Race and Practice in Archaeological Interpretation

Preface

Preface Scholars who investigate race-a label that asserts the identification of individuals based upon real or perceived physical differences-realize that they face a formidable task. History records that learned academicians , committed political activists, well-intentioned relief workers, empowered citizens, and disfranchised outcasts have variously contested and condoned, debated and denied race throughout modern history. That a complete and thoroughly accepted understanding ofrace has not emerged with the start of the twenty-first century merely demonstrates the tenacity of the concept, the perseverance of those who would seek to construct their world around racial notions, and the concomitant investigative hurdles that must be negotiated in the analysis of race. Part of the difficulty of reaching a wholly satisfactory notion of race stems from the historical reality of racialization-the conscious labeling of individuals and groups as members of a "race" based upon specific criteria. Racialization is a process that seeks to define and compartmentalize the human community on the basis of outward characteristics. Individuals intent on racializing others have feltjustified in using physical appearance, cultural practice, religious belief, and many other attributes as their defining variables. The process of racialization is never entirely harmless or disengaged from social ranking, because one implication of the process is the construction of social inequality. An added historicity of racialization is that the classifiers are completely free to change their classificatory attributes at any time. The mutability of the process mandates that the study of racialization is immensely laborious and fraught with pitfalls. A contributing factor in the historical chimera of race is that racialized men and women may decide to accept an imposed label as a symbol of unity, group consciousness, and empowerment. Thus, while race does not exist as a biological reality, and racialization is a vastly mutable x Preface process, the assignment ofrace is a social fact with concrete reality in the daily lives of countless individuals. Anthropologists, sociologists, and others who investigate race and racialization in present-day communities fully appreciate the obstacles that such study presents. The very mutability of the concepts, both across space and through time, dictates the complexity of race among living peoples. Knowing this, we can fully appreciate that the examination of race in the past is even more problematic. The addition ofarchaeological data to the universe ofavailable information merely intensifies the problems because of the notorious difficulty ofsocial interpretation in archaeology . To be sure, the many detailed ethnographic accounts of race and racialization serve as substantive cautionary tales for archaeologists. This book is presented with the full understanding that race and racialization are profoundly complicated concepts that have had, and still have, clear social practices associated with them. The project to understand the archaeological dimensions of race and racialization in the modern world is only just beginning, and archaeologists will undoubtedly sustain the analytical effort for many years. This book is presented to offer one way to engage the examination of historic race. In an important way, this book is a continuation and substantive refinement of A Historical Archaeology of the Modern World (1996). In that exploration, I outlined ideas about the importance of an archaeology of the modern world in light of the notion that because archaeology exists in the present, its practitioners have a responsibility to address research questions that have both historical and present-day significance. The onus of relevance is particularly strong on historical archaeologists because the history they study is still being enacted in various ways throughout the world. The primary concern of the earlier book was to explore the major themes of the modern world and to consider how archaeologists might contribute to understanding their historical trajectories. These themescolonialism , Eurocentrism, capitalism, and modernity-forever hover around the practice of historical archaeology. That these four topics can be controversial in today's scholarship amply demonstrates the continued force they exert on modern life. Many readers misread the use of the term "haunts" to describe the major themes of the modern world as an attempt to promote a totalizing scheme for world history or to propose an Eurocentric view of modern history. Nothing could have been further from the objective because the goal was to demonstrate that capitalism, colonialism, Eurocentrism, and modernity have had, and continue to have, significant and locally variable impacts on the peoples of the world. The initial attempt at framing a modern-world archaeology, however, Preface xi was not without problems. In concentrating...