Format: Paper presentations with discussion
Convenors:
Dan Hicks, School of Archaeology, University of Oxford, UK, dan.hicks@stx.ox.ac.uk
Laura Mcatackney, University College Cork, Ireland, laura.mcatackney@ucc.ie
Randall H. McGuire, Binghamton University, USA, rmcguire@binghamton.edu
Mark Leone (1940-2024) quietly revolutionised the project of anthropological archaeology. He did so by continually reflecting on the nature of and potential for revolutions in our understanding of the past. With his passing those twin tasks of revolution and reflection remain unfinished and more urgent than ever.
For half a century Leone studied the recent past through a contemporary and politically-engaged lens. In doing so he revealed the possibilities of explicitly political approaches to archaeology, grounded in a commitment to anti-racism and social justice. His question was simple: how to excavate the ideologies that can be hidden in the material past and the disciplinary present?
To read through the titles of Leone’s publications from the 1970s onwards is to draw a line through the most urgent debates of the times: from the new ideas of Modern Material Culture (1971) and Contemporary Archaeology (1972) to the archaeology of time (1978) and the question of Archaeology’s Relationship to the Present and the Past (1981); and the archaeology of ‘mind’ (1982) and his call to move Toward a Critical Archaeology (1987, 2010); for the development of A Historical Archaeology of Capitalism (1995) and digging into Invisible America (1995); for The Archaeology of Liberty (2005) and a Postcolonial Archaeology (2009); and for reflections on the production of anger in archaeology (2010), The Importance of Material Things (2012), and the enduring relevance of the work of Frederick Douglass (2017).
This session remembers, celebrates and interrogates Mark Leone’s legacy across all fields of archaeology, from Marxist, African-American and Indigenous archaeologies to the study of enslavement, landscape, power, time and ideology. Papers of all kinds are invited: from reflections from those who worked with him to engagements to the contributions of new generations of archaeologists for whom his calls for ‘world archaeologies’ that are anti-capitalist and anti-racist, both political and personal, hold a lasting value.
References
Leone, M.P. 1971 Modern American culture, the decline of the future? Journal of Popular Culture IV:4:863-880, Spring. Also in R.B.Nye, R.B. Browne, and M.T. Marsden (eds), Crisis on Campus. Bowling Green University Press, 1971
Leone, M.P. 1972 Contemporary Archaeology. Southern Illinois University Press.
Leone, M.P. 1981 Archaeology’s relationship to the present and the past.In R.A. Gould and M.B. Schiffer (eds) Modern Material Culture. Academic Press, pp. 5-13.
Leone, M.P. 1982 Some opinions about recovering mind. American Antiquity 47:742-760.
Leone, M.P. 1995 Invisible America. (with Neil A. Silberman)
Leone, M.P. 1999 Historical Archaeologies of Capitalism (edited with Parker B. Potter, Jr)
Leone, M.P 2009 Making historical archaeology postcolonial. In T. Majewski and D. Gaimster (eds), International Handbook of Historical Archaeology, pp.159-168.New York: Springer.
Leone, M.P. 2010 Critical Historical Archaeology. Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press.
Leone, M.P 2010 Walter Taylor and the production of anger in American archaeology. In A. Maca, J. Reyman and W. Folan (eds), Prophet, Pariah, and Pioneer: Walter W. Taylor and Dissension in American Archaeology, pp. 315-330. Boulder, Colorado: University of Colorado Press.
Leone, M.P. 2012 Historical Archaeology and the Importance of Material Things, II (ed. with Julie Schablitsky. Society for Historical Archaeology, Special Publication, Series No. 9.
