The Archaeological Study of Spanish Colonialism in the Americas

Spanish colonial archaeology has undergone a fundamental shift since the Columbian Quincentenary due to the adoption of a bottom-up understanding of colonialism that emphasizes the analysis of local phenomena in a global context and the active ways in which people negotiated the processes set in motion by the conquest. This review examines five key research foci: culture change and identity, missionization, bioarchaeology, economics, and investigations of the colonial core. It ends with a consideration of ongoing challenges posed by the archaeology of colonialism, particularly the relationship of the individual to broader social processes and the emerging role of comparison.     

Between the South Sea and the mountainous ridges: biopolitical assemblages in the Spanish colonial Americas

SUMMARY: Although the historical archaeology of the Spanish colonial world is currently witnessing an explosion of research in the Americas, the accompanying political economic framework has tended to remain little interrogated. This paper argues that Spanish colonial contexts bring into particular relief the entanglements between ‘core’ capitalist processes like ‘antimarkets’, dispossession and the disciplining of labour with the specific biopolitical ecologies assembled through co-option, coercion and accumulation. This perspective is explored through two archaeological case studies from Peru and Guatemala, where competing concerns about altitude, climate, disease, violence and populations of differentiated labouring bodies (both human and non-human) came to the fore in unexpected ways. The resulting discussion challenges the reliance on abstract analytical totalities like ‘capitalism’ and ‘colonialism’, and shifts attention towards the diverse assemblages of actors that shaped and continue to shape the processes central to political economic analyses.     

Fashioning a Cacique Nun: From Saints’ Lives to Indian Lives in the Spanish Americas

New Spain was a land of opportunity for the missionary as well as the conquistador. The controversial proposal to found a convent for women of the indigenous elite illuminates the redefinition of notions of gender and race. Examining testimonies on this question written by priests, this article charts how they transform material that would normally have been presented as hagiography into narratives of a more general nature, and argues that this rhetorical shift contributed to a kind of writing on the Indies which not only shared the comparative and epistemological stakes of ethnography but also considered issues of gender.     

Postcolonial Archaeologies in Africa: Breaking the Silence

Postcolonial archaeologies in Africa are engaged in a variety of agendas including the decolonization of everyday practices in the field and in the classroom. Postcolonial theory, concerned with issues of power and the Other, is increasingly being invoked to examine how archaeologists conduct their field research and how archaeology is used to dismantle essentialized histories—the metanarratives that arose in the colonial as well as the postcolonial era. Easily misunderstood, however, is the passion expressed by some African archaeologists who are voicing their own views while simultaneously trying to free themselves from dominating “expert” voices. These occurrences create tensions in archaeological discourse that are a natural part of decolonizing archaeology, joining other forms of disenchantment, particularly the disenchantments arising in contemporary African communities about social services, civil society, and human rights. Archaeologists are also implicated in disenchantments as they conduct investigations in the midst of people who may be without water or are suffering from HIV/AIDS—conditions that starkly contrast with their own comfortable lives. We may also need to reconsider how to deal with states that see archaeological research as contrary to nation building. This essay responds to some current misunderstandings that have arisen over these and related issues.     

Cabral and the Postcolony: Postcolonial Readings of Revolutionary Hopes

This article discusses the legacy of Amílcar Cabral. The main question it deals with is how to read Cabral today when the system that prompted the emergence of his theory, colonialism, is no longer there. The main argument of this article is, therefore, that a disjuncture exists in the ways Cabral is discussed today. Cabral was certainly a great nationalist and revolutionary, and his contribution crucial for the ways in which revolution in Africa has been apprehended. However, his theoretical contribution should be ascertained alongside the analyses of the realities his emancipatory project addressed. Basically, this article suggests a reading of Cabral's theory in the context of the practices and context his theory was addressing. For doing this, this article examines the main tenets of Cabral's theory, on nationalism, alongside the responses the Portuguese had come up with under the rubric of counter-insurgency strategies. The contribution this article tries to put forward is that critical purchase in reading Cabral today has to take into account the complexities of the anticolonial past that brought us to our postcolonial present.     

Review Article: Discovering New Americas

DAVID E. STANNARD. American Holocaust: Columbus and the Conquest of the New World. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. Pp. xv, 358. $36.50 (CDN)

ANTHONY GRAFTON, APRIL SHELFORD, and NANCY SIRAISI. New Worlds, Ancient Texts: The Power of Tradition and the Shock of Discovery. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992. Pp. x, 282. $29.95 (US)

VALERIE I. J. FLINT. The Imaginative Landscape of Christopher Columbus. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992. Pp. xx, 233. $24.95 (US)

DJELAL KADIR. Columbus and the Ends of the Earth: Europe's Prophetic Rhetoric as Conquering Ideology. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992. Pp. xiv, 256. $30.00 (us).     

Re-emerging Frontiers: Postcolonial Theory and Historical Archaeology of the Borderlands

The article considers the importance of frontier studies in historical archaeology and discusses applicability of some of the concepts deriving from postcolonial theories for a better understanding of human relationships in the frontier zones. The conditions of frontiers and borderlands are compared with the characteristics of the “Third Space” described by Homi Bhabha as a realm of negotiation, translation and remaking. It is argued that concepts developed in postcolonial theories, such as “Third Space,” “in-betweeness” or hybridity, are useful not only to address cultural and social processes in borderlands that were created by colonial empires. They are also an apt way to conceptualize relationships in frontiers that lacked colonial stigma. To illustrate this point, two different historical examples of borderlands are scrutinized in this paper: the medieval frontier region that emerged between Denmark and the Northwestern Slavic area and the creation of the colonial frontier in Northeastern America through the establishment of the Praying Indian Towns.     

“庶民研究”与后殖民史学

“庶民研究”是印度近二十余年来以后殖民主义为研究视角的一种历史编纂实践。它主张摒弃传统史学撰述中的精英主义话语,从“庶民”的角度重写印度殖民与后殖民时期的历史。“庶民研究”在理论与方法上代表了当今后殖民史学的一个重要特征,它既批判了西方现代史学观念中的历史主义弊端,又对近现代以来非西方史学在西方普遍主义话语之下继续“受殖”的状况进行了深刻反思。“庶民研究”努力建构的书写非西方历史的新模式,以及由此导致的后殖民史学对非西方历史学的重新定向具有一种普遍意义,值得第三世界的历史学者借鉴与思考。