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Introduction

The current epoch of “globalization,” in which European-American political and economic forms are exported and used to dominate other areas of the world, is not a new phenomenon. Forcible expansion of an intercontinental system based on nation-states and nascent capitalism began in 1415, when Portugal seized the North African port of Ceuta (Wolf, 1982:129). Other European nations followed on the heels of the Portuguese, eventually generating near-global exploration and settlement, with the conquest and exploitation of indigenous peoples following in its wake. This chapter provides a framework for the archaeological study of the intercultural relations caused by post-1415 European colonialism.

Focus on post-1415 European expansion fits the definition of “historical archaeology” advocated by many scholars, particularly those based in North America (e.g., Deetz, 1991; Orser, 1996). However, this temporal focus does not encompass all possible examples of colonialism, nor all examples of colonialism where analysis of material remains can be aided by directly associated texts (Little, 1992). Although I draw on aspects of the theoretical and empirical investigations of pre-modern colonies, the scope of this essay is limited to the post-1415 era for purposes of brevity. Geographically, I rely on the North American examples with which I am most familiar; I also largely have confined my remarks to discussion of interactions between Europeans and indigenous peoples, as targeted discussions of slavery and the African Diaspora (though crucial elements in colonial strategies) are available elsewhere.

Those writing about the European expansion encounter many terminological dilemmas. Following the lead of other archaeologists (e.g., Rothschild, 2003; Thomas, 2000), I have tried to use more neutral terminology in the place of the “prehistoric” and “historic/historical” divide, which has been criticized frequently by both indigenous and mainstream scholars (e.g., Echo-Hawk, 2000; Lightfoot, 1995). The alternatives are not entirely unproblematic: one of the most-used options, “Precolumbian” and “Postcolumbian,” equates the onset of the era of European expansion with Christopher Columbus’s first voyage, despite the fact that this venture took place 77 years after Ceuta was seized. Nonetheless, I will use several terms interchangeably to refer to the period of European expansion and colonialism, including “Postcolumbian” and “modern.”

Definitions: Colonies, Colonialism, Cultural Entanglement, and Structures of Discourse

Stein (2002, 2005a) makes a useful distinction between “colonization” and “colonialism.” A colony is defined as “an implanted settlement established by one society in either uninhabited territory or the territory of another society” (Stein, 2002:30). Colonization is simply the process of establishing colonies, which produces a system of social interaction with at least three nodes: (1) the colonies themselves; (2) the indigenous groups impacted by the colonies; and (3) the colonial homeland or metropole (Stein, 2005a:25). Each node is altered by the process of colonization; social and cultural changes for the colonizers and their indigenous “hosts” frequently are dramatic. Determining whether colonies exist in a territory is a fairly straightforward empirical issue that should precede and be distinct from judgments about power relations.

In contrast, colonialism fundamentally involves relationships of intercultural domination. Reinhard (2001:2240) defines colonialism as “the control of one people by another, culturally different one, an unequal relationship which exploits differences of economic, political, and ideological development between the two.” The colonizing group politically and economically incorporates the land, population, and resources of the colonized in order to maintain and manage the colony, and often exports resources or wealth to the metropolitan homeland. For subordinate groups, colonialism may involve genocide (the deliberate extermination of members of a group), ecocide (destruction of the ecosystem and resources that make a group’s lifeways possible), and ethnocide (forced destruction of a cultural system without killing its members) (Bodley, 2000).

The important point raised by these definitions is that colonialism is only one possible outcome of colonization. Even a brief review of the archaeology and history of the Postcolumbian European expansion reveals significant variation in its mode and tempo in different regions. In some parts of the world, Europeans were interested in territory or agricultural crops, in others precious metals and minerals, and in still others “mobile goods” such as fur-bearing animals and slaves. In some areas, huge numbers of European colonists demographically swamped indigenous inhabitants, in others the European presence was limited to relatively small numbers of soldiers and administrators, and some European colonies failed completely. Either over time or by design, these situations did not equally involve “colonialism.” Thus, investigation of the degree of colonial control expressed in particular contexts is a vital aspect of research on the Postcolumbian European expansion.

Many colonies were established in settings where the power of colonizers was more or less balanced with that of the area’s prior occupants. Alexander (1998) has labeled this type of interaction cultural entanglement, defined as “a process whereby interaction with an expanding territorial state gradually results in change of indigenous patterns of production, exchange, and social relations” and as “a long-term, gradual, and non-directed process of interaction” (Alexander, 1998:485). In these situations, mutual influence is unavoidable—the parties involved are “entangled.” But above all, power relations in entangled settings are ambiguous: it is difficult to tell who (if anyone) has the upper hand. While in some situations the rough equality of cultural entanglement rapidly evolved into a relationship of colonial domination, in others entangled relations continued for decades or even centuries.

The formal definition of cultural entanglement has a relatively low profile in the archaeological literature despite the fact that much of the archaeology of the European expansion has been done in situations that can be characterized as “entangled” (e.g., Bradley, 1987; Spector, 1993). These settings need to be identified as a distinct domain that is of vital importance to Postcolumbian archaeology. Archaeology can provide novel insights into entangled contexts because they are unlikely to be well-documented owing to the lack of colonial control and its accompanying archive (Cohn, 1996). Many oral traditions are unlikely to provide the temporally specific details of daily life during periods of cultural entanglement that archaeology can supply. Additionally, entangled settings remain undertheorized; for example, there has been little systematic investigation of the different types of intercultural power relations that characterized entangled settings, which in some cases differed dramatically from the familiar forms of domination that occurred under colonialism.

