Colonialism, Identity And Social Responsibility

Convened By
Richard Hingley (UK) and Alejandra Korstanje (Argentina)

Theme Details
At heart, archaeology is a colonialist endeavor. It is based on, and generally perpetrates, the values of Western cultures. Privileging the material over the spiritual and the scientific over the religious, archaeological practice is solidly grounded in Western ways of knowing the world. At the beginning of the 21st century, it is a truism that ‘doing’ archaeology is a political act and archaeologists routinely have to recognize that many groups have rights and responsibilities in the themes, materials and locations that are studied. This theme explores the relationships between colonialism, identity and social responsibility.

Sessions

Colonialism And Identity: Origins And Otherness

Organized By
Pedro Funari (Brazil), Chris Gosden (UK) and Richard Hingley (UK)

Session Details
Peoples’ views of their identity is compounded of ideas about origins and ideas about Otherness: where people think they come from and how they differ from others contributes in large part to their feelings of identity. Colonialism has caused massive changes in thoughts about identity, partly through changing peoples’ thoughts about their origins and who constitutes the Other. European cultures are very much colonial products. In the eighteenth to the earlier twentieth centuries they often sought for ‘civilized’ origins in Greece and Rome in a manner influenced by their contemporary imperial relationships. On the other hand they also sought ‘primitive’ origins comparing their prehistory to the ‘modern Stone Age peoples’ of Africa, New Guinea or the Americas. Effectively, Europeans tried to deny ‘civilised’ origins to those who were not deemed civilised in the then present: the most notorious case being the amount of effort Rhodes and others spent on looking for a non-African origin for Great Zimbabwe, but is something which also happened with the mound builders of North America and a range of other cases. As well as considering European views about others, we want also to explore how other cultural forms have created notions of identity, otherness and origin through colonial experiences. Diasporic cultures have special interests in origins and identity shaped by their colonial experience, for instance. We also need to consider how far clichéd notions of origins and identity are current within archaeology and anthropology and what forms of critique we need to provide new forms of thought about identity.

This session aims to explore case studies from a range of societies across the world and the general perspective is derived from colonial discourse theory

Presentations
Colonialism Begins At ‘home’: Nationalism, Colonization And The Invention Of Modern Greece
Yannis Hamilakis (Dept of Archaeology, University of Southampton, UK) Rome, Eurocenticism and western identity
Richard Hingley (University of Durham, UK)
‘Contested Ground’: Archaeology, Identity And The Romanian City Of Alba Iulia
Ian Haynes (Birkbeck College, University of London, UK) Brazilians and Romans: colonialism, identities and the role of material culture
Pedro Paulo A. Funari (Campinas State University, Brazil)
Tradition And Colonialism: ‘Roman-ness’ In 4th Century Britain
Andrew Gardner (Institute of Archaeology, University College, London, UK) The Depiction of Roman Monumentality in Brazil
Renato Pinto (Universidade de Sao Paulo, Brazil)
Differences And Similarities In Mesoamerican Archaeology: Theoretical And
methodological Implications
Bernd Fahmel Beyer (Instituto de Investigaciones Antropologicas, UNAM) Origins and the Erasure of Otherness: Marc Lescarbot’s Histoire de la Nouvelle-France
Brian Brazeau (The American University of Paris, Paris, France)
Iron Marshalltown Of Serbia: Ethnography Of An Archaeological Community
Sta_a Babi (Department of Archaeology, University of Belgrade) Internal colonialism and the domestication of otherness in Colombia
Cristóbal Gnecco (Departamento de Antropología, Universidad del Cauca)
The Colonial Origins Of Modernity
Chris Gosden (Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, UK) Wedding ancient history to modern Brazil: perceptions of Egyptianizing motifs in daily life
Margaret M. Bakos (PUCRS, Brazil)
Agricultural Origins, Ethnocentrism And Identity In Papua New Guinea
Tim Denham (Flinders University, South Australia) Colonialism and identity: origins and otherness, The construction of archaeological identities in Lebanon: archaeology, colonialism, nationalism and Frankenstein
Tamima Mourad (Beirut, Lebanon)
Colonialism And Material Culture: A Case Study Of Relationships Between Colonial Collectors And Collections, Donor Community And The Holding Museum
Gilbert Oteyo (University of Nairobi) Mapping colonial narratives: the archaeology of western South America
David Kojan (Department of Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley, USA)
Towards A Critical Ethnohistory Of The Encomienda System In Puerto Rico: 1509-1520
Gabriel De La Luz-Rodríguez (Department of Anthropology, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, USA) Excavating the Colonial in a Postcolonial Context: An Example from Hong Kong
Hilary du Cros (Research Fellow, Department of Management, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong SAR, China)
Colonialism, Landscape, And Ethnicity, Through The Dialectics Of Post-W.W.II Discourse, And Alternate Interpretative Frameworks, In Kokoda, Papua New Guinea
Nick Araho (Papua New Guinea National Museum)

