Decolonizing Indigenous Histories: Exploring Prehistoric/Colonial Transitions in Archaeology

13. Lost in Transition: A Retrospective

282 13 Lost in Transition A Retrospective Kent G. Lightfoot The purpose of this chapter is to examine how the contributors to this volume are advancing archaeological practices and the study of colonial encounters and colonialism. My participation in the original American Anthropological Association symposium as a discussant, and then reading the final drafts of the papers, provided me with an opportunity to reflect upon the significant progress that has been made in the archaeology of colonialism over a short span of time. The chapters comprising Decolonizing Indigenous Histories exemplify what state-of-the-art archaeological research can do to generate important insights about cross-cultural entanglements that span the globe and the prehistory/history divide. My goal here is to contextualize the volume ’s contributions within the history of archaeological practice and colonial studies, particularly highlighting noteworthy changes and innovative developments that have taken place over the last 15 to 20 years. The 1990s were significant in shaping the scholarly landscape of colonial and culture contact studies in American archaeology. In marking the Columbus Quincentenary, a flurry of activities took place across North America and beyond, involving symposiums, lectures, and meetings that provided venues for archaeologists and other scholars to present various perspectives about the processes and consequences of European contact with Native American societies. A number of excellent publications resulted from these Quincentenary enterprises , and these quickly comprised the core readings in the developing field of the archaeology of colonialism and culture contact in North America (Deagan 1991, 1995; Falk 1991; Milanich and Milbrath 1989; Rogers 1990; Rogers and Wilson 1993; Thomas 1989, 1990, 1991; Verano and Ubelaker 1992). The chapters in Decolonizing Indigenous Histories demonstrate the significant developments and theoretical and methodological advances that have taken A Retrospective 283 place in colonial encounter and colonialism studies since the milestone publications of the early 1990s. The late 1990s and 2000s witnessed major transformations in colonial research in archaeology with the growing attention to social agency, resistance, practice-oriented approaches in archaeology, social memory and landscapes, and various social processes involving creolization, ethnogenesis, and hybridity (Cusick 1998; Dawdy 2000; Dietler 1997; Lightfoot et al. 1998; Rubertone 2000, 2008; Silliman 2001, 2004; Stein 1999, 2005a; Voss 2005, 2008). Archaeologists also became more conscientious about how they employed the concepts of colonies, colonization, colonialism , and culture contact (Dietler 2010; Silliman 2005; Stein 2005b). Here I reserve the term colonialism for situations where imperialistically oriented polities attempted to maintain power and control over the territories of other people, usually through the founding of colonies and through their explicit subjugation. Following Stein (2005b:6–16) I employ colonial encounters as a broader concept that may include the above as well as the movement of people from one polity into the territory of another, but where no power differentials are necessarily assumed. In discussing recent developments that have emerged in the study of colonial encounters and colonialism, I focus on three major advances as epitomized in this volume. The first is the emphasis placed on examining colonial entanglements from a broader, comparative perspective and the growing recognition that many different kinds of culture contact and colonial relationships have played out across the globe through time. The second advance is the incorporation of collaborative partnerships in research programs that are examining long-term colonial encounters in specific study areas. The third advance is the growing sophistication of colonial research that is moving us beyond the classic divide that once separated prehistory and history. Global Comparative Perspectives A significant advance represented in this volume is the diverse range of highquality studies that examine issues of colonial encounters and colonialism in North America, Central America, South America, Australia, and Africa. Even more remarkable are the citations in individual chapters that reference work outside the local region. There is clearly a much greater recognition of the importance of examining colonial studies on a global scale, and the critical insights that can be made in employing comparative perspectives to understand better the similarities and differences in the events, processes, and outcomes of distinctive colonial entanglements (see also Stein 2005a). Just a few Kent G. Lightfoot 284 years ago, there was a strong tendency for archaeologists examining Indigenous histories and colonialism to be rather parochial with respect to their research programs and comparisons with other regions. Influenced in large part by the events of the Columbus Quincentenary, the seminal studies of colonialism and culture contact in the 1990s...