This edited volume is a welcome addition to a growing number of collections discussing the archaeology of colonialism. Most of these volumes are thematic, and they focus on particular regions, on postcolumbian transitions, or on particular groups of colonizers. In contrast, this book eschews both regional and temporal constraints, and it includes a wide range of case studies from both the Old World and the New World and from both precolumbian and postcolumbian eras.
The theme of the volume is frontiers. Many contributors take this theme literally and focus their research on the edges of colonies rather than in the metropoles. The frontier theme is also meant to challenge the boundaries of colonial research, pushing past the dichotomous categories of prehistoric/historic, Old World/New World, and others. Christine D. Beaule argues that it is only when we take a broad comparative approach that we can truly understand what colonialism is. In this way, the book reads like an update to previously published and widely comparative volumes on colonial encounters and culture contact.
The volume is divided into three sections, with a short introduction to each by Beaule. These introductions are helpful guides to the reader, as Beaule reminds us of the linking themes within and between each set of essays. The first section deals with local adaptations to colonial incursions, illustrating the variety of ways that indigenous groups interacted with colonizers depending on their own local and indigenous motivations. Case studies in this section come from the postcolumbian Americas and Roman Britain. I particularly appreciated the chapter about Haudenosaunee settlement ecology by Eric E. Jones (Chapter 2), which assesses whether colonialism altered the exploitation of different ecological zones. He finds that some groups showed no settlement changes at all, while others did change their exploitation of ecological zones to maximize their participation in the fur trade. The chapter by Douglas C. Wilson, Kenneth M. Ames, and Cameron M. Smith (Chapter 5) is also very well done. It considers diverse forms of indigenous acquisition and distribution of trade goods at Chinook villages and the localized variation in colonial processes.
The second section of the book deals with colonial situations in which there was significant conflict. Case studies from the nineteenth-century Philippines, Hellenistic Egypt, the Pacific Islands, and prehistoric (2300–2000 BCE) China all complicate our understandings of violence, assimilation, and culture contact. The chapter by Geoffrey Clark (Chapter 8), for example, presents an alternative analysis of violent interactions between Pacific Islanders and Europeans, by framing historically known colonial encounters within a long history of precolonial indigenous culture contact and maritime violence. He argues that the all-male crews on large European ships would have been associated with intergroup conflict and raiding and that precolonial social constructs may have influenced contact situations.
The third section of the volume is dedicated to breaking down dichotomous categories in the archaeology of colonialism. Case studies from prehispanic Peru, the edge of the Aztec empire, and the iconography of Spanish colonialism in Latin America and the Philippines all take aim at simplistic notions of core/periphery dynamics in colonial empires. The chapter by Jay E. Silverstein (Chapter 11) provides a fascinating account of the kingdom of Otzuma, caught in both geographic and geopolitical senses between the Aztec and Tarascan empires, and Silverstein advocates a polycentric perspective in the study of empires. He is able to show, through historical and archaeological data, the ways that Otzuma adapted and responded to a drastically changing geopolitical situation throughout the Postclassic and colonial periods.
Beaule has a useful introduction to the volume, as well as a short concluding chapter. In this final section, she articulates her hopes for future research on colonialism. She calls for more nuanced interpretations of change and continuity and for the removal of disciplinary barriers that prevent us from recognizing the variability within colonialism. The case studies incorporate a wide variety of types of data, the chapters outline innovative methods to the study of colonial encounters, and the contributors engage with current theoretical models in the study of colonialism and frontiers. This book does not offer a single conclusive or new takeaway. It is, rather, in dialogue with other edited collections and recent research, and it continues to move forward scholarly conversations in archaeology about how best to conceptualize and to understand colonialism and its myriad effects on past societies.
