Review of The Global Spanish Empire: Five Hundred Years of Place Making and Pluralism, eds. Christine D. Beaule and John G. Douglass (original) (raw)
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Comparative Archaeology of the Americas: ca. 50,000 BC-ca. AD 1600
America: The Atlas, 2023
Indigenous peoples helped shape the environment, foodways, culture, and interconnections of what we now call the North and South American continents. This chapter samples some of the deep history of Indigenous groups through a lens emphasizing archaeology, material culture, and cross-cultural comparison. It begins with first peoples of the Americas, moves to early farmers and their contributions to global foodways, and examines comparative themes relating to trade, politics, cities, and religion. These deep histories of place help to contextualize more recent American history by highlighting the interconnected peoples and landscapes that were in place for millennia prior to European colonization.
Current Anthropology 49(3): 458–459. , 2008
Through the recent symbolic appropriation of an archaeological site, an indigenous community in southwestern Colombia is subverting the colonial-created meaning attributed to the physical and cultural remains of ancient peoples; once feared and socially proscribed, these remains are now entering a new symbolic realm and playing an important role in the construction of territory and social life. A reflexive and committed archaeology can contribute to processes such as this one in the larger context of decolonization.
Syllabus ANT 395 Historical Archaeology of Latin(x) America
Course Description Historical archaeology is the archaeology of historical periods. For some this means the study of ancient literate societies, for others it is the archaeology of the modern world. For most, it is the methodological integration of material, documentary, and oral evidence. Considered as such, archaeology as a modern discipline began as a form of historical archaeology, and later approaches (Culture History, Processual, Postprocessual, etc.) subsequently shaped the sub-discipline. Current practices and debates in historical archaeology are also contingent on the field's respective disciplinary position between anthropology and history, so a global perspective is essential to understand the different reconstructions of the ancient and more recent pasts. This course focuses primarily on the historical archaeology of Latin America, as well as the material, literary, and cultural legacies of Latin America and the Hispanic world in the U.S. It delves into questions of how historical archaeology is different from other type of archaeologies, and why it is important to both academics and the public. Through weekly readings, in-class assignments, group projects, and independent research papers, students will explore different theoretical and methodological approaches in case studies ranging from Tierra del Fuego to Colorado, and from the first Indigenous historical inscriptions in the America to yesterday's "garbage". We will tackle diverse themes such as culture contact,
Springer, 2015
Archaeology of Culture Contact and Colonialism in Spanish and Portuguese America contributes to disrupt the old grand narrative of cultural contact and colonialism in Spanish and Portuguese America in a wide and complete sense. This edited volume aims at exploring contact archaeology in the modern era. Archaeology has been exploring the interaction of peoples and cultures from early times, but only in the last few decades have cultural contact and material world been recognized as crucial elements to understanding colonialism and the emergence of modernity. Modern colonialism studies pose questions in need of broader answers. This volume explores these answers in Spanish and Portuguese America, comprising present-day Latin America and formerly Spanish territories now part of the United States. The volume addresses studies of the particular features of Spanish-Portuguese colonialism, as well as the specificities of Iberian colonization, including hybridism, religious novelties, medieval and modern social features, all mixed in a variety of ways unique and so different from other areas, particularly the Anglo-Saxon colonial thrust. Cultural contact studies offer a particularly in-depth picture of the uniqueness of Latin America in terms of its cultural mixture. This volume particularly highlights local histories, revealing novelty, diversity, and creativity in the conformation of the new colonial realities, as well as presenting Latin America as a multicultural arena, with astonishing heterogeneity in thoughts, experiences, practices, and material worlds.
The Archaeological Study of Spanish Colonialism in the Americas
Journal of Archaeological Research, 2010
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.