Threads: Collecting Cloth in the North American French Colonies

Trade of European-produced cloth and clothing enabled indigenous and non-indigenous inhabitants of colonial New France to rethink the “hand-woven”, impacting how self could be presented through dress. At the same time, objects were being collected in New France for cabinets of curiosities and museums. These different collections resonated in different ways through history, subsequently influencing modern understandings of colonial cloth and clothing. This paper examines colonial experiences of cloth by looking at archaeological remnants of cloth and cloth production as compared to how indigenous and non-indigenous colonial peoples were and are being represented by cloth and clothing in museum collections.     

Archaeology and Inka Origins

The recent proliferation of Andean archaeological research presents new interpretive opportunities for reconstructing different aspects of Inka origins. Early colonial historiography reveals that “Inka origins” refers to multiple aspects of the past, including the first appearance of Andean people, Inca ancestors, and the imperial title. The intellectual history of Inka archaeology demonstrates the lasting influence of Spanish colonial interpretive values, even with the gradual introduction of new scientific methods during the 20th century. Since 1970, significant advances in the archaeology of Cuzco, the Inka capital region, and other parts of the Andes have established an independent database that highlights the long-term and regional aspect of Inka origins, as well as areas where interpretive questions remain. The shift from colonial chronicles to archaeological data improves the accuracy of reconstructions of Inka origins, but it also raises some epistemological questions for the future relationships between history and archaeology in the study of ancient empires.     

An Overview of Alaskan Late Pleistocene Archaeology: Historical Themes and Current Perspectives

Alaska has long held an important role in the late Pleistocene prehistory of the New World. Alaska being situated at the juncture between the Old and New Worlds, scholars have long looked to the Alaskan archaeological record to provide clues into the initial peopling of the New World. As such, Alaska figures prominently in most models of the peopling of the New World. In recent years, however, it has become clear that the late Pleistocene archaeological record of Alaska is characterized by great technological and adaptive diversity, and no single interpretive model can adequately explain that diversity. This paper traces the development of Pleistocene Alaskan archaeology by outlining the history of site discoveries and interpretations. In so doing, it provides a historical perspective on current frameworks of Alaskan Pleistocene prehistory. Based primarily on a search for the first inhabitants of the New World, however, the research questions traditionally guiding Alaskan archaeology have tended to complicate rather than clarify the picture. In some cases, this has led to false expectations and oftentimes contradictory interpretations, many of which still persist, and which can only be resolved by addressing the Alaskan record on its own terms.     

Archaeology, Myth-History and the Tyranny of the Text: Chaldike, Torone and Thucydides

By focusing on Thucydides'Chalkidic Torone' against the backdrop of modern historians' neglect of archaeological evidence, this paper highlights not only another case of 'history being written by the winners,' but the persistent problem of privileging written documents over archaeological material in Aegean prehistory and classical archaeology. The practice of using literary historical records as direct historic analogues continues to be one of the methodological cornerstones of textual history. Such a neglect of archaeological evidence by historians of early Greece, South Italy and Sicily contributes to the current schism between prehistory and history. Even when the material record is used in historical inquiry, it is in a framework already defined or informed by written sources. By adopting a more integrated approach, this paper echoes Kent Lightfoot's (1995) perspective that archaeology is poised to play a pivotal role in the reconfiguration of historical studies.     

The Unthinkable and the Unseen: Community Archaeology and Decolonizing Social Imagination at Okeeheepkee,or the Lake Jackson Site

Recent decolonizing scholarship examines how Indigenous ways of knowing can transform archaeology. This article discusses community-based research undertaken with a Muskogee tribal town in North Florida, focusing on the archaeology of the Lake Jackson site (1100–1500 A.D.). Centering on the historical narratives circulated in this community illuminates gaps in the dominant archaeological discourse, or what Trouillot (Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History, 1995) calls the silences of history. Examples such as iconographic representations of “genderless” moths and possibilities of “invisible” mound structures render the limits of colonial imagination visible. Archaeology can move beyond these constraints by bridging the center and margins of archaeological production.     