Session Time
Day Monday Date 23rd June
Time 9am-1pm & 4-6pm Room Hannan 106

The History Of Archaeology In The Service Of ‘Isms’

Organized By
Ana Cristina N. Martins (Portugal) and Michael Cremo (USA)

Session Details
Ana Cristina N. Martins
Portuguese Association of Archaeologists (amartins@ippar.pt)

Michael Cremo
Bhaktivedanta Institute, USA (mcremo@compuserve.com)

Among all the sciences, archeology has come to play a central role in defining the goals of nations and humanity in general. Our identities and the goals that we set for ourselves, individually and collectively, are to a large extent determined by our picture of our past. We define ourselves in terms of our past. And the exploration of our human past is largely in the hands of archeologists. But archeology also must define itself, and define its search for the human past, in terms of its present existence. Archeology does not exist in a vacuum.

Archeologists themselves are not purely archeologists. They are human beings, situated in male and female bodies, speaking specific languages, and raised in certain cultures, societies and specific time.

And archeology as a discipline, as a social group, is also exposed to the very same influences. And some would go further and say that there is no such thing as a “pure archeology,” an essential archeology that is transformed by various influences. Some would maintain that such influences themselves act to produce “archaeologies” of various kinds. There is no pure essential archeology and neither are there pure essential archeologists.
And what is archeology anyway? From its very beginnings, archeology has been a diverse discipline, with practitioners involved in a variety of fields of action, ranging from paleolithic archeology to medieval archeology and modern industrial archeology. Others are implicated primarily in teaching archeology in a variety of settings. Other archeologists are involved in storing and displaying the results of excavations. Some are concerned in rescue archeology and contract archaeology. Others are involved in policy making. Others are involving historical sites. The money that pays the salaries of all of these archeologists, and that pays the expenses involved in the publication, storage, and display of the results of their work, comes from sources within the surrounding society, that archeology serves. Does this influence the theory and practice of archeology? Since archeology has found a place in the modern university system, it also exists in relation to other academic disciplines, sharing in their overall worldviews, such as the biological theory of evolution, the physical and chemical theories underlying various dating methods, and theories of human psychology and sociology. In many ways, archeologists individually, and archeology as a discipline reacts to political, social, religious, and scientific pressures.

Since archeology is funded by national governments, archeology is arrayed in national groupings, but there is also an overlay of international funding sources. These national and international al-funding sources have their own political and social characters, not only individually, but also in relation to each other. And this introduces not only considerations of nationalism but colonialism and imperialism. Does standardization of archeology praxis really result in standard archeology? What have been and what are and what will be the relationships among archeology and the various isms with which it is found associated? This is the central question we wish to explore, from an historical perspective. Therefore, we invite papers that explore the historical relationship among archeologists (individually and/or collectively) and the variety of isms to which they’re exposed, with a view to arriving at some understanding how these passed events in the history of archeology have influenced the archeology of today and how they will influence the archeology of the future. In a certain way, we pretend to explore the following themes:

1. Discontinuity of or in archaeological record?
2. Post-processualism versus Processualism?
3. Diversity of Archaeological Record or Record of Diversity? The Problematic of the “Pre” and “Proto”.
4. The images of Archaeology: Reality or Invention?
5. The Public side of Archaeology: Reality or Myth?
6. Archaeology from Episteme to Praxis or from Praxis to Episteme?

