Fonthill
Abbey are discussed by archaeologists and others often in hermetically sealed terms,
as if what went on in these great houses and estates and what went on either in the
surrounding countryside or in plantations thousands of miles away had nothing to
do with each other. One of the most classic examples is the history of the Atlantic
port of Bristol, which until recently had managed to bury its involvement in the
slave trade almost completely and which is ringed to this day by a fine series of
the tide reversed
325
Figure 16.2 John Rutter’s rendition (1823) of Fonthill Abbey, Wiltshire, England, built by William
Beckford from 1796 onward. Beckford’s fortune came from his father’s plantations in the West
Indies. Reprinted with permission of Dick Claesson
stately homes built off the wealth of the slave trade (Dresser 2001:especially 111–
116; Hicks 2003). Again, the history of Birmingham has been written around its
role as a center for the production of guns – but the West African destination of
many of those guns, where they were used to barter for slaves, is rarely mentioned.
Similar comments could be made about the ports of Nantes, Saint-Malo, Lisbon,
Amsterdam, and Liverpool.
Four commodities which came to transform the lives of ordinary Europeans –
coffee, tea, tobacco, and sugar – were directly implicated in the use of slavery on
European-owned plantations, and all have left distinctive traces in the archaeological record. Thus the classic Guide to Artifacts of Colonial America (Noël Hume
1969) discusses European-produced teapots and tea sets in which sugared teas were
drunk and clay tobacco pipes; yet in the extensive literature on these artifacts, a
profound silence exists on the subject of the colonial networks that underlay the
production and consumption of these artifacts. The most common find on
European post-1500 sites is, of course, the clay tobacco pipe. Clay tobacco pipes
326
matthew johnson
are both exceptionally common and found in all corners of Europe, from Ireland
to the Ottoman Empire (Baram 1999).
Europe at the Margins
A second strategy for a postcolonial archaeology of Europe requires looking at its
margins. Of course, I mean here a created margin rather than a natural or “real”
one. If, culturally, Europe created itself with reference to a non-European Other,
then it had to define the boundaries. Such areas became zones between, on the one
hand, areas subject to colonial and imperial conquest, and on the other, increasingly
self-conscious and aggressive “mother nations.” So, we might see how such processes were expressed and negotiated materially by developing a postcolonial
archaeology of areas at the perceived edges of Europe. I shall explore this potential
by looking briefly at two contexts: Ireland and Greece.
Perceived as being at the edge of Europe in the Middle Ages, Ireland was reconfigured as a result of two related processes in the 16th century: the “discovery” of
the Americas, and formation of a new articulation of the nation-state, in particular
the centralization and outward aggression of England as a nation-state under the
Tudor monarchs.
The first development placed Ireland as one element in the center of an Atlantic
world that encompassed French, Spanish, and English colonies in the Caribbean,
and the nascent British colonies in North America. Historically, many of those
involved in North American settlement also had Irish estates. Walter Raleigh had a
traditional gentry house in the English county of Devon, was granted 42,000 acres
in the English plantation of Munster, and was a key figure in the early history of
North and South America. A less well-known figure with a modern cultish following, Thomas Harriott, an English intellectual with a reputation as magician and
rumoured to be an atheist, had estates in Ireland and compiled the first English
dictionary of a Native American (Algonkian) language. The poet Edmund Spenser,
seen by some as an architect of English colonial policy in Ireland and as a founding
voice of an Anglo-Irish identity, had a rather small, ancient, crumbling medieval
tower-house and estate at Kilcolman which has recently been the subject of archaeological excavation (Klingelhofer 1999; Maley 1997). All these figures moved
around the fringes of the court of England’s Queen Elizabeth.
These biographical summaries suggest that the development of 16th-century
nation-states, the nascent colonialism of the “discovery” and settlement of the New
World, and the recasting of settlement in Ireland from the 16th century onward are
three processes that must be considered as unfolding in the context of each other
(Delle 1999). One could go further and note a paradox: the idea of “Ireland” as a
nation-state was only made possible by the unfolding of the very forces that were
placing the island in a subjected and colonized role.
How have archaeologists come to understand the landscape and material culture
of Ireland in terms of these processes? They first acknowledge the medieval antecedents of the archaeology of post-1500 Ireland. Colonial domination after 1500
the tide reversed
327
was not imposed on a tabula rasa. The area around Dublin had been subject to
Anglo-Norman rule for over three centuries, and Anglo-Norman settlement had
spread well beyond this, most notably into Munster. The Irish landscape is dotted
with castles and tower-houses dating from the 12th to 17th centuries. The simple
interpretation of these castles and towers as artifacts of an Anglo-Norman feudal
order is no longer tenable; they must be seen as reflecting the complexity and
ambiguity of different identities (O’Keeffe 2000).
Secondly, archaeologists engage with the nature of their sources as themselves
bound up with emergent systems of power and domination. Earlier I cited the
archaeology of the map as a theme in European historical archaeology. English maps
of Ireland, from the very start, were intended as instruments of colonial policy. This
was fully understood by Irish rebels, who ambushed and beheaded the cartographer
Bartlett shortly after the 1603 publication of his Generalle Description of Ireland
(Andrews 1970:181). The 19th-century blanket coverage of the Ordnance Survey,
in which Irish place-names and local knowledge were buried under the objective,
faceless sheets of the map, served the logical end-point of this process.
The more I engage with Irish material, the more convinced I become that the
archaeology of historic Ireland cannot be understood in terms of colonial domination and resistance alone, however important those processes were. A peasant
couple living in traditional manner in an isolated community in Ireland was not
simply engaging in “resistance”; they were trying, in often desperate circumstances,
to make a living both materially and spiritually, in a way that made sense to them
and their family. These individual lives intersected with wider views of the world in
complex ways that are not simply reducible to a dry analysis of power and domination, as Henry Glassie (1982) strongly implies.