Beneath the Rising Sun: “Frenchness” and the Archaeology of Desire

This article takes the case of “rouge pot” fragments found in an archaeological context in New Orleans’ French Quarter associated with the circa 1822 Rising Sun Hotel and investigates the discourses and desires that shape our interpretations of artifacts. We argue that archaeological, historiographic, and public desires overlap and inform one another in a complex web of relations. In New Orleans, the particular web into which the archaeology of cosmetic jars and hotel sites can fall is spun by the ways in which the former French colonial capital is sexualized in both textbooks and folk songs.     

NATIVE AMERICAN MATERIAL CULTURE FROM THE WALLACE BOTTOM SITE,SOUTHEASTERN ARKANSAS

Abstract

This paper synthesizes analyses of Native American artifacts collected at Wallace Bottom (3AR179) from 1998 to 2006. These artifacts offer the prospect of identifying the archaeological signature of the Quapaw people in the early colonial era, a decades-old conundrum in lower Mississippi Valley archaeology. While this artifact assemblage appears to date to the early colonial era (A.D. 1650–1750), it contrasts markedly with the archaeological “Quapaw phase” (Phillips 1970:943–944). The Wallace Bottom site now seems a good candidate for the location of both the Quapaw village of Osotouy and the French Arkansas Post. The native material from Wallace Bottom exhibits a generalized midwestern character, consistent with Degiha Siouan traditional narratives of migration. The material from Wallace Bottom and the neighboring Lake Dumond site also reflect continental scale interaction during the era in which the Quapaws and contemporary native societies of the historic period were taking form.     

The Search for Makak: A Multidisciplinary Settlement History of the Northern Coast of Le Morne Brabant,Mauritius

Le Morne Brabant is an important mountain landscape in the living memory, colonial history, and national identity of Mauritius. This paper presents a kind of salvage project to understand Makak, an elusive, “mythic” settlement along Le Morne’s northern coast. This detailed analysis brings together wide-ranging oral, written, and material evidence to show that Makak is an informal place name for an area first settled by French colonists in the 1700s, then by several prominent “Free Colored” families in the 1800s, and finally depopulated as residents were forcibly removed in the 1940s. The investigation suggests that Makak is a serial settlement, which seemingly was not eking by at the edge of the Indian Ocean, but thrived as a multicultural community, tapped into global trade networks. The project thus provides a new way of framing Le Morne’s history and heritage, while also providing a potential research model for the nascent field of Mauritian historical archaeology.     

The Almshouse in Dutch and English Colonial North America and its Precedent in the Old World: Historical and Archaeological Evidence

To establish historical and archaeological contexts for the case studies presented in this volume, this paper presents a review of the literature on the history and archaeology of almshouses. Because both English and Dutch colonial almshouses were based on European precedents, this paper examines historical research and archaeological work conducted in The Netherlands and England, as well as their North American colonies.     

新疆史前时期考古学研究现状

新疆史前时期考古学的研究,已经取得一批丰富的考古材料和科研成果。本文尝试概括1949年以来新疆史前时期考古学研究,进行一个研究历程的文献综述。就新疆史前时期的考古学研究文献进行梳理,具体考察新疆史前时期的考古学研究成果。试图了解当前新疆史前时期考古学研究的现状、特点,对未来的研究工作提出建议和展望。     

Imagining Palestinian Archaeologies: A Sampler

As three of the articles in this collection demonstrate, one central axis of the Zionist archaeological project is the absolute necessity of diminishing, and ultimately erasing, the importance and existence of aspects of “the archaeological record” that pertain to non-Jewish presences in Palestine, particularly and especially Islamic civilizations and the long-term presence of an indigenous non-Jewish Palestinian population. In this introduction, I focus, however, upon Zionist archaeology’s rearticulation of Jewish identity in nationalist form, an operation that has entailed the elaboration of a consistently simplified, unidimensional, or narrowly channeled interpretive version of Jewish history and Jewish identity in Palestine over time. Through several pointed queries, I suggest alternative interpretations of one element of the Zionist archaeological narrative that in turn could lead to other ways of thinking about the long-term presence of Jewish people in Palestine.     