Leone, M.P. 2017 Atlantic Crossings in the Wake of Frederick Douglass: Archaeology, Literature, and Spatial Culture. Leiden: Brill (ed. with Lee M. Jenkins)
Papers:
An Archaeology of Capitalism in Antarctica
Andres Zarankin, Departamento de antropologia e Arqueologia, UFMG, Brazil
Melisa A. Salerno, CONICET, Argentina
Archaeological research has been highlighting working people groups and the capitalist world expansion in the XVIII and XIX centuries to understand Antarctic discovery and exploitation. The main sources of information for the research are the material traces and the written documents. From the confrontation between this information, it is possible to access the daily lives of these subordinate groups, understanding how the historical process of capital globalisation was experienced by those who were exploited and left rare written testimonies about their lives. For the last decades, the Laboratory of Antarctic Studies in Human Sciences – LEACH– UFMG, Brazil) has been working to build an alternative history of Antarctica.
In addition to researching alternative stories about occupation of Antarctica, the project seeks to build an alternative way, of plural perspectives on the Antarctic past, challenging master narratives. Starting from a digital approach to Public Archaeology, new technologies are used as potential dialogue tools with the non-archaeological public, in a perspective clearly based on the Digital Humanities.
In this presentation we are interested in bringing a brief synthesis of some results that allow us to think about a story that has as its protagonists the subaltern and invisible working groups of Antarctic history.
Problems of ‘Progress’: Mission Schools and the Emergence of the Modern African Consumer
Natalie Swanepoel, University of South Africa
Mission schools in South Africa are regarded as one of the key loci that laid the groundwork for the emergence of black, female consumers, who bought and used commodities such as skin-lightening creams and other cosmetics, practices linked to the global emergence of the ‘modern girl’ in the twentieth century. The current understanding of such consumption practices rests, however, on the information drawn from disparate documentary and advertorial sources that only allow the drawing of broad conclusions, which lack specificity about the range and type of commodities consumed by the members of any particular school community. The excavation of a large midden deposit (ca.~1900-1970) containing material from the male and female hostels at the educational institute of the Botshabelo Mission Station in Mpumalanga, South Africa, offers us a parallel line of evidence to explore these and other questions about how young African men and women became modern consumers in twentieth century South Africa. The material record reveals insights into a range of bodily practices and the use of consumables by black students, not evident in or easily gleaned from the documentary record alone, within the larger context of mission education, boarding schools and an increasingly racialised and segregated South Africa.
Revealing the Politics of the Past: A Celebration of Mark Leone
Laura McAtackney, University College Cork, Ireland
One of the first time I met Mark Leone, in Oxford nearly 20 years ago, he told me that my research on Long Kesh/Maze prison was fascinating and important, but I was crazy to do it as a PhD as I would make myself unemployable. He was almost right! While being somewhat amused at his forthright opinions I have reflected over the years on our interactions, Mark’s frank and sometimes brutal opinions, and also the nuance of his understanding of hierarchy, structure and speaking truth to power in both archaeology and the world. His way of thinking meant that he always saw the angle that one should take in ‘political’ work, but he understood why we were sometimes constrained from explicitly saying the quiet bits out loud. Over the years, I found his comments, feedback and invitations to speak and write emboldened me in what I could say about the politics of the contemporary past. This paper will reflect on some of the work I have completed—and am still completing—and how Mark’s work and advice has shaped it.
Archaeology of the Hispanic Encomienda System in Valdivia, Chile (39°S)
Leonor Adán, Escuela de Arqueología, Universidad Austral de Chile, Puerto Montt, Chile
Simón Urbina, Escuela de Arqueología, Universidad Austral de Chile, Puerto Montt, Chile
The development of historical archaeology in the city of Valdivia has enabled us to engage in dialogue with the work of Mark Leone and his paradigmatic research in Annapolis. Valdivia was founded in 1552 on Mapuche-Huilliche territory as part of the Spanish occupation of the so-called ‘Araucanian rebels’. Alongside the urban settlement project, effective colonial control relied on the encomienda system to exploit local labour and resources. Through an approach that integrates archaeology and history (FONDECYT 1221582), our research has revealed indigenous territoriality, leadership structures, and how the system of exploitation was imposed on local settlements. In this process, we have critically engaged with traditional, racist, and evolutionist archaeological and historical approaches that portrayed Mapuche society as backward and warlike, lacking permanent authorities, with dispersed settlements and achievements attributed solely to Inca influence. Chilean historiography has celebrated prominent Mapuche warriors such as Caupolicán and Lautaro, while neglecting the names of numerous leaders who have not been acknowledged in historical discourse for centuries. Today in Chile, the constitutional recognition of the Mapuche and their prior existence remains unresolved, with a mestizo ideology continuing to obscure the dispossession of their lands and names.