The historical archaeology of Greece, at the other end of Europe, again suggests
that we must balance wider accounts of large-scale processes of colonialism against
a nuanced account of local antecedents, particularities, and processes. Here, from
the 15th century onward, Europeans and Christians were part of an arguably Asian
and certainly Muslim imperial power, the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman dynasty,
originating in what is now Turkey, conquered what remained of the Byzantine
(Eastern Roman) Empire and adjacent areas in the later Middle Ages, pushing up
through the Balkans toward central Europe; Ottoman expansion culminated in the
famous siege and capture of Constantinople in 1453, and its high water mark is
seen by traditional historians as being punctuated by the unsuccessful sieges of
Vienna in 1529 and 1683.
The first point to make is the relative lack of modern landscape and settlement
archaeology of this period relative to the Classical and Byzantine periods, and
relative to the other example of Ireland. This is partly due to purely scholarly difficulties, in particular the relative inaccessibility and difficulty of translation of many
of the bureaucratic records of the Ottoman Empire, many of which were written in
a highly specialized form of Turkish known only to the bureaucrats themselves
(Rackham and Moody 1996:8). There are also archaeological hindrances, in particular the difficulty of dating the terracing so prevalent across hillsides in the
Mediterranean; terracing goes back to the Bronze Age, but also may only be a few
328
matthew johnson
centuries old. However, it also reflects a nationalist agenda in Greek archaeology,
in which resources and research directions emphasize periods of glory (most
obviously the 5th century B.C.) and downplay periods of outside domination
(Kotsakis 1991).
Again, the Ottoman Empire did not conform to the capitalistic colonial models
familiar to historical archaeologists. The Ottomans imposed a system of large-scale
estates and networks of colonial tribute and labor service. It is clear that within
different parts of Greece under Ottoman rule there were major elements of autonomy. The landscape archaeology of many of these areas shows substantial continuity with preceding periods (Rackham and Moody 1996).
In the 19th century, the architecture reflected a highly conscious pan-Hellenism
as successive areas of Greece were liberated from Ottoman rule. The Greek
merchant classes built houses of Classical style and influence that were of symmetrical plan and design and that self-consciously proclaimed their Greekness. As
such, they can be seen as part of a “Georgian Order,” being middle class in origin,
and being implicated in the expanding trade and production of the 19th-century
Aegean. However, they can also be seen as a conscious statement of nationalism
and identity. This was echoed in the rigid grid-plans of 19th-century cities such as
Sparta and Pythagorion.
Conclusions
The historical archaeology of Europe is in a decidedly uneven state of development.
Its disciplinary basis is fragmented, and in much of Europe little or no conscious
provision can be found for post-1500 archaeology in either the academic or professional spheres. As a result, there has been only patchy intellectual engagement with
the ideas and issues raised by a “world historical archaeology” and discussed in the
rest of this book. I believe passionately that such an engagement is long overdue.
At its heart, I think, will be a heightened appreciation of the need to see Europe
within its imperial and colonial context, following the work of postcolonial scholars
and critics in other disciplines.
I have tried to suggest in the later stages of this chapter that as a postcolonial
archaeology of Europe emerges, it will be characterized by tensions between the
description of large-scale and emergent forces of colonialism and capitalism, and
the need to understand the local, the particular, and the historical antecedents in
any given area. I see this tension as a productive one, though I cannot forecast with
any confidence where it will lead us.
REFERENCES
Aalen, F. H. A. 1987 Greek Vernacular Architecture. Vernacular Architecture 18:41–50.
Andrews, John H. 1970 Geography and Government in Elizabethan Ireland. In Irish
Geographical Studies in Honour of E. Estyn Evans. Robin Glasscock and N. Stephens
eds. Pp. 178–191. Belfast: Queens University.
the tide reversed
329
Ashcroft, William, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin 1998 Key Concepts in Post-Colonial
Studies. London: Routledge.
Baram, Uzi 1999 Clay Tobacco Pipes and Coffee Cup Sherds in the Archaeology of the
Middle East: Artefacts of Social Tensions from the Ottoman Past. International Journal of
Historical Archaeology 3:131–6.
Beaudry, Mary, Lauren J. Cook, and Mrozowski, Stephen 1991 Artefacts and Active Voices:
Material Culture as Social Discourse. In The Archaeology of Inequality. Randall H.
McGuire and Robert Paynter, eds. Pp. 150–191. Oxford: Blackwell.
Bermingham, Anne, and John Brewer, eds. 1995 The Consumption of Culture, 1600–1800:
Image, Object, Text. London: Routledge.
Borel-Leandri, J. N. D. Architecture et Vie Traditionelle en Corse. Paris: Berger Larault.
Braudel, Fernand 1986 The Identity of France, Volume Two: People and Production. London:
Fontana.
Brenner, Robert 1983 The Agrarian Roots of European Capitalism. In The Brenner Debate:
Agrarian Class Structure and Economic Development in Pre-Industrial Europe. T. H.
Aston and C. H. E. Philipin, eds. Pp. 213–237. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Brewer, John, and Roy Porter, eds. 1993 Consumption and the World of Goods. London:
Routledge.
Brewer, John, and Susan Staves, eds. 1995 Early Modern Conceptions of Property. London:
Routledge.
Bucaille, R., and L. Levi-Strauss 1980 L’Architecture Rurale Française: Corpus des Genres,
des Types et des Variantes: Bourgogne. Paris: Payot.
Burke, Peter 1993 Res et Verba: Conspicuous Consumption in the Modern World. In Consumption and the World of Goods. John Brewer and Roy Porter, eds. Pp. 148–161. London:
Routledge.
Campbell, Colin 1993 Understanding Traditional and Modern Patterns of Consumption in
8th Century England: A Character-Action Approach. In Consumption and the World of
Goods. John Brewer and Roy Porter, eds. Pp. 40–57. London: Routledge.
Clout, Hugh 1980 Agriculture in France on the Eve of the Railway Age. London: Croom
Helm.
