Indigenous Persistence in the Colonized Americas


Book Description

This scholarly collection explores the method and theory of the archaeological study of indigenous persistence and long-term colonial entanglement. Each contributor offers an examination of the complex ways that indigenous communities in the Americas have navigated the circumstances of colonial and postcolonial life, which in turn provides a clearer understanding of anthropological concepts of ethnogenesis and hybridity, survivance, persistence, and refusal. Indigenous Persistence in the Colonized Americas highlights the unique ability of historical anthropology to bring together various kinds of materials—including excavated objects, documents in archives, and print and oral histories—to provide more textured histories illuminated by the archaeological record. The work also extends the study of historical archaeology by tracing indigenous societies long after their initial entanglement with European settlers and colonial regimes. The contributors engage a geographic scope that spans Spanish, English, French, Dutch, and other models of colonization.




Narratives of Persistence


Book Description

Narratives of Persistence charts the remarkable persistence of California's Ohlone and Paipai people over the past five centuries. Lee M. Panich draws connections between the events and processes of the deeper past and the way the Ohlone and Paipai today understand their own histories and identities.




Routledge Handbook of the Archaeology of Indigenous-Colonial Interaction in the Americas


Book Description

The Routledge Handbook of the Archaeology of Indigenous-Colonial Interaction in the Americas brings together scholars from across the hemisphere to examine how archaeology can highlight the myriad ways that Indigenous people have negotiated colonial systems from the fifteenth century through to today. The contributions offer a comprehensive look at where the archaeology of colonialism has been and where it is heading. Geographically diverse case studies highlight longstanding theoretical and methodological issues as well as emerging topics in the field. The organization of chapters by key issues and topics, rather than by geography, fosters exploration of the commonalities and contrasts between historical contingencies and scholarly interpretations. Throughout the volume, Indigenous and non-Indigenous contributors grapple with the continued colonial nature of archaeology and highlight Native perspectives on the potential of using archaeology to remember and tell colonial histories. This volume is the ideal starting point for students interested in how archaeology can illuminate Indigenous agency in colonial settings. Professionals, including academic and cultural resource management archaeologists, will find it a convenient reference for a range of topics related to the archaeology of colonialism in the Americas.




The Global Spanish Empire


Book Description

The Spanish Empire was a complex web of places and peoples. Through an expansive range of essays that look at Africa, the Americas, Asia, the Caribbean, and the Pacific, this volume brings a broad range of regions into conversation. The contributors focus on nuanced, comparative exploration of the processes and practices of creating, maintaining, and transforming cultural place making within pluralistic Spanish colonial communities. The Global Spanish Empire argues that patterned variability is necessary in reconstructing Indigenous cultural persistence in colonial settings. The volume’s eleven case studies include regions often neglected in the archaeology of Spanish colonialism. The time span under investigation is extensive as well, transcending the entirety of the Spanish Empire, from early impacts in West Africa to Texas during the 1800s. The contributors examine the making of a social place within a social or physical landscape. They discuss the appearance of hybrid material culture, the incorporation of foreign goods into local material traditions, the continuation of local traditions, and archaeological evidence of opportunistic social climbing. In some cases, these changes in material culture are ways to maintain aspects of traditional culture rather than signifiers of new cultural practices. The Global Spanish Empire tackles broad questions about Indigenous cultural persistence, pluralism, and place making using a global comparative perspective grounded in the shared experience of Spanish colonialism. Contributors Stephen Acabado Grace Barretto-Tesoro James M. Bayman Christine D. Beaule Christopher R. DeCorse Boyd M. Dixon John G. Douglass William R. Fowler Martin Gibbs Corinne L. Hofman Hannah G. Hoover Stacie M. King Kevin Lane Laura Matthew Sandra Montón-Subías Natalia Moragas Segura Michelle M. Pigott Christopher B. Rodning David Roe Roberto Valcárcel Rojas Steve A. Tomka Jorge Ulloa Hung Juliet Wiersema




New Mexico and the Pimería Alta


Book Description

Focusing on the two major areas of the Southwest that witnessed the most intensive and sustained colonial encounters, New Mexico and the Pimería Alta compares how different forms of colonialism and indigenous political economies resulted in diverse outcomes for colonists and Native peoples. Taking a holistic approach and studying both colonist and indigenous perspectives through archaeological, ethnohistoric, historic, and landscape data, contributors examine how the processes of colonialism played out in the American Southwest. Although these broad areas—New Mexico and southern Arizona/northern Sonora—share a similar early colonial history, the particular combination of players, sociohistorical trajectories, and social relations within each area led to, and were transformed by, markedly diverse colonial encounters. Understanding these different mixes of players, history, and social relations provides the foundation for conceptualizing the enormous changes wrought by colonialism throughout the region. The presentations of different cultural trajectories also offer important avenues for future thought and discussion on the strategies for missionization and colonialism. The case studies tackle how cultures evolved in the light of radical transformations in cultural traits or traditions and how different groups reconciled to this change. A much needed up-to-date examination of the colonial era in the Southwest, New Mexico and the Pimería Alta demonstrates the intertwined relationships between cultural continuity and transformation during a time of immense change and highlights contemporary thought on the colonial experience. Contributors: Joseph Aguilar, Jimmy Arterberry, Heather Atherton, Dale Brenneman, J. Andrew Darling, John G. Douglass, B. Sunday Eiselt, Severin Fowles, William M. Graves, Lauren Jelinek, Kelly L. Jenks, Stewart B. Koyiyumptewa, Phillip O. Leckman, Matthew Liebmann, Kent G. Lightfoot, Lindsay Montgomery, Barnet Pavao-Zuckerman, Robert Preucel, Matthew Schmader, Thomas E. Sheridan, Colleen Strawhacker, J. Homer Thiel, David Hurst Thomas, Laurie D. Webster