We sincerely hope that this special session will assume a real forum character, where will – and must -, be discussed and changed every kind of national, regional and local experiences in all these research fields, without any kind of prejudgement or misunderstanding.
Presentations
Prehistoric: What Does It Mean?
Pascale Binant (France) The Nineteenth Century California Gold Mine Discoveries: Archaeology, Darwinism, and Evidence for Extreme Human Antiquity
Michael Cremo (Los Angeles, CA 90034 USA)
Heresy In The Camp: Hueyatlaco, A 250,000 Year Old Mammoth Hunter Site From Central Mexico And It’s Treatment By Darwinism In Late 20th Century USA
Virginia Steen-McIntyre (Idaho Springs, CO 80452 USA) Correlation of Artefact Horizons at the Hueyatlaco Archaeological Site with Sangamonian (sensu lato = 80,000 to ca. 330,000 yr BP) Age Diatomaceous Samples, Cores, Measured Sections from the Valsequillo Region south of Puebla, Mexico. A Case of Clovis Dogmatism in Archaeology
Sam L. VanLandingham (Consulting Environmentalist/Geologist, 1205 West Washington, Midland, USA)
The Discursive Space Of Post World War 2 Japan And The Fate Of Archaeological Discourse In Post-Modernity
Koji Mizoguchi (Graduate School of Social and Cultural Studies, Kyushu University, Fukuoka City, Japan) Renaissance, Rhinos and the Politics of Archaeology in South Africa
Pia Bombardella (Research Unit for the Archaeology of Cape Town, Centre for African Studies, University of Cape Town)
Archaeology In The Service Of Kemalism In Turkey
Fahri Dikkaya (Settlement Archaeology Graduate Program, Graduate School of Social Sciences Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey) Hillforts: the invention and reinvention of nationality (Portugal during the 19th and 20th centuries)
Ana Cristina N. Martins (Portuguese Association of Archaeologists, Largo do Carmo, nº 4, 1º D.to Lisboa, Portugal)
Chosen Glories / Chosen Traumas: The Selection Of An Archaeological Narrative In Ireland
Ian Russell (Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland) Archaeology after World War II: The legacy of Gustaf Kossinna and Kulturkreis
Ian Russell (Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland)

Session Time
Day Wednesday Date 25th June
Time 9am-1pm Room Pryzbyla 351

Anglo-American And Hispanic Marxist Archaeologies

Organized By
Randall H. McGuire (USA) and Rodrigo J. Navarrete (Venezuela)

Session Details
Organized by:

Randall H. McGuire
Professor of Anthropology
Department of Anthropology
Binghamton University
Binghamton, NY, 13902-6000
rmcguire@binghamton.edu

Rodrigo J. Navarrete
Profesor Asociado
Escuela de Antropología
Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y Sociales
Universidad Central de Venezuela, Caracas
bf81014@binghamton.edu
FORMAT: OPEN DISCUSSION

The symposium is organized in three sessions of no more than seven participants each and a final discussion session with all participants and the public. Papers will be prepared in advance and be made available for the participants as well as the audience to read before the meetings. There will be no formal public reading of the papers during the sessions but an open discussion of the topics among the participants and with the audience. Every session will begin with short (10 minute) opening statements by the discussants that summarize and put together the issues to be discussed and opening questions for the debate. The discussants (or others) will close the sessions with conclusive remarks and some input for discussions in the next session.