Colley, Linda 2002 Captives: Britain, Empire and the World, 1600–1850. London: Cape.
Courtney, Paul 1996 In Small Things Forgotten: The Georgian World View, Material Culture,
and the Consumer Revolution. Rural History 7:87–95.
Davis, Whitney 2000 The Site of Sexuality: William Beckford’s Fonthill Abbey, 1780–1824.
In Archaeologies of Sexuality. Robert A. Schmidt and Barbara L. Voss, eds. Pp. 104–113.
London: Routledge.
Deetz, James F. 1977 In Small Things Forgotten: An Archaeology of Early American Life.
New York: Anchor.
Delle, James 1999 Extending Europe’s Grasp: An Archaeological Comparison of Colonial
Spatial Processes in Ireland and Jamaica. In Old and New Worlds: Historical/Post Medieval
Papers from the Societies’ Joint Conferences at Williamsburg and London 1997 to Mark
Thirty Years of Work and Achievement. Geoff Egan and Ronald Michael, eds. Pp. 106–116.
Oxford: Oxbow.
Dresser, Madge 2001 Slavery Obscured: The Social History of the Slave Trade in an English
Provincial Port. London: Continuum.
Emery, Norman 1999 St Kilda: Excavations in a 19th Century Hebridean village. In Old
and New Worlds: Historical/Post Medieval Papers from the Societies’ Joint Conferences
at Williamsburg and London 1997 to Mark Thirty Years of Work and Achievement. Geoff
Egan and Ronald Michael, eds. Pp. 165–170. Oxford: Oxbow.
330
matthew johnson
Evans, E. E. 1968 Mourne Country. Landscape and Life in South Down. Dundalk:
Dundalgan Press.
Filippidis, Dimitris, ed. 1983–90 Greek Traditional Architecture. Athens: Melissa.
Gaunt, D., and O. Lofgren 1985 Myter om Svensken. Stockholm: Liber Forlag.
Gerrard, Christopher M. 2003 Medieval Archaeology: Understanding Traditions and
Contemporary Approaches. London: Routledge.
Gerzina, Gretchen 1995 Black England: Life Before Emancipation. London: Murray.
Gilroy, Paul 1993 The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. London:
Verso.
Glassie, Henry 1975 Folk Housing in Middle Virginia: A Structural Analysis of Historic
Artifacts. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press.
—— 1982 Passing the Time in Ballymenone: Culture and History of an Ulster Community.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Helgerson, Richard 1992 Forms of Nationhood: The Elizabethan Writing of England.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Hicks, Dan 2003 Archaeology Unfolding. Oxford Journal of Archaeology 22(3):315–
329.
Hingley, Richard 2000 Roman Officers and English Gentlemen. London: Routledge.
Hoskins, William G. 1955 The Making of the English Landscape. London: Hodder and
Stoughton.
Hunt, John Dixon, and Peter Willis 1975 The Genius of the Place: The English Landscape
Garden 1620–1820. London: Dent.
Hutton, Ronald 1994 The Rise and Fall of Merry England. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Inikori, J. E., and Stanley Engerman 1992 The Atlantic Slave Trade: Effects on Economies,
Societies, and Peoples in Africa, the Americas, and Europe. Durham: Duke University
Press.
Jardine, Lisa 1996 Worldly Goods: A New History of the Renaissance. London: Macmillan.
Johnson, Matthew H. 1993 Housing Culture: Traditional Architecture in an English
Landscape. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.
—— 1996 An Archaeology of Capitalism. Oxford: Blackwell.
—— 1999 Rethinking Historical Archaeology. In Historical Archaeology: Back from the
Edge. Pedro A. Funari, Martin Hall, and Siân Jones, eds. Pp. 23–36. London:
Routledge.
—— forthcoming Ideas of Landscape. Oxford: Blackwell.
Klingelhofer, Eric 1999 Proto-Colonial Archaeology: The Case of Elizabethan Ireland. In
Historical Archaeology: Back from the Edge. Pedro A. Funari, Martin Hall, and Siân Jones,
eds. Pp. 164–179. London: Routledge.
Kotsakis, Kostas 1991 The Powerful Past: Theoretical Trends in Greek Archaeology. In
Archaeological Theory in Europe: The Last Three Decades. Ian Hodder, ed. Pp. 65–90.
London: Routledge.
Kristiansen, Kristian, and M. Larson, eds. 1987 Centre and Periphery in the Ancient World.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Leone, Mark P. 1984 Interpreting Ideology in Historical Archaeology: Using the Rules of
Perspective in the William Paca Garden at Annapolis, Maryland. In Ideology, Power and
Prehistory. Daniel Miller and Christopher Tilley, eds. Pp. 235–261. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Maley, Willy 1997 Salvaging Spenser: Colonialism, Culture and Identity. London:
Macmillan.
the tide reversed
331
Martin, S. L. 1999 Britain’s Slave Trade. London: Macmillan.
Millett, Martin 1990 The Romanisation of Britain: An Essay in Archaeological Interpretation.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Mukerji, Chandra 1993 Reading and Writing with Nature: A Materialist Approach to French
Formal Gardens. In Consumption and the World of Goods. John Brewer and Roy Porter,
eds. Pp. 439–461. London: Routledge.
Noël Hume, Ivor 1969 A Guide to Artifacts of Colonial America. New York: Random
House.
O’Keeffe, Tadhg 2000 Castle-Building and the Construction of Identity: Contesting
Narratives about Medieval Ireland. Irish Geography 33:2, 69–88.
O’Sullivan, Dierdre 1999 Teaching and Learning Post-Medieval Archaeology in Britain. In
Old and New Worlds: Historical/Post Medieval Papers from the Societies’ Joint Conferences at Williamsburg and London 1997 to Mark Thirty Years of Work and Achievement.
Geoff Egan and Ronald Michael, eds. Pp. 33–40. Oxford: Oxbow.
