Ethnic identity and archaeology (original) (raw)

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 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.

Ethnicity, archaeology and nationalism: remarks on the current state of research

Annales Universitatis Apulensis. Series Historica, 2021

While in the modern world, ethnicity has become the politicization of culture, the old controversy over the relation between ethnicity and archaeology refuses to die. The first studies of that relation dealt primarily with what made the historical interpretation of the archaeological material dependent upon the political situation. Soon, the emphasis shifted to the link between archaeology and the beginnings of nationalism, especially the influence of Romanticism, the rise of the culture-history paradigm, and of the historical interest in ethnogenesis. Now, the emphasis is more on the role of archaeology in the shaping of social memory as past that may be used politically. This study focuses on the new trends in this research field, particularly those concerned with the social mobilization by means of the ancestors’ myths, with pseudo-archaeology, and the staging of historical authenticity through heritage tourism. The second part of the article highlights differences between approaches to ethnogenesis in the European and American archaeology and illustrates the latter by means of three key studies by Christopher Stojanowski, Scott Ortman, and Laurie Wilkie. To judge from the titles of the publications that came out in Eastern Europe and the United States over the last year, several common trends are apparent, along with significant divergences. Archaeology is increasingly perceived as the most important, if not the only way to understand the ethnicity of immigrants in the (medieval) past. Archaeologists have taken a front seat in all debates about ethnic identities. Instead of state authorities or the ideological pressure of various political regimes, the emphasis in Eastern Europe is now on individual archaeologists, the role of their life experience and of their education in the ethnic interpretation of the archaeological record. Meanwhile, in the Unites States, it is the ethnic identity of the archaeologists themselves that has now come under lens. In other words, agency is restored to archaeologists, who are now regarded as much more capable of original work and decision making than before. Finally, gender perspectives are now applied to the study of the relations between ethnicity, archaeology, and nationalism. In both Eastern Europe and the United States, there is a conspicuous interest in women archaeologists.

The 'Introduction to Ethnicity Syndrome' in Proto-Historical Archaeology

Excerpt: "This scientific pathology consists of two steps. First, the author acknowledges the latest advances in the field; Jones and Hall are the main references, with echoes of Eriksen, Shennan, Hodder and, ultimately, Barth. Following this, the author proceeds to ignore any consequences derived from the first introductory part and continues to interpret variations in material culture as signs of ethnic change. In this sense, there is not much difference in such works from the Siedlungsarchäologie practised by Kossinna. This is the ‘introduction to ethnicity-syndrome’, essentially tipping your hat to recent advances, and then moving on to classic ethnic interpretations."

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: 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 ...