Beyond Ethnicity: The Overlooked Diversity of Group Identities (original) (raw)

2009, Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 22.1: 101-126

AI-generated Abstract

This paper explores the concept of ethnicity in the field of archaeology, emphasizing the need to recognize the overlooked diversity of group identities beyond just ethnic categorizations. It critiques the predominant focus on ethnicity as the primary lens for understanding social groups, suggesting that this approach can obscure other important identities that contribute to group dynamics. By examining case studies, particularly from western Anatolia, the paper advocates for a more nuanced understanding of group identities, highlighting the implications for archaeological research and interpretation.

Ethnicity in Complex Societies: Archaeological Perspectives

Journal of Archaeological Research, 1997

It is often difficult to identify ethnic groups in the archaeological record, yet archaeology has much to contribute to understanding the long-term social and political dynamics of ethnicity. This review considers recent anthropological perspectives on ethnic groups and their boundaries, emphasizing the rote of state formation in their creation and maintenance. It then reviews recent archaeological studies of ethnicity in complex societies and discusses current questions facing archaeological research on these topics.

The Study of Ethnicity in Historical Archaeology

Despite increasing interest in the archaeological study of ethnic groups few historical archaeologists have addressed the broad question of how such groups form and change. This paper presents a theory of ethnic group formation and change drawn from both anthropological and sociological research. The theory is based on the examination of the relationship of three variables: competition, ethnocentrism, and differential power. Of these variables, the differential distribution of power is given the most weight in determining changes in ethnic boundary maintenance. The development of ethnic boundaries in southern Arizona between 1854 and the early 1900s provides an example of the interrelationships among these variables. Consideration of archaeological material from this time period illustrates the necessity of archeaological data for testing the proposed theory. Further suggestions are made for the testing of the proposed theory, using historical and archaeological data.

The Archaeology of Ethnicity - Syllabus

The Archaeology of Ethnicity, 2013

One of the central problems facing archaeologists today is that of understanding the relationship between material culture and identity. The aspect of the material culture/identity conundrum we will focus on in this course concerns the archaeology of ethnicity. What can the archaeological record tell us about ethnic identities and relations in the past? Did ancient populations assert and recognize differences between themselves comparable to those we refer to today as "ethnic differences"? If so, how were such differences constructed and maintained? Can we find evidence of such markers in the material record (e.g., in different styles of dress, ceramics, etc.)? As we will see, especially from study of ethnographic examples, people may change the characteristics of the objects they produce for a variety of reasons, just as they may temporarily adopt other peoples' habits and customs for certain, strategic purposes. How can we know when such processes may have been at work in the past to produce the archaeological record of an ancient society? In broad terms, what we will be concerned with in this class are questions of the extent to which and in what ways populations in the past used differences in material culture (e.g., dress, pottery, culinary practices, burial, etc.) to signal identity and what the consequences of these strategies were for the interaction between and the evolution of societies at different times and places around the world.

The archaeology of ethnicity: Constructing identities in the past and …

1997

This book is largely based on my doctoral thesis, which was undertaken at the University of Southampton and completed in 1994. Drawing on recent theories of ethnicity in the human sciences, the aim of my doctoral research was to provide a theoretical framework for the analysis of ethnicity ...

The Study of Ethnicity in Archaeology: Some Methodological Issues

In the 1970s many archaeologists promoted the importance of building theory; but by the 1980s, theory was becoming something archaeologists borrowed. Today, we rarely hear about theory building, but rather about successful or unsuccessful appropriations or translations of theory borrowed from outside the discipline. Most recently though, there has been a call to halt this one way traffic and reverse the flow of influence and create theory from within archaeology. Is this a swing back to theory building? Or something different? Or is the difference between theory building and theory borrowing in fact over exaggerated? What really is at stake here? These are some of the questions I will explore in this talk, which attempts to draw out key issues about archaeological theory in relation to disciplinary practice and its wider intellectual context.

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