Palmer, Marilyn, and Paul Neaverson 1998 Industrial Archaeology: Principles and Practice.
London: Routledge.
Phythian-Adams, Charles 1992 Hoskins’ England: A Local Historian of Genius and Its
Theme. Local History 22: 170–83.
Rackham, Oliver, and James Moody 1996 The Making of the Cretan Landscape. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Said, Edward 1978 Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient. London: Routledge.
Spufford, Margaret 1984 The Great Reclothing of Rural England: Petty Chapmen and their
Wares in the 17th Century. London: Hambledon.
Stout, Matthew 1996 Emyr Estyn Evans and Northern Ireland: The Archaeology and Geography of a New State. In Nationalism and Archaeology. John A. Atkinson, Iain A. Banks,
and Jerry O’Sullivan, eds. Pp. 111–127. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Tarlow, Sarah, and Susie West, eds. 1999 The Familiar Past? Archaeologies of Later Historical Britain. London: Routledge.
Trigger, Bruce G. 1995 Sociocultural Evolution. Oxford: Blackwell.
Thomas, Hugh 1997 The Slave Trade: The History of the Atlantic Slave Trade 1440–1870.
London: Picador.
Williams, Eric 1964 Capitalism and Slavery. London: Andre Deutsch.
Williamson, Tom 1995 Polite Landscapes: Gardens and Society in 18th Century England.
London: Sutton.
Willmott, Hugh 2002 Early Post-Medieval Vessel Glass in England, c. 1500–1670. York:
Council for British Archaeology.
Index
Aborigines 27, 72, 95
and colonialism 25, 36, 120, 301–6
and labor 12, 151, 152, 154, 303,
305
culture 296, 301–6
acculturation 259, 277–8
actor-network theory (ANT) 43–4, 51–2, 53
artifacts 44–9
case study 52–60, 61
texts 49–51
Adelaide Lunatic Asylum, Parkside 181
Adorno, Theodor 87, 88, 90
Africa 5, 7, 23, 230, 246
and colonialism 216, 217
see also under names of individual
countries
African Americans 120–1, 158–9, 180
culture 115–16, 252–5
heritage 71–2, 99–100
see also slaves and slavery
African Diaspora 6–7, 115–16, 123,
148
agency 9–10, 153–4, 193–4, 200
Akan states 235
Alaska 27, 150, 157, 274, 279, 280
Albany 169
Aleutian archipelago 274, 279
almshouses 168–9, 170, 184
Althusser, Louis 10, 84, 86, 91, 93, 94,
100, 129, 131, 133
Anglesea Barracks 176
Angola 221, 224
Angola Janga 13, 221, 222, 223–4
Angwa 243
animals, Old World 28–30
Annapolis 7, 13–14, 96–100, 130, 199
see also Paca, William
Annapolis School 193
anthropology 11, 87, 89–90, 219, 306
Antigua 322–3
anti-Semitism 88; see also Jews
Arabic 213–14; see also Islam
architectural structures, analysis of 68–70, 240, 254, 256–7
domestic 76–7, 121, 157, 199, 212,
318
institutional 72, 116–17, 169, 170,
176, 178, 277
religious 121, 212–13, 221, 277
architecture 5, 11, 130, 212, 219, 315
Moorish 213–14
archivization 44, 47–52
Argentina 32, 86, 175–6, 219, 220, 221
Arizona 34, 152
Arnhem Land 303
art history 11, 219, 315
see also Pictish symbol stones
artifacts 44–9, 51–2, 65–6
analysis of 4, 9, 76, 149, 254–5, 257–66
and gender 109–12, 120, 256, 257–60
Asante 237
Asia 31, 217, 302
Astor, John Jacob 275
Astoria Pacific Fur Company 275
asylums 176, 180–1, 184
Auburn plan penitentiaries 170, 172
Augustine Pattern 112
Australia 23, 32, 36
and colonialism 293–4, 297, 303
architecture 72, 117, 130
institutions 10, 122, 173–5, 176,
180–1, 185
labor 12, 34, 138, 152, 302
national identity 173, 185, 302–3
urbanization 31, 302
see also Aborigines
awls, use of 109–11
Azores 218
Bagamoyo 240, 241
Bahia 221
Bankfontein 245
Baranda 243–4, 246
Barawa 239
battlefield archaeology 42, 70–1, 246
beads 220
glass 233, 236, 238, 253
see also wampum
Beale, Edward 284
Beckford, William 121, 324
Benin 235–6, 237, 246
Benjamin, Walter 87–8, 90
Bentham, Jeremy 170
Bering, Vitus 273
Bernal ranch 283
Berwind 198; see also Colorado Coal
Field
Binghamton 199
Birmingham, England 325
Bloodhound Site 265
Bloomington 180
Bolivia 29–30, 31, 36
Boott Cotton Mills 34, 117, 119, 153,
157, 159, 193
Boston 32, 96, 114
Bougainville 294
Bourdieu, Pierre 10, 133
index
333
Brazil 86, 209, 211, 219, 220, 226
Dutch in 8, 15–16, 221
Portuguese in 218
slavery 9, 13, 28, 221–3, 225, 234
Bristol, England 5, 324–5
Britain 170, 321
and colonization 4, 26, 244–5, 262–3,
313–14
and fur trade 27, 275, 276, 280
and slave trade 5, 324–5
and West Africa 234
British Columbia 276
Broome County cemetery 140
brothels 114; see also prostitutes and
prostitution
Buenos Aires 32
Buganda 246
Bunce Island 234, 235
Bunyoro-Kitara 246
Burghardt family 198–9, 200
burial customs 261–3, 265–6
see also cemeteries; graves
Cacheu 234
California 31, 275, 277–8
Native Americans in 13, 120, 154–5,
273, 276–88
Russians in 27–8, 156–7, 275; see also
Fort Ross
Spanish in 12, 121, 157, 273, 276–7
Cambridge 114
Cameroon 232
Canada 27, 32, 151, 275, 276
Canary Islands 216, 234
Cantonment Burgwin hospital 180
Canudos 220
Cape Coast Castle 235
Cape of Good Hope 8, 12, 241
Cape Town 28, 31, 32, 70, 244–5
Cape Verde Islands 217, 233
capitalism 1, 113, 218, 324
and class 190, 195, 199–200
and ideology 128, 139–41, 201
see also merchant capitalism; slaves and
slavery; slave trade
Caribbean 9, 30, 31, 219, 234
Casey, Thomas 184
