Challenging historical silences, this edited volume on archaeologies of sexuality and intimacy sheds critical new light on the often ignored yet deeply personal aspects of cultural relations in the context of colonial and imperial projects. The twenty-one authors collectively tackle difficult subjects, including coercive as well as voluntary sexual relationships; homosociality as a response to cultural destabilisation; and the eroticisation of the archaeological subject. The focus on intimacy in the context of the uneven character of colonial relations builds upon approaches in archaeological theory that allow for individual and group agency while acknowledging the constraining effect and affect of structure.
Edited by two well-respected historical archaeologists, Barbara Voss (Stanford) and Eleanor Casella (Manchester), the volume should appeal to anyone dealing with colonialism, be it in the ancient world or in more recent centuries. The editors have chosen their contributors well, ensuring rich depth of research and freshness of perspective by tapping senior scholars as well as early career researchers. The volume is also impressively international in its focus and in the identities of its contributors.
Divided into four thematic sections (pleasures and prohibitions; engaged bodies; commemorations; showing and telling), the volume incorporates nineteen chapters, including an introduction by the editors and concluding remarks by Professor Martin Hall. Fascinating and challenging case studies are drawn from around the world and engage with ancient as well as modern empires and colonies. The chapters themselves are generally well illustrated: that multiple formats and fonts appear in the maps is unfortunately the norm for an edited volume. Taken as a whole, the volume is much more than the sum of its parts, with all contributors clearly making efforts to engage critically with the central themes. One minor quibble is the title of the collection: it is not an all-encompassing archaeology of colonialism as implied. Rather, it focuses on a central if under-appreciated and under-studied aspect of colonialism and colonial encounters that is well worth exploration. In a world increasingly driven by search engines and metrics, the title selection is of course understandable.
To varying degrees, the contributors address the paradox of sexuality and materiality, as explained by co-editor Barbara Voss (p 23): ‘sexuality is understood as the most material and bodily realm of social life yet simultaneously is considered to be ephemeral and immaterial, leaving little lasting trace’. One of the most effective ways of challenging this paradox is simply to acknowledge possibilities, most notably that the contemporary normativity of heterosexuality cannot be uncritically assumed nor imposed upon the past, be it in the nineteenth-century South African diamond fields (Lyndsay Weiss, Chapter 4), Punic society of the sixth to first centuries bce (Mireia López-Bertran, Chapter 6), or pre-Columbian Peru (Mary Weissmantel, Chapter 18).
Inevitably, challenging presentist assumptions about sexual norms also raises critical questions about practice in the present and how to broach uncomfortable topics that remain entangled with power politics. Furthermore, as a construction of both colonialism and imperialism, archaeology as a discipline emerges as complicit in the creation and maintenance of silence, conspiring to avoid consideration of sexuality while also exoticising sexuality amongst colonial ‘others’. The contribution by Nick Shepherd (Chapter 17) is particularly effective in exposing the ugly side of the archaeological gaze in the entanglement of South African prehistory with racist portrayals of the modern Khoekoen and San peoples.
Some of the case studies make for uneasy reading. Sexual transgressions, violence and inequality permeate most discussions. Those with delicate sensibilities may prefer to avoid acknowledging that what may seem difficult to consider today nonetheless characterised the realities of life in the past. This volume forcibly reminds us that if we claim as archaeologists to seek understandings of past human experiences, we cannot ignore the fact that people in the past possessed sexual identities alongside the identities more often discussed by archaeologists: elite, slave, craftsperson, labourer, religious leader. In colonial settings, sexuality was central to the exercise and the subversion of power relations. Anyone seeking more fully to understand colonialism and its ongoing legacies will benefit from reading this collection.