Dismembering Monarchs Down Under: Irish and Australian Iconoclasm as Anti-Colonial Performance
Madeline Shanahan, Extent Heritage, Australia
This paper explores the recent histories of two statues of British monarchs and their posthumous postcolonial royal tours through Ireland and Australia. Specifically, it will tell the story of the mysterious missing head of King George V, last seen on stage at Belfast rap trio Kneecap’s sold-out gig in Melbourne, and the dislocated body of Queen Victoria, ‘transported’ to Australia in the wake of Irish independence. Through these two stories of iconoclasm —featuring decapitation, dislocation, and dismemberment—the paper will explore the entanglements of Irish and Australian relationships with Empire and their connected narratives of ever-evolving postcolonial identity. Both cases highlight the complex relationships between two former colonies and their ambiguous roles in Empire; as simultaneous protesters and participants, rebels and role players. This paper ultimately argues that the increasingly contested and fragmented bronze bodies of former monarchs have been used as vessels for both Irish and Australian communities to explore their relationships with the legacy of colonisation. By examining these narratives the paper charts the twentieth century journey of Ireland’s unfinished reckoning with its past, considering how the dislocation and dismemberment of ‘royal bodies’ in Australia creates an opportunity for anti-colonial performance and ongoing discourse in both nations.
Swept Up by Things: Anti-capitalism in the Antipodes
Caitlin D’Gluyas, The University of Queensland, Australia
‘It made me angry that so little was to be learned about the past at Colonial Williamsburg’, so opened Mark Leone (2010:17) in Chapter 1 of Critical Historical Archaeology. Founded on feelings about a lack of learning from the past and concern for our modern world, like many of Leone’s publications, this paper takes a tone of critical reflection. However, rather than reflecting on a career of work, this paper presents the perspective of an early career historical archaeologist, part of a new generation grappling with the present as it hurtles into the future.
With an Australian focus, this paper builds an anti-capitalist framing by drawing links between ideologies of possession and material expression in colonial Parramatta, one of the earliest settlements of the colony of New South Wales. Leone finished this book pondering objects and objectifications through the work of Slovaj Zizek (1989), and this paper takes inspiration to consider the very capitalist hold that material ‘things’ have over us now and in the past.
References
Leone, M.P. 2010 Critical Historical Archaeology. London and New York: Routledge.
Zizek, S. 1989 The Sublime Object of Ideology. Blackwell, London and New York.
Invisible America Remembered: A Contribution to MAGA Studies
Dan Hicks, School of Archaeology, Oxford University, UK
This paper revisits Invisible America — a 1995 volume that Mark Leone edited with Neil A. Silberman in the Henry Holt Reference book series. It re-reads Leone’s project of, as the book’s subtitle put it, “unearthing our hidden history” through the lens of the multiple challenges laid down in the second half of the 2020s through Trump-Musk-MAGA-sponsored attempts to re-ignite the right’s war on culture under headings like “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History”. Returning, thirty years on, to the book’s theme of what Leone called “the implicit ideology of traditional archaeological interpretation” in relation to landscapes, the historic built environment, and material culture, the paper considers ways of resisting new hard-right attacks on museums, monuments and wider spaces of public memory: reclaiming them as what Leone once called “places for thinking”.
References
Hicks, D. 2005 ‘Places for thinking’ from Annapolis to Bristol: Situations and symmetries in “world historical archaeologies”. World Archaeology 37(3): 373-391.
Hicks, D. 2025 Every Monument Will Fall: A Story of Remembering and Forgetting. London: Hutchinson Heinemann.
Leone, M.P. and N.A. Silberman (eds) 1995 Invisible America: Unearthing Our Hidden History. New York: Henry Holt
Discussant