Caste Sao Jorge de Mina see Elmina
334
index
The Castle, Cape Town 31, 70, 244,
245
Celts 56–9
cemeteries 121, 140, 168, 261–3
ceramics, analysis of 132, 192–3, 223,
224, 254, 256–7, 315
and gender 113–14
and labor 153–4
British 244
Chinese 233, 236, 238, 242
Eastern 241–2, 243, 244
Moorish 214
Persian 238
Ceuta 216, 217
Chesapeake 6, 9, 29, 30, 260–3
Chihuitán 30
children 120–1, 123, 152
China 152, 217, 274, 275; see also
ceramics
Chinese Diaspora 138, 148
Chirikov, Alexeii 273–4
Chomagora 244
chronology 3–4
Churchhaven 28
class 2, 32, 85, 190–202, 256, 317
and gender 12, 198, 200
and ideology 134–9
and labor 150–1, 159–60, 192, 198
and race 198, 200
and social relations 194–201
as an entity 191–4, 195, 200
classical archaeology 220–1, 314, 315
Colliers 245
colonialism 148, 253, 284–8
see also under specific countries and
topics, e.g., identity
colonization 1, 14, 23, 25–8
and gender studies 111–12, 120, 123
biological impact of 23, 27–9, 159
see also under specific countries; fur
trade etc.
Colony Ross see Fort Ross
Colorado Coal Field 150, 156, 160,
198, 200; see also Ludlow
Columbus, Christopher 216, 217
Comorian Islands 238
consumption 320–1
Cook, Captain James 275
cosmology 115–16
critical archaeology 13–14, 84–100
critical theory 6–7, 139, 160
Croatia 152
Cuba 217, 220
culture contact 4, 7, 120, 123, 148,
155, 273
see also Aborigines; Native Americans;
Pacific Ocean islands
Culture Resource Management
(CRM) 93, 95–6, 193, 277, 287,
288
Custer, George Armstrong 42, 70
Cyprus 234
Dambarare 243
Dahomey 236
Darwin 185
deconstruction 89
Deetz, James 1, 4, 6, 9, 10, 24, 69,
251–4, 267, 318–19
see also Georgian Order
dendroclimatology 25–6, 68
De Soto, Hernando 42
Destitute Asylum, Adelaide 176
dialectics 88
diaspora 14, 23, 302
see also African Diaspora; Chinese
Diaspora
disability 183–4
disease, spread of 23, 25–7, 32, 34–5,
233, 276
dislocation 14, 306
displacement 14, 306
domesticity, cult of 113
dress 109–10, 256, 258, 263–6
Dudley Castle, England 121–2
Dutch East India Company 8, 70
earthlodges 76–7, 122
East Africa 9, 231, 237–41, 247
Eastern State Penitentiary,
Philadelphia 170, 183
Eastport, Annapolis 98–100
Eckhout, Albert 15–16
Ecuador 112, 220
education 181
and archaeology 99–100, 247, 280
elders 121, 123
Eliot, John 258
index
Elmina 217, 235, 236–7, 246
El Presidio de San Francisco 120
Enlightenment 2, 3, 88, 209
environment 2, 8, 9–10, 23–36, 67–8
ethnicity 12–13
Europe 23, 33, 313–28
and colonialism 7–8, 313, 316, 319,
320–8
and identity 5, 13, 296, 321
see also under specific countries
excavation 10, 47–8
Fannie Bay Gaol Museum 185
faunal remains, analysis of 28, 29–30,
31, 32, 245, 254
feminism 89, 109
see also gender; women
feudal society 216, 218–19
field data recovery 72–3
Fiji 295, 297, 300
Finland 152
firearms 240, 325
First People 96; see also Aborigines;
Khoikhoi; Maori; Native Americans
Florida 30–1, 111–12, 159, 262, 263,
264
folklore 78, 232, 317
Fonthill Abbey, England 121, 324, 325
foodways 29–31, 32, 99, 115, 322
Fort Dundas, Melville Island 173
Fort Elisabeth 275, 280, 298
fortifications, Zimbabwe 244
Fort Jesus 239, 240
Fort Knokke 28
Fort Langley 275
Fort Mosè 31
Fort Okanogan 275
Fort Ross 27–8, 150, 275, 276, 277,
279, 280, 283, 285
forts: Dutch 244, 245
Portuguese 235, 236–7, 238–9; see
also Elmina
Spanish 219, 273, 276, 280
Fort St Jago 235
Fort St Pierre 265
Fort Spokane 275, 277
Fort Vancouver 275, 277, 280, 281
Foucault, Michel 10, 84, 86–7, 90, 183
and governmentalization 94–6, 100
335
and institutions 2, 10, 168, 170, 179–80, 182
France 27, 234, 314, 315, 317, 322
Frankfurt School 85, 86, 87–8, 89, 90
Freeman family 194
French Guiana 209
French Polynesia 294
French Revolution 209
Fresno Reservation 284
Fromm, Erich 88
fur trade 27–8, 74, 109, 274–5, 276,
277, 279, 285–6
Galu 238
Gambia 235
Gambia Island 234
Gambia River 233, 234
Ganga Zumba 221, 223
Ganja 235
Gao 233
gardens, historic 69–70
see also Paca, William
Gedi 238
gender 2, 7, 12, 73, 107–23, 191, 197,
256, 281
and class 12, 198, 200
and labor 150–2
see also men and masculinity;
prostitutes and prostitution; women
geographic information systems
(GIS) 73
Georgian Order 4, 69, 130, 132, 139–40, 252–3, 328
and capitalism 11, 199, 318–19
Gereza 238
Ghana 232, 233, 234–5
Giddens, Anthony 129, 133
glass 233, 238, 254, 315
Glassie, Henry 10, 130, 132, 139, 318,
327
globalization 199–200, 219, 235
gold 34, 217, 232, 233, 234–5, 238,
241–2, 275
see also Elmina
Gold Coast 232, 233, 234–5
Goree Island 235
governmentalization 94–7, 100
see also heritage; public archaeology
Gramsci, Antonio 90, 129, 133
336
index
Grand Village, Louisiana 265
graves 71–2, 97, 122
gravestones 132, 140, 199, 254
Great Zimbabwe 241–2
Greece 314, 315, 317, 326, 327–8
identity 95, 327–8
Guam 297, 299
Hacienda Tabi, Yucatan 157
Haiti 209
Harpers Ferry 153, 159
Harriott, Thomas 326
Haupt, Charles 283
Hausa caravan trade 237
Hawaii 67–8, 275, 280
and culture 296, 298, 299
and identity 95, 295, 297, 298
heritage industry 74, 86, 92, 93, 94, 95,
185, 316
see also governmentalization; public
archaeology and under specific
areas, countries and peoples e.g.