The history of Marxism in Western archaeology is a hidden one. The Marxist tradition of thought had a profound impact on Western archaeology from the 1940’s onward but this influence was rarely explicitly recognized. U.S. and British scholars working in the 1950s risked harassment, loss of support, and dismissal if they explicitly adopted Marxism. In other parts of the world such as Spain and various countries in Latin America an explicit engagement with Marxism could result in imprisonment or death. An explicitly Marxist archaeology developed in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s, but with the notable exception of V. Gordon Childe, few Western archaeologists knew of it. In the United States Marxism had a profound but largely unacknowledged influence on the New Archaeology of the 1960s. In parts of Europe and in Latin America Marxism became a major theoretical approach in archaeology in the 1970s with a few English-speaking archaeologists also adopting the theory. It is undeniable that the development of Marxist archaeology owes a great debt to Latin American archaeologists and the theory of Social Archaeology that they developed in the 1970s. It was only with the advent of alternative archaeologies in the 1980s that Marxism picked up a significant following among English-speaking archaeologists.

In the last few decades of the 20th century Marxism became a significant feature of archaeological theory in the Western, Capitalist World. This has happened at the exact same moment that Marxism diminished as a political force in the world with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the conversion of China from a totalitarian socialism to a totalitarian Capitalism. Archaeologists may reasonably ask what is Marxism in the 21st century and what does it have to offer archaeological theory in this changed world.

The purpose of this session is to critically explore the utility of Marxism for the study of archaeology. The session will consider three major themes: (1) what is Marxist Archaeology? (2) Current trends and applications of Marxist archaeology, and (3) What is the future for a Marxist archaeology?

Range Of Participants And Perspectives To Be Included

The session will consider Marxism in an international context that compares and contrasts Marxist approaches to archaeology in the English and Spanish speaking worlds. It includes researchers from Latin America, Europe, and North America. Participation is balanced with a roughly equal number of Spanish speaking and English speaking participants. The languages of the session will be Spanish and English.

1st session: What is a Marxist archaeology?
This session will focus in the definition of Marxism as an approach to study, understand and interpret the past. It will compare and contrast Marxism to other approaches. It will consider basic definitions of Marxism as a social science, its use for the study of human history, conceptual and methodological definitions of Marxist archaeology, and commonalties and differences among different Marxist approaches to archaeology. The question is not only if there is a Marxist archaeology but also what kind of Marxisms are involved or should be involved in archaeological discourses and practices.

2nd session: Current applications of Marxist archaeology.
This session the shift the focus to younger archaeologists and to innovative approaches, especially case studies, current in Latin America, Europe, and North America. The idea is to explore how the theoretical and methodological tools developed during the last thirty years are being applied in different contexts and to what extent they have been successful in interpreting the past or in creating new avenues for archaeological inquiries.

3rd session: Praxis in a Marxist Archaeology.
One of the basic premises of Marxist theory is that the study of society should have as its goal changing society. This session will exam ethical and political issues in the relation between present and past, and the social use of archaeology. It will build on the positions from the first session as it examines how different Marxist approaches may, or may not, engage in theoretically informed social action in different contexts.

Discussion (4th) session: What is the future of a Marxist archaeology?
Based on the analyses of the current state of Marxist archaeology in the first three sessions, this session will contextualize Marxism within the contemporary world n in order to analyze its expectations, prospective and orientation for the future. In this session the consequences and impact of Marxism in general on current archaeology will be discussed, as well as how it can impact the future of our discipline. This session will be organized as a general discussion of all the participants and the public. It will be moderated by the session organizers and led by a panel of archaeologists. The members of the panel will include Iraida Vargas, Vicente Lull, Bruce Trigger, and Luis Lumbreras. In the end, the panel will discuss the conclusions of the whole symposium and will try to put together a summary of the agreements and disagreements.