Materiality and Autonomy in the Pocumtuck Homeland

The Indigenous people of New England’s middle Connecticut River Valley are often imagined as having been subservient to powerful tribal nations elsewhere. Yet, archaeological and ethnohistorical evidence suggests Pocumtuck independence and autonomy in relations with neighboring Native groups and with Dutch, English, and French colonizers during the seventeenth century. We employ a decolonizing framework, drawing on H.M. Wobst’s critique of the preoccupation with dominance and geopolitical “centers” to analyze this evidence. By framing artifacts, colonial texts, and cultural interactions as both past and present “material interventions,” we can generate better understandings of Pocumtuck political autonomy, agency and identity.     

Spectacles of Ethnographic and Historical Imaginations: Kamatapur Movement and the Rajbanshi Quest to Rediscover their Past and Selves

India since independence has experienced a series of movements based on “identity politics” demanding separate states and reorganization of its internal state boundaries. Much of the contemporary discussions find uneven development and unequal access to power accelerated by regionalism and linguistic fanatism responsible for these movements. Through the study of social movements of Koch–Rajbanshi people in North Bengal, the paper argues that these movements display a timeless quest and aspirations of people that are rooted in their deep sense of history. People's unique sense of history or “historical imaginations” are contextualized within the secular language of socio-economic injustices and socio-cultural differences celebrated in a spectacular manner through these movements marked by re-interpretation, re-writing of the past, real yet imagined, time bound yet eternal. Today the Koch–Rajbanshi people are creating a “new past” and an identity which is a blend of colonial ethnography on one hand and Rajbanshi mythographies on the other. The paper also questions the dichotomy that apparently exists between the past and the present.     

‘I Felt Connected to a Past World’: A Survey of Visitors to Colonial Archaeological Sites Conserved In Situ in Australia and New Zealand

Abstract

While there is extensive international literature on the technology and techniques of archaeological conservation and preservation in situ, there has been only limited discussion of the meanings of the places created and the responses they evoke in visitors. Experience in Australia and New Zealand over the past decade suggests that the conservation of colonial archaeological remains is today seen as a far more desirable option, whereas previously many would have suggested that this kind of conservation was only appropriate in ‘old world’ places like Greece and Italy; and that the archaeology of the colonial period was not old enough to be of value. This paper discusses a recent survey of visitors to colonial archaeological sites which reveals some of the ways in which these archaeological remains are experienced, valued, and understood, and gives some clues as to why conservation in situ is an expanding genre of heritage in this region. The visitors surveyed value colonial archaeological sites conserved in situ for the link they provide to place, locality, and memory; for the feeling of connection with the past they evoke; and for the experience they provide of intimacy with material relics from the past. This emphasis on the affective qualities of archaeological remains raises some issues in the post-colonial context, as it tends to reinforce received narratives of identity and history, and relies on the ‘European’ antiquarian appreciation of ruins — making the urban environment more like Europe by creating evidence of similar historical layering.     

THE PREHISTORY OF MR. ELI LILLY

Abstract

The disciplinary mythology of North American archaeology grudgingly acknowledges Eli Lilly’s financial support for research. At the same time it systematically devalues and even deletes his role as a productive scholar, the author of original works on the prehistory of Indiana, the creator of an effective archaeological seminar on the prehistory of Indiana and the Eastern United States, and the guiding force in the establishment of several enduring archaeological institutions. This paper documents the scholarly contributions of Eli Lilly. It shows how his mind and management skills were even more important to the development of archaeological research in the Midcontinent than was his financial support for many important archaeological research projects.     