Aborigines; Colorado Coal Field
Hidatsa 122
history 11, 75, 219
Holbein, Hans 2, 3, 16
homosexuality 117, 121, 324
Hoopa Valley Reservation 284
Horkheimer, Max 87, 88
Hoskins, W.G. 67, 316–17
hospitals 180
Hudson’s Bay Company 275, 277, 279
Hueda Kingdom 235–6
human remains 72, 298
bioarchaeology 28, 121, 122, 159
Iberian America see Latin America
Iberian culture 5, 30, 31, 218–19, 225
Iberian Peninsula 211–15
and colonization 215–18
Idaho 275
identity 2, 11–13, 120, 141, 235, 293,
295–7, 306
American 4–5, 13, 251–67
and class 193–4
and colonialism 232, 293
and labor 12, 150–2
Native American 181, 286–7
South American 220–1, 224
ideology 2, 11, 84–91, 94, 100, 128–42,
199, 201
imperialism 297
indigenous people 7, 138–9, 148
see also under names of specific peoples
and areas e.g. Aborigines; Maori;
Native Americans; Pacific Ocean
islands etc. and topics e.g.
colonialism; culture contact etc.
individualism 193–4; see also identity
India 239, 245
Indonesia 8, 12, 245, 294
industrial archaeology 5–6, 33, 245,
247, 315
industrialization 33–5, 148, 149, 172,
173
Industrial Revolution 33, 317
insects, analysis of 32
Institute of Social Research 87–8
institutions 10, 167–85
and gender 116–19, 123, 176–9
integrity 93
intersectionality 12, 111, 114, 119, 122,
194
Ipswich 259–60
Ireland 152, 185, 314, 317, 322, 326–7
Irian Jaya see Papua
Iron Age 4, 56–7, 58, 59, 240
Ironbridge Gorge 33, 34
Islam 5, 9, 213, 217, 231, 238, 239
ivory trade 217, 233, 234, 238, 239–40,
242
Jamaica 115, 152, 159
James Island 235
Jamestown 26, 27, 31, 35, 68
Japan 33
Jarlshof, Shetland 54
Jefferson, Thomas 154
Jenne 233
Jews 211, 214–15, 223
Johnson’s Island Civil War Military
Prison 175
Jumba la Mtwana 238
Kanaka Village 277, 280
Kaole 238
Karanga 241, 243, 244, 247
Kenya 247
index
Khoikhoi 28, 241, 245
Kilwa 232, 238, 240, 242
Kodiak archipelago 274, 279, 280
Kongo 246
Korovinski settlement, Atka Island 280
Kumbi-Saleh 233
Kurile Islands 274
labor 2, 5, 7, 12, 14, 147–62
and gender 120, 174–5
in prisons 169, 170, 171, 172, 173,
175, 184
Lamu 238, 241
landscape 5, 10, 66, 67, 69–78, 303–4, 315–17
and prisons 173–4
gardening 139–40, 319, 323–4
Latin America 5, 7, 8, 86, 157, 209–26
Launceston female factory 174
Levi Jordan plantation 91, 92
Levi-Strauss, Claude 10
Levuka 300
Liberia 232, 235
Limbo 238
Lintz, Bartholomew 221
Lithgow 34
Little Bighorn 42, 70
Little Rapids 109–11, 119
livestock 29, 30, 216
Los Angeles 114
Louisiana 263, 265–6
Penitentiary 173
Lowell 34, 35, 150
see also Boott Cotton Mills
Lower Zambezi 232, 244
Lozi 246
Luanzi 243
Luba 246
Ludlow massacre 91, 150–1, 160, 198;
see also Colorado Coal Field
Lukács, Georg 87, 93, 129
Macaco 221, 223
Madagascar 245
Madeira 217, 234
Magdalen homes 176–7, 185
Magdalen Society Asylum,
Philadelphia 177–9
Magunco Hill, Ashland 257–9, 264
337
Mahilaka 238
Maiolica 214
maize 29, 30, 322
Makhana 234
Mali 233, 237
Malindi 238
Manda 238
Mande 234
Maori 296, 297–8
maps 322, 327
Marcuse, Herbert 87
María de la Cruz site 111–12
Mariana archipelago 299
maritime archaeology 240, 241
Maroons 5, 9, 221–6
Marx, Karl 10, 12, 133
and class 88, 132, 160, 161, 194–7,
200, 201, 317
and labor 148, 161, 218
Marxist interpretation, archaeology 10,
11, 13, 69, 85, 87–8, 90–1, 302
Maryland 260–3; see also Annapolis;
Paca, William
Maryland Center for African-American
History and Culture 99
Massachusetts 252–3, 257–60, 264; see
also Boott Cotton Mills; Russell
Cutlery Factory
Massapa 243, 244
Matanda Farm 244
material culture 24, 42, 196
see also artifacts
materiality 10–11
matrilineal society 59–60
Mbanza Kongo 232
Mbundu 246
meaning, search for 11–12
Melanesia 294, 296, 299
men and masculinity 108–9, 119–20,
123, 255
Merced Reservation 284
merchant capitalism 241–4, 318; see
also trade
methodology see actor-network theory
Mexico 73, 152, 157, 263, 273, 275,
276, 281
ranchos 30, 154–5, 273, 280, 285
Michigan 30, 151
Micronesia 294, 299
338
index
midwifery 116
migration 14
military hospitals 180
military prisons 175–6
mines and mining 34, 156
see also gold
Minnesota 109–11, 119, 122
Mission La Purísima 120, 277–8
Mission San Buenaventura 277, 283
