From Colony to Empire: Fifty Years of Conceptualizing the Relationship between Britain and its New World Colonies through Archaeology

Author(s): Marley Brown III

Year: 2017

Summary

Through a series of brief case studies drawn from archaeological research in Plymouth, Massachusetts, Portsmouth, Rhode Island, Williamsburg, Virginia, St. George's, Bermuda, and Bridgetown, Barbados, this paper examines how American historical archaeology has developed its understanding of Britain's establishment of its colonies throughout the New World. It is argued that the gradual but significant shift in geographic scale from regional specialization to frameworks like the Atlantic World, along with the abandonment of an overwhelming concern for folklife studies in favor of complex models of economic and social change rooted in capitalism, has yet to result in a fully statisfactory interpretive approach. The long-standing concept of anglicization is proposed as an effective means of integrating archaeological materials from both homeland and colony  in order to create a meaningful comparative transatlantic archaeology of British colonialism.

Cite this Record

From Colony to Empire: Fifty Years of Conceptualizing the Relationship between Britain and its New World Colonies through Archaeology. Marley Brown III. Presented at Society for Historical Archaeology, Fort Worth, TX. 2017 ( tDAR id: 435461)

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Keywords

Temporal Keywords
Colonial

Spatial Coverage

min long: -129.199; min lat: 24.495 ; max long: -66.973; max lat: 49.359 ;

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 478