Participants:
Manuel Aguirre-Morales P. (Peru)
O. Hugo Benavides (USA & Ecuador)
Reinhard Bernbeck (USA & Germany)
Bradley E. Ensor (USA)
Jordi Estevez (Spain)
Trish Fernandez (USA)
Pedro Paulo A Funari (Brazil)
Ermengol Gassiot Ballbè (Spain)
Rafael Gassón (Venezuela)
Gladys Gordones (Venezuela)
Vicente Lull (Spain)
Luis G. Lumbreras (Peru)
Christopher N. Matthews (USA)
Randall H. McGuire (USA)
Rafael Micó (Spain)
Lino Meneses P. (Venezuela)
Luis Molina (Venezuela)
Rodrigo Navarrete (Venezuela)
Maria O’Donovan (USA)
Beatriz Palomar Puebla (Spain)
Cristina Rihuete Herrada (Spain)
Roberto Risch (Spain)
Mario Sanoja (Venezuela)
Bruce Trigger (Canada)
Iraida Vargas-Arenas (Venezuela)
Assumpció Vila (Spain)
LouAnn Wurst (USA)
Presentations
Excavando Modos De Producción: El Problema De La Congruencia Entre Teoría
y Métodos/técnicas En La Arqueología Social Latinoamericana
Rodrigo Navarrete (Escuela de Antropología, Universidad Central de Venezuela) Walking the Talk: Rethinking Marxism and Archaeology
Maria O’Donovan (Public Archaeology Facility, SUNY Binghamton, USA) and LouAnn Wurst (SUNY Brockport, USA)
El Lugar Del Genero En La Arqueología Social Latinoamericana
Gladys Gordones (Museo Arqueológico de la Universidad de Los Andes) Arqueologia Marxista En Venezuela: Área En (De)Construcción
Rafael Gassón (Depto. de Antropología, Venezuela)
Marxism In Front Of State Formations
Vicente Lull, Rafael Micó, Cristina Rihuete Herrada and Roberto Risch (Dept. d’Antropologia Social i Prehistòria, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona) The Process of Accumulation in Pre-Capitalist Societies
Mario Sanoja and Iraida Vargas-Arenas (Escuela de Antropología, Universidad Central de Venezuela, Caracas)
La Contradiccion Basica En Sociedades “Cazadoras-Recolectoras”
Jordi Estévez (Univ. Autònoma de Barcelona) and Assumpció Vila (CSIC. Barcelona)
Palmares: a Marxist approach to the archaeology of a runaway settlement
Pedro Paulo A Funari
A Political Economic Analysis Of Mexican Miners In The California Gold Rush
Trish Fernandez (Pacific Legacy, USA) Revisión De La Arqueología Del Noroeste De Venezuela (Reviewing Northwestern Venezuelan Archaeology)
Luis E. Molina (Escuela de Antropología, Universidad Central de Venezuela)
How Kinship And Marriage Structure Political Economy, Social Crises, And Social Transformations In “Crow-Omaha” Societies
Bradley E. Ensor Arqueología de la praxis o la superación de la escisión entre teoría i práctica en la arqueología marxista
Beatriz Palomar Puebla (Departament d’Antropologia i Prehistoria, Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona) and Ermengol Gassiot Ballbè (Department of Anthropology, Binghamton University, USA)
Social Archaeology And Indian Claims Of The Past: Theory And Praxis
O. Hugo Benavides (Fordham University, USA) Is Praxis Agency? A Marxist Perspective
Reinhard Bernbeck (SUNY Binghamton, USA) and Randall McGuire (SUNY Binghamton, USA)
La Arqueología Social Y La Producción De Conocimientos Socialmente Útil
Antrop. Lino Meneses P. (Museo Arqueológico de la Universidad de Los Andes) Public Dialectics: Marxist Reflection In/Of Archaeology
Christopher N. Matthews (Hofstra University, USA)
La Arqueología Social En El Perú
Manuel Aguirre-Morales P. (Departamento de Antropología Social y Prehistoria, de la Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona, Spain)