Mission San Fernando 283
Mission San Francisco Solano 277
Mission San Jose 283
Mission Santa Barbara 283
missions 159, 285
Spanish 121, 148–9, 156, 157, 219,
264, 273, 276, 279–80
Modderfontein dynamite factory 35–6
modernity 2, 3, 190
Mombasa 238, 239, 241
monasteries 116
Montevideo 221
Monticello, Virginia 154
Moors 213–15, 216, 321
Moscow 117–19
Mozambique 28, 238, 239, 240, 241,
242, 245
multiculturalism 302, 305
music 255
Muslims 211, 223, 226; see also Islam;
Moors; Omani Arabs
Mutapa State 232, 241, 242, 243–4
Narkomfin Communal House,
Moscow 117–19
Narragansett cemetery 121
Native American Graves Protection and
Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) 97,
272–3, 288
Native North Americans 73, 95, 272–3
and colonialism 74–5, 258–9, 277–89
and disease 25, 26, 281
and gender 109–11, 122
and labor 27–8, 156–7, 160–1, 279–80, 282–3
federal reservations 283–4, 288
identity 150–1, 152, 181, 286–7
see also under specific areas e.g.
California
Native South Americans 221, 224, 225
Nazi concentration camps 185
neo-positivism 87
Netherlands 8, 12, 15–16, 27, 221, 244,
245, 324
Nevada 150
New Amsterdam see New York
New Archaeology 14, 85, 87
New Caledonia 294, 296, 300
New England 157, 257–60, 318
New Mexico 29, 30, 31, 180
New South Wales 26–7, 29, 34, 35
New Spain see Mexico
New World 23, 25, 29, 30, 31, 217,
218, 322
New York City 8, 30, 32, 113, 114
African Burial Ground 71–2
almshouse 169, 184
Five Points neighborhood 152, 158–9
New Zealand 23, 31, 293–4, 296, 297–8, 303
Niani 233
Niger River 234
Nile Valley 230
Norfolk Island 180
North Africa 9, 216, 217
North West Company 275, 279
nunneries 116
Oakley Plantation 115, 194
Oaxaca 30
objects see artifacts
Oceania see Pacific Ocean islands
Ohio 175
Old Mobile 265
Old World 28–31
Omani Arabs 239–40, 241
Oosterland 241
oral history 11, 49, 78, 230, 240, 296
use of 72, 154, 232, 233, 240, 288,
303
Oregon 273, 275, 284, 288
Other 49, 321–2, 326
Othering, places of 10, 171, 182
Ottoman Empire 216, 327–8
Oudepost I 28, 245, 246
Ouidah 235
index
Paca, William 69, 134–6, 138, 318–19
Pacific Coast, North America 4, 5, 7,
13, 272–89
Pacific Ocean islands 5, 7, 13, 14, 293–307
Palmares 221, 222, 223–6
palynology 10, 26–7, 68
Papua 294
Papua New Guinea 294
Paradys 244
Paraguay 220
Parting Ways community 252–3
Pate 238, 239
Patuxent Point Site, Calvert County 261–3
Pemba Island 238, 240–1
penitentiaries see prisons
Perryman, Lucrecia 116
Peru 72, 220
Peterboro 158
Philadelphia 30, 96, 170, 177–9, 183
Phoenix Indian School 181, 184
Pictish symbol stones 52, 54–61
pipes, clay tobacco 8, 254, 325–6
place 66
plantations 70, 154, 217; see also slaves
and slavery, plantation
plants 28, 32
Plymouth 257
Point Puer 173–4
Polynesia 294
Port Arthur Historic Site 185
Portugal 5, 8, 209–11, 215–18
in East Africa 238–41
in Southern Africa 241, 242–4
in West Africa 233–4, 235, 236–7,
246, 324
positivism 86, 87
post-colonialism 148, 322
post-Marxism 85, 89–91
post-Medieval 11, 315
postmodernism 2, 14, 89, 201
see also agency; individualism
post-processualism 14
see also critical archaeology
post-structuralism 89
Potbelly Hill 223
Potchefstroom 246
Potosí 29
339
power 66, 69, 85, 91, 94, 107, 132,
141, 197
and colonialism 87, 297, 306
and institutions 168, 176, 182
Presidio Los Adaes 264–5
presidios see forts
Prince William Sound 279
Pretoria 246
prisons 72, 117, 169, 170–6, 184
process 2, 3–5
processualism 85–6, 87, 129, 297
prostitutes and prostitution 72, 121,
152, 156
see also brothels
Providence 170–3, 184
public archaeology 14, 71–2, 74–5, 86,
91, 92–3, 95, 280
see also Eastport
Quebec 32
race 6, 12, 150–2, 191, 197, 256, 263
racism 88, 302
Raleigh, Walter 326
Rancho Petaluma 30, 154–5, 285
ranchos 73, 156, 157, 276
Rancho Santa Cruz 30
recording techniques 47–9
Reipetown 150
religion 99; see also Islam; missions;
Roman Catholicism
relocation 75, 78
Renaissance 2, 215, 320, 323
representation 13–15
Rhode Island 169, 170–3, 184
Rimuka 243
Rio de Janeiro 221
ritual 178, 183
Roanoke Colony 26, 31
rock art 245
Roman Catholicism 5, 211, 213, 215,
218, 226
Roman Empire 5, 211–12, 216, 314
Roosevelt Dam 152
Rorke’s Drift 246