The Routledge Handbook of Global Historical Archaeology


Book Description

The Routledge Handbook of Global Historical Archaeology is a multi-authored compendium of articles on specific topics of interest to today’s historical archaeologists, offering perspectives on the current state of research and collectively outlining future directions for the field. The broad range of topics covered in this volume allows for specificity within individual chapters, while building to a cumulative overview of the field of historical archaeology as it stands, and where it could go next. Archaeological research is discussed in the context of current sociological concerns, different approaches and techniques are assessed, and potential advances are posited. This is a comprehensive treatment of the sub-discipline, engaging key contemporary debates, and providing a series of specially-commissioned geographical overviews to complement the more theoretical explorations. This book is designed to offer a starting point for students who may wish to pursue particular topics in more depth, as well as for non-archaeologists who have an interest in historical archaeology. Archaeologists, historians, preservationists, and all scholars interested in the role historical archaeology plays in illuminating daily life during the past five centuries will find this volume engaging and enlightening.




Archaeologies of Indigenous Presence


Book Description

Highlighting collaborative archaeological research that centers the enduring histories of Native peoples in North America Challenging narratives of Indigenous cultural loss and disappearance that are still prevalent in the archaeological study of colonization, this book highlights collaborative research and efforts to center the enduring histories of Native peoples in North America through case studies from several regions across the continent. The contributors to this volume, including Indigenous scholars and Tribal resource managers, examine different ways that archaeologists can center long-term Indigenous presence in the practices of fieldwork, laboratory analysis, scholarly communication, and public interpretation. These conversations range from ways to reframe colonial encounters in light of Indigenous persistence to the practicalities of identifying poorly documented sites dating to the late nineteenth century. In recognizing Indigenous presence in the centuries after 1492, this volume counters continued patterns of unknowing in archaeology and offers new perspectives on decolonizing the field. These essays show how this approach can help expose silenced histories, modeling research practices that acknowledge Tribes as living entities with their own rights, interests, and epistemologies. Contributors: Heather Walder | Sarah E. Cowie | Peter A Nelson | Shawn Steinmetz | Nick Tipon | Lee M Panich | Tsim D Schneider | Maureen Mahoney | Matthew A. Beaudoin | Nicholas Laluk | Kurt A. Jordan | Kathleen L. Hull | Laura L. Scheiber | Sarah Trabert | Paul N. Backhouse | Diane L. Teeman | Dave Scheidecker | Catherine Dickson | Hannah Russell | Ian Kretzler




Archaeologies of Cultural Contact


Book Description

Archaeologies of Cultural Contact undertakes an exploration of cultural transfer, with a particular focus on the combination and modification of both material and behavioural attributes under conditions of contact. From globalization and displacement to cultural legitimization and identity politics, the modern world is characterised by, and articulated through, dynamics of contact and transfer. This book recognises that creolization, ethnogenesis, hybridity, and syncretism are analytical concepts and social processes, relevant not only to the postcolonial contexts of the twentieth century but also to wide-ranging instances where contact is made between cultural groups. Indeed, in representing the re-working of pre-existing cultural elements, they were crucial and ever-present features of the human past. Ranging in their analytical frame, scale, and geographical and temporal location, the chapters in this volume demonstrate the diverse understandings that can be gained from explorations into the material remains of past contact, exposing and overcoming various limitations of competing models of cultural change. They permit insights into not only cultural change and difference but also the processes of appropriation, resistance, redefinition, and incorporation. Together, the contributions articulate the perspectives that concern practices in relations to people, places, and things, and note how power dynamics mediate social interactions and sustain and constrain forms of cultural contact. This book will be of interest to researchers and students in archaeology as well those from cognate disciplines, particularly anthropology and history.




The Archaeology of Villages in Eastern North America


Book Description

The emergence of village societies out of hunter-gatherer groups profoundly transformed social relations in every part of the world where such communities formed. Drawing on the latest archaeological and historical evidence, this volume explores the development of villages in eastern North America from the Late Archaic period to the eighteenth century. Sites analyzed here include the Kolomoki village in Georgia, Mississippian communities in Tennessee, palisaded villages in the Appalachian Highlands of Virginia, and Iroquoian settlements in New York and Ontario. Contributors use rich data sets and contemporary social theory to describe what these villages looked like, what their rules and cultural norms were, what it meant to be a villager, what cosmological beliefs and ritual systems were held at these sites, and how villages connected with each other in regional networks. They focus on how power dynamics played out at the local level and among interacting communities. Highlighting the similarities and differences in the histories of village formation in the region, these essays trace the processes of negotiation, cooperation, and competition that arose as part of village life and changed societies. This volume shows how studying these village communities helps archaeologists better understand the forces behind human cultural change.




Colonialism and Postcolonial Development


Book Description

In this comparative-historical analysis of Spanish America, Mahoney offers a new theory of colonialism and postcolonial development. He explores why certain kinds of societies are subject to certain kinds of colonialism and why these forms of colonialism give rise to countries with differing levels of economic prosperity and social well-being. Mahoney contends that differences in the extent of colonialism are best explained by the potentially evolving fit between the institutions of the colonizing nation and those of the colonized society. Moreover, he shows how institutions forged under colonialism bring countries to relative levels of development that may prove remarkably enduring in the postcolonial period. The argument is sure to stir discussion and debate, both among experts on Spanish America who believe that development is not tightly bound by the colonial past, and among scholars of colonialism who suggest that the institutional identity of the colonizing nation is of little consequence.




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