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  • The Archaeology of American Capitalism: The American Experience in an Archaeological Perspective
  • Nicolas Zorzin
Christopher N. Matthews, The Archaeology of American Capitalism: The American Experience in an Archaeological Perspective (Gainesville: University Press of Florida 2010)

This book is an essential contribution to Social Archaeology and American Historical Archaeology. It primarily refers to the United States of America but the implications of its discourse are not limited to that nation, and could be highly relevant to any scholar interested in the processes of materialization in other capitalist systems. The author presents an analysis of archaeological evidence attesting to the social transformations caused by the advent of the capitalist system, from a theoretical point of view mostly inspired by Marx and Weber. This book comes as a necessary addition to some key recent publications largely focused on the transformative effects of the introduction of a capitalist framework in society, but it also looks at the conception, uses and misuses, practice and interpretations of present-day archaeology (Yannis Hamilakis and Philip Duke, Archaeology and Capitalism: From Ethics to Politics; Randall McGuire, Archaeology as Political Action), as well as concentrating on specific colonial or post-colonial contexts (Sarah Croucher and Lindsay Weiss, eds., The Archaeology of Capitalism in Colonial Contexts).

In his book, Matthews supports the idea that a new archaeological praxis should be defined to support non-capitalist alternatives within archaeological interpretations. The main purpose of this [End Page 303] book is then to explore how archaeology can facilitate an understanding of the processes that lend to people accepting their own commodification as individuals. The central interpretative tool presented in Chapter 1 is drawn from the idea that the material properties of daily living embedded in capitalism can be interpreted through three different levels of understanding of the objects: their use, the mechanisms of exchange they involve, and their fetishization (i.e. when the social value attributed to an object is endowed not by the maker but by its owner).

In Chapter 2, the author presents the simultaneous mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion involved in the capitalist system that might be traceable in archaeological records. To do so, Matthews scrutinizes the archaeology and history of the Narragansett and the Mohawk peoples in the 18th century. The integration of First Nations people into a capitalist system was firmly established in the fur trade, and in several food and crafts exchanges. In turn, this system afforded a specialized function for colonized groups, maintaining trade within them for as long as they were economically viable. Meanwhile, the colonial structure established a definition for the group as “Indians,” ensuring their distinction from the rest of society and disallowing their integration. This process of exclusion was completed as soon as the First Nations groups could no longer participate in the capitalist system as “Indians,” that is when their functional viability for trade and value came to an end. At the end of the American Revolution, colonizers considered “Indianity” useless or even threatening. It was then declared incompatible with the new white capitalist society, leading to a quasi-total exclusion.

Through Chapters 4 and 5, Matthews develops his argument by examining the later changes in 19th-century American history within the metropolis of the Northeast, and the underdeveloped periphery of the Midwest. Archaeological remains show the acceleration of capitalist domination over all aspects of life, notably by exhibiting qualities of the capitalist ideals of the private home and the nuclear family. This new domination contributed to drastic change of the urban landscape: the separation of work structures from those domestic, men from women (while subordinating the latter), and separating classes into a hierarchy. Similarly, in the Midwest the new mining towns reproduced the new capitalist social order and imposed the corporate company’s rules and policies on its population. The rapid development of competitive individualism against united and cohesive social, political and ethnic communities generated isolation and a pressure to conform. This conformity required following middle-class capitalist ideals, and embracing all its material attributes. The material culture associated with ideal urban life was thus primarily recognized for what value objects were endowed with and represented in the capitalist system rather than for their intended function...

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