Colonizing the Colonial: Viewing Influence through the Lens of Coarse Earthenware at the Dutch East India Company Cape of Good Hope, South Africa

Summary

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 only over the colonized – itself not a single homogenous group – but over and between various populations of the colonizers. Moreover, cultural identity was simultaneously curated and conflicted through the use of material culture. The materially necessary adjustments in daily experience in colonial contexts create an environment ripe for the development of new syncretic identities. Without denying the inherent imbalance in power dynamics in colonial situations, analyses of material cultural can help reveal its role in the subtle shifts of culture and identity that occur in the forgotten moments of everyday experience.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• Multi-Directional Colonialism: Approaches to Studying Global Interactions

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