Multi-Directional Colonialism: Approaches to Studying Global Interactions
Part of: Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)
Colonial settings are marked by cultural exchange in many directions, yet studies of colonialism usually highlight the relationship between motherland and territory with a specific focus on the colonized. In this session, we explore colonial environments as settings for a multiplicity of cross-cultural interactions by presenting research on a range of geographical locations and periods. We aim to discuss the multi-directional nature of these social exchanges, in order to move beyond the static interpretive frame of colonizer and colonized. Participants will consider questions such as how changes in colonial territories rippled back to the motherland; the role of proximate, non-colonized cultures living on the edges of imperial activities; the multi-directional nature of material culture change; and how peoples connected to colonial exchanges developed new notions of heritage and identity. By discussing these themes from disparate eras and locations, we hope to add a new facet to the rich ongoing scholarship on colonial studies, and also demonstrate new modes of approaching the study of culture contact on a global scale.
Other Keywords
Colonialism •
Ceramics •
Empire •
Labor •
Social Identity •
Colonial •
colonial contact •
Frontier •
Inka •
south africa
Geographic Keywords
South America •
East/Southeast Asia •
AFRICA •
Europe •
West Asia •
North America - Mid-Atlantic
Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-8 of 8)
- Documents (8)
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3D Visualization and Soundscape Applications that Speak to Community Organizational Change on Luzon, Philippines during Spanish Contact (2016)
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This paper explores the organizational impact of Spanish contact on the island of Luzon, Philippines from the 15th-19th centuries through an analysis of sound landscapes (soundscapes) that are produced by the habitual ringing of Catholic Church bells. Church bells in Luzon were intended to notify local residents of prayer congregation or of impending ‘Moro’ attacks; however the bells were also Spanish territorial markers that flaunted power and demanded the attention of residents living within...
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Colonizing the Colonial: Viewing Influence through the Lens of Coarse Earthenware at the Dutch East India Company Cape of Good Hope, South Africa (2016)
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Archaeological collections are more than a record of form and function. Historiographic analyses can assist in placing material remnants in their broader social context. Investigations of the production, producers, use and users of locally produced coarse earthenware at the 17th- and 18th-century Dutch East India Company Cape of Good Hope illustrate the complex fractals of cultural influence in this particular multi-cultural context. Here, like in many colonial situations, power was exerted not...
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Exotic or Familiar? : Exploring the Multi-directionality of Cultural Influence of Asian Porcelain in the late 17th- early 19th-century Dutch sites in Banten, Indonesia (2016)
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This paper explores the roles of Chinese and Japanese porcelain excavated at the Dutch East India Company forts built in the Sultanate of Banten, Java, Indonesia and raises the questions of how to interpret Asian porcelain in European-related sites in Asia. The paper pays particular attention to the multi-directionality of cross-cultural influence and the assumed exoticness of Asian porcelain to European consumers. In 1596, the first Dutch expedition in the East Indies went to the Sultanate of...
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Inka Frontier Political Economy: The Kallawayas and Yampara (2016)
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In this paper I will evaluate the political economy of the ancient Inka imperial frontier in order to understand the ways in which competing border lords affiliated themselves to the empire, including associated processes of social competition, specialized production and changes in the indigenous local trajectories . In doing so, I will explore two Inka frontier segments. The first is located in the Yampara territory in the Southeastern region, and the second, in the central frontier in the...
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Lagging, Uneven Hellenism in the Hellenistic East (2016)
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Alexander the Great’s conquest of the Persian Empire ushered in the Hellenistic period, so called because of the ostensible spread of Greek culture across a vast landscape. Such a characterization is supported by the presence of Greek inscriptions and Greek style art and architecture at cities founded by Alexander and his successors. But this picture becomes complicated the further one moves from the centers of power. I Maccabees, an account of a Jewish revolt against the Seleucid dynasty...
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Landscape, Labor, and the Production of Difference in Colonial Peru: Indios and Negros in the Zaña Valley, 16th through 18th centuries C.E. (2016)
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Historians and historical anthropologists have long suggested that racial and ethnic categories in the Spanish colonial Americas were discursively produced. But it is only recently that historical archaeologists have begun to chart the roles that household practices, economic transactions, and settlement configurations played in their emergence and reproduction. Archaeological excavations and documentary research on sites in Peru’s Zaña valley provide new perspectives on how indianess and...
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The Old World a Bridge to the New: Daniel Gookin Jr.’s Intercolonial and Transatlantic Connections in the Seventeenth Century. (2016)
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Daniel Gookin Jr. is perhaps one of the better-known figures in colonial Massachusetts history, as an important civil servant and military leader. The third son of an English planter from Kent who settled in County Cork during the second phase of the Munster Plantation in 1611, Gookin Jr. was born in Ireland, and became involved in his father's plantation projects in Virginia, migrating to North America in 1625. This paper will outline the archaeological biography of Daniel Gookin Jr. and the...
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"Reverse Colonialism": The Multi-Directional Nature of Cultural Exchange in the 18th-Century Spanish Atlantic (2016)
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In 1492, Spain “discovered” the Americas and proceeded to lay claim to as much of the New World and its natural resources as it could. The colonization and territorial expansion that followed has been fodder for clergy, scholars, historians, and archaeologists throughout the intervening centuries. The majority of these discussions, however, address the impact of Spain’s imperial activities in the Americas, specifically during the “Golden Age” of the 16th and 17th centuries. In this paper, I...