Ross Female Factory 117, 122, 174–5
Round Valley Reservation 284
Russell Cutlery Factory, Turner’s
Falls 153, 157, 198, 200
340
index
Russell family 158
Russia: and fur trade 27, 28, 276, 279;
see also Fort Ross
colonies 112, 156–7, 273–5, 280
Russian-American Company 274
Ruya-Mazowe valley 243, 244
sacred sites 71, 72, 298–9; see also
graves
sacred objects 97, 288
Sahara trade 217, 232, 233
Sahlins, Marshall 294–5, 297
St Augustine 32, 111–12, 262
St James 234
St Kilda 322
St Louis 234
St Mary’s City 261, 262
San Diego 273
Sandwich Islands 299
San Francisco 121
San Francisco Bay 12, 13, 154, 273,
283, 285
San Leandro 283
Santa Catalina 264
Santa Elena 25–6, 264
Santa Fe la Vieja 220
Sâo Paulo 86, 223
Sâo Tomé 234
Savannah River Valley 26
Savi 235–6, 237, 246
scale 8–9, 67–72, 196, 318
and class relations 197–200, 201
Schliemann, Heinrich 42
Schoemansdal 245
Scotland 52, 54–61
Senegal 235
Senegambia 233–4
separate spheres 112–15
Serra da Barriga 223
sewing, material culture 12, 155, 256,
257
see also awls; thimbles
sex 107–8
sexual exploitation 115, 152; see also
brothels; prostitutes and prostitution
sexuality 121–2
Shanga 238
Shenandoah 91
Sierra Leone 234, 235
Simmel, George 88
slaves and slavery 28, 30–1, 212, 213
in Africa 12, 245, 246
in Latin America 221–6
plantation 4, 5, 9, 13, 148, 157–8,
217, 219–26, 234, 322–3, 325
runaway communities 5, 9, 13, 221–6
see also African Americans; African
Diaspora
slave trade 232, 239–40, 322
West Africa 5, 9, 217, 233–7, 239,
322, 324–5
Smith, Gerrit and Ann 158
Smith, William 283
Smithfield asylum 169
Social Darwinism 199
social theory 219
Sofala 238, 241, 242
Somalia 239
Songhai 233
Songo Mnara 238
soul food 115
South, Stanley 4, 254, 263
South Africa 12, 28, 31, 32, 34, 35–6,
241, 244–6, 247
South America 31, 87; see also Latin
America
South Carolina 25–6, 264
Southern Africa 231, 241–2
space and spatial relationships 2, 7, 31–5, 65–78
Spain 5, 8, 29, 209–11, 324
and colonialism 4, 215, 219, 234,
273, 276–7, 313
see also specific areas e.g. California;
Florida etc.
Spenser, Edmund 326
Spokane House 275, 277
status see class
Stompiesfontein 245
Stone Age 4
Stonehenge 71, 91
Stout, Grace 259–60
stratigraphy 47
structuralism 10–11, 68, 69, 85, 132,
295
structuralist archaeology 9–10; see also
Deetz, James; Georgian Order
sugar 29, 217, 234, 325
index
surrealism 89
Swahili culture 238, 239, 240, 247
Sweden 317
Sydney 32, 36, 174, 176
Tanzania 232, 239
Tarapaya 29
Task Differentiation Framework 109
Tasmania 72, 117, 122, 173–4, 176,
180
tea sets, material culture 132, 325
technique see geographic information
systems; palynology; zooarchaeology
Tejon Pass Military Reservation 284
Texas 263, 264–5
textual evidence 4, 42, 49–52
and Africa 230–2, 237–8, 240–1, 242
thimbles 5, 257–60, 264
Three Saints Harbor 280
Timbuktu 233
Tio 246
Togudo-Awute, Allada 236
town planning 212, 221, 328
trade, and Africa 231, 232, 233, 246
see also ivory trade; slave trade
transculturation 220, 224
transsexual identity 122, 123
Troy 42
Tule River Reservation 284
Turner’s Falls 153, 157, 198, 200
two-spirit identities 122
typology 4
Ungwana 238, 239
United States Industrial Indian School,
Phoenix 181
Upper Guinea 234, 235
Upper Lisle 198–9
urbanization 31–5, 148
Uruguay 220
341
Vancouver Island 275; see also Fort
Vancouver
Van der Stel, William Adrian 245
Velho, Domingos Jorge 223
Vergelegen 28, 70, 245
Vespucci, Amerigo 218
Virginia 26, 27, 31, 35, 38, 69, 154,
318
wampum production 169
Washington, Maisha 99
Washington 275, 284
Washington, D.C. 114
Wayman African Methodist Episcopal
Church 180
West Africa 5, 13, 180, 231, 232, 233–7, 252–3
see also under names of specific
countries
West Virginia 68, 153, 159
Windward Coast 234, 235
women 173, 174–5, 176–9, 185, 302
see also Boott Cotton Mills; gender;
Ross Female Factory
work camps 120, 148, 152, 154, 156
workers 34–5, 159, 173; see also
labor; Boott Cotton Mills; Colorado
Coal Field
workhouses 169, 174
Xhosa 245
Zanzibar 239, 240, 241
Zeekou Valley 245, 246
Zimbabwe 232, 241–4, 246–7
Zimbabwe Culture 241, 243, 244
see also Great Zimbabwe
zooarchaeology 10, 32
Zumbi 223