May Games and Noble Savages: The Native American in Early Celebrations of the Tammany Society

This paper discusses the May Day celebrations of the “Sons of Saint Tammany,” an American holiday fraternity under the patronage of an historical Lenape (Delaware) Indian chieftain, which incorporated many Native American performative elements. Beginning in Philadelphia in the colonial period and quickly becoming a vehicle for republican sentiments, the Tammany idea spread to many other east coast cities. The May Day revels of the Society reached their heyday in the early years of the new nation (Federalist period). Two trends in the use of Native materials are identified, the “vaudevillian” and the more serious ethnographic. The latter led to incidents of what can be called “carnivalesque diplomacy,” with native American delegations to the U.S. capital. Dr Samuel Mitchill's elaborate mythopoetic oration for the New York chapter in 1795 is taken as an end point for the creative appropriation of Native American elements. New York's Tammany Society would eventually evolve into the famous political machine of the Democratic Party, leaving behind the original May Day idyll and Indian masquerade.     

Archaeology and Regional Identity in Saxony

Abstract

The paper discusses the interrelation between archaeological method and regional identity using the example of Saxony, a federal state of Germany. While the role of archaeology in the nationalist and ethnic discourse has been discussed relatively intensively, little is known about the hidden or open resistance present and the subnarratives used on a more local level. Saxony, with a multi-ethnic past (Germanic, Slavic and German settlement) and strong indications of a multi-ethnic identity, can be used to demonstrate the changing strength of the ‘Germanocentric’ view of German prehistory.

The paper follows the evolutions of the ‘Saxon character’ and its reflection in the archaeological narrative from the Romantic phase (c. 1817–70), through Nationalism, Fascism and archaeology in the GDR to modern times. This specific point of view does not only determine the evaluation of past events, but the questions asked and the methods used to interpret archaeological finds as well.

In conclusion, the ‘instrumentalization’ of archaeology as part of the public domain is seen as inescapable. But archaeologists retain responsibility for the use their data are put to. Any construction of identity by way of a common past is exclusive and potentially xenophobic. The author argues for a greater independencce from the past that leaves room for the recognition of distance and ‘strangeness‘.     

考古学本质刍议——一个田野考古者的思考碎片

田野考古从地底下发掘出各类遗物,这些遗物指代了某种历史,是毫无异议的,但它如何进入历史学的语言范畴?在现代考古学诞生以前,神话传说和历史事件,是古物意义价值的主要载体,实际上,两者之间互证,至今依然是考古学终极价值的重要体现。新考古学、后过程考古学时代,应用科技手段、设计理论模式,试图重建一段更加鲜活的历史。种种努力,似乎总是在挣脱考古对象作为一种"实物"的遗存属性。实际上,从汤姆森提出石器、铜器、铁器"三期说"开始,历史已经被符号化、象征化了,而这正是考古学述史语言的本质特征,体现一种新历史学的精神,而这种新历史学的符号化的象征元素,正是考古遗存的实物属性。     

Magunkaquog Materiality, Federal Recognition, and the Search for a Deeper History

This article explores the manner in which archaeology can address some of the issues that confront contemporary Native American groups trying to gain federal recognition. Often frustrating and at times capricious, the federal recognition process privileges documentary evidence over other forms of information in determining the political and cultural continuity demanded of groups seeking recognition. Demonstrating cultural continuity is hindered by the antiquated, assimilationist views that underpin the recognition process which equate the adoption of European cultural practices with the loss of Indian identity. This issue of authenticity is linked to even broader questions concerning materiality and the construction of identity. Drawing on archaeological and documentary investigations of the Christian Indian community of Magunkaquog, this paper explores the ambiguities of an archival record that can be challenged by material evidence. Archaeological evidence of cultural persistence discussed in the paper supports the political arguments of contemporary Native American groups that their ancestors maintained their political and cultural identity in the face of European colonization.     

Japanese archaeology in the 1990s

As scientific archaeology takes hold in Japan, our understanding of the nature and content of Japanese prehistory is changing radically. All of the period boundaries of Japanese prehistory are being rewritten, and many new “archaeologies” are growing up around particular scientific techniques. New publications in English give greater access to archaeological thinking in Japan, while Japanese publications focus on ever-narrowing aspects of prehistoric lifeways. Policy changes are giving archaeologists more access to the imperial tombs, and rescue teams are under less obligation to “save everything” as selective preservation is instituted.