Session Time
Day Sunday & Monday Date 22nd & 23rd June
Time 9am-1pm & 4-6pm (Sun Room 22nd: Hannan 106; 23

Archaeology And Cultural Diversity

Organized By
Bozena Webart (Sweden) and Luiz Oosterbeek (Portugal)

Session Details
The main issue is cultural interactionism and cultural diversity all over the world. The European perspective can be exemplified by, for instance, Bronze Age in temperate Europe and in the Mediterranean world: Bronze Age Temperate Europe was linked to the contemporary Mediterranean world as the result of contacts and interactions. Contacts between Bronze Age Temperate Europe and the contemporary Mediterranean world reached deep into the continent, and were also significant for Mediterranean societies themselves. The important centres of the Mediterranean world – Mycenae, Crete, Troy, and Etruria – spread their culture and influence when northern feeder routes entered the arteries of maritime trade, which connected the urban world. Although islands such as Cyprus, Crete, and Sardinia played a crucial role in the westward spread of urban systems, long-term growth was concentrated in areas, which had a continental hinterland. The marginal routes created by successive phases of westward expansion – along the Danube and Black Sea, across the Alps, and later west to Spain/Portugal- were vital in determining the future expansion of the great centres of Mediterranean civilization. Cultural changes, in as much as they can be read from the archaeological record, are primarily a factor of movement of people, migration or colonization. The close relationship of artefacts, material culture and cultural identity in this context is considered, of course, self-evident. However, it is not fixed and stable features, such as dress, material culture or language, which identify a group, but its boundaries separating from other groups, as well as the maintenance of these flexible boundaries which form its distinctive character. Globalism, pluralism and the potentials of the past are a common denominator in studies of human changes and cultural identities. The role of archaeology in construction and legitimizing of collective identities is one of the most important questions in archaeological theory and practice. Cultural identity in archaeology can be interpreted as a conglomerate of different cultural manifestations in different societies. Cultural identity is a flexible and subjective phenomenon, it is a process: societies can change identities, and can identify themselves with different groups of people and societies. Interactions with other groups can influence the group’s own cultural identity. Cultural identity can, therefore, be seen as a social, diversified and dynamic phenomenon, which can be (and often is) affected and altered by social and cultural interactions. There is no reason to separate the two, previously different, scientific traditions in archaeology: “classical” or Mediterranean and “prehistoric”. By equalizing differences between these two research fields and between “Oriental” and “West”, the positive role of the past will be emphasized. The positive role of the past can be likewise illuminated through transnational scientific co-operations between European and non-European Eastern Mediterranean countries. The interactive co-operation with non-European countries, together with the large-scale perspectives, is one of the most important issues.

Presentations
Changing Quantity Into Quality: Common Trends And Conflicting Diversity In Later Prehistoric Europe
Luiz Oosterbeek Three case studies of forager/agropastoralist interaction during the advent of the Iron Age in southern Africa: a human osteological perspective
Alan G. Morris (Department of Human Biology, University of Cape Town Medical School, Observatory 7925 SOUTH AFRICA)
Heritage As Socio-political Dialogue
Dr. Håkan Karlsson and Dr. Anders Gustafsson (Bohusläns Museum, Box 403, 451 19, Uddevalla, Sweden) A New Look at the Multi-Regional Theory
Adam Chou PhD
How Did Archaic Homo Become Homo Sapiens Sapiens?
Carol W. Hill (87 Sammis Avenue, Deer Park NY 11729, USA) New Darwinism, old problems: Evolutionary theory and racist practice
Sam Hardy
The Spread Of Iron Technology In Europe – Sweden And Greece
Christina Risberg (University Museum, Uppsala, Sweden) Prehistoric Cultural Interaction: A View from Central Thailand
Kamolthip Thansawangdumrong and Sawang Lertrit (Department of Archaeology, Silpakorn University, Bangkok 10200, Thailand)

Session Time
Day Wednesday Date 25th June
Time 4-6pm Room Pryzbyla 351