Breaking Boundaries: Exploring Colonialism in the Modern World and Beyond

Over the last three decades, the archaeology of colonialism has reached a period of maturity under the direction of a generation of established scholars. The resulting knowledge and discussions have impacted the theoretical, political, and methodological landscape of archaeological practices and have opened up new avenues for comparative work within the field. However, much of this work has remained focused on discrete contexts associated with the "modern" world or with a particular set of "settler colonialist" encounters. This session seeks to explore whether the impacts of "colonialism" as a lens for archaeological analysis holds utility beyond such contexts. Specifically, we invite speakers to explore the potential applicability of the framework within diverse geographical, temporal, and social contexts that fall outside the traditionally delineated boundaries of colonial relations. The goal is not to propose a unified and unproblematic method of analysis; rather, it is an attempt to recover an intra-disciplinary dialogue, among at times disparate sections of the archaeological endeavor, centered on a common conceptual framework. In so doing we hope to highlight both the potential and limitations of applying the lens of colonialism to the archaeological record, but more importantly the common ground that creates archaeology with a "capital A."