Separating colonialism from cultural entanglement reveals that certain concepts and theories apply better in one type of setting than in the other. For example, each class of interaction involves a distinctive structure of discourse. Under colonialism, political and economic relations between dominant and subordinate groups are characterized by demands and impositions, and decisions are made “top-down” without consulting the subaltern peoples fundamentally affected by those decisions. The General Allotment, or Dawes, Act of 1887, which attempted to force private ownership of land on Indian Nations within the United States (Thomas, 2000:66–70), is a notorious example of top-down colonial discourse. Historian Richard White’s (1991) conception of the “middle ground,” where discourse between relatively equal groups is characterized by novel intercultural forms of communication and “creative misunderstandings,” most frequently characterizes cultural entanglement (Malkin, 2002; cf. Gosden, 2004).

This consideration of discourse links the study of Postcolumbian intercultural interaction to the emerging body of “postcolonial” theory and its growing application in historical archaeology (e.g., Hall, 2000; Matthews, 2005). Postcolonialism typically is defined either in formal terms, as relating to the condition of newly independent former colonies (often involving new or “neo-colonial” forms of metropolitan manipulation and domination), or in activist political terms, as “the contestation of colonial domination and the legacies of colonialism” (Loomba, 2005:16). Any treatment of archaeology and colonialism must examine archaeology’s potential to reproduce colonial relations between dominant and subaltern peoples in its present-day social practices, something that is done most often through the “top-down” structure of archaeological discourse. I return to this topic at the end of the essay.

Colonialism as a Research Framework in Postcolumbian Archaeology

In many parts of the world colonized by European powers, the early years of what has come to be called “historical archaeology” emphasized colonial installations and the dwellings of noteworthy historical figures (Orser, 2004). In North America, early large projects in historical archaeology focused on prominent colonies such as Jamestown (Cotter, 1958), forts like Michilimackinac (Stone, 1974), and missions, including La Purisima in California (Deetz, 1963). While there was widespread agreement that archaeologists studied colonial outposts and agents, colonialism did not emerge as a major focus of research until well after it did in cultural anthropology and political science (Asad, 1973; Fanon, 1966; Wolf, 1982). Historical archaeologists instead focused more tightly on material culture processes, such as acculturation, artifact patterning, the dynamics of borderlands, and the like (Lewis, 1984; Quimby and Spoehr, 1951; South, 1977). These studies placed surprisingly little emphasis on power relations among and within cultures. Despite early exhortations (e.g., Schuyler, 1970), detailed consideration of power relations did not gain significant traction in historical archaeology until the 1980s and subsequently has centered on intrasocietal dynamics of race, class, and gender (e.g., Delle et al., 2000; Leone and Potter, 1999; McGuire and Paynter, 1991).

Currently, archaeologists studying Postcolumbian colonialism are trying to emerge from the limitations of earlier theoretical models by developing new conceptions of intercultural relations. Archaeologists have engaged in a fruitful series of terminological and theoretical reassessments (e.g., Cusick, 1998; Gosden, 2004; Lightfoot, 1995; Lyons and Papadopoulos, 2002; Murray, 2004; Orser, 1996; Silliman, 2005; Stein, 2002, 2005b), and a growing body of broadscale comparative work also exists (e.g., Hall, 2000; Lightfoot, 2005; Rothschild, 2003). However, the recent literature has not completely bypassed some persistent stumbling points. William Roseberry (1988:174) cautioned anthropologists writing the history of European expansion to “avoid making capitalism too determinative … and avoid romanticizing the cultural freedom of anthropological subjects.” Four limitations in the recent literature on the archaeology of Postcolumbian colonialism indicate Roseberry’s warning has not fully been heeded: (1) persistent stereotypes of power relations; (2) structural emphasis on the metropolitan core; (3) homogenization of colonizer and colonized; and (4) valorization of indigenous cultural continuance.

First, the model of colonialism most often associated with European expansion is a stereotype derived from the nineteenth century that does not apply in many earlier settings (Gasco, 2005:72; Kelly, 2002:102). European colonialism changed significantly in the nineteenth century with the spread of industrial production and innovations in transportation and communication technology (Wolf, 1982). Incorporation into this new world economy demanded risky regional specialization in single crops or raw materials, which in many cases went hand in hand with economic dependence (Wolf, 1982:310). Although some products of major importance in the early stages of European expansion (e.g., cotton, sugar, and gold) maintained their prominence, the new focus on mass production and bulk transportation of goods sets nineteenth- and twentieth-century colonialism apart from earlier eras.

Major theoretical models used to examine the modern world system, such as dependency theory (Frank, 1967) and world-systems theory (Wallerstein, 1974, 1980), often privilege the structural role of each party (e.g., as “core” or “periphery”) within the colonial system. These models and applications derived from them emphasize the structurally determinative role of the metropole and provide a scanty toolkit for understanding indigenous resistance and autonomy. Such macrostructural perspectives run the risk of obscuring the contingent histories of individual colonies’ development and also court the danger of interpreting the past from the perspective of its historical outcome. Due both to the synchronic leanings of structural models and because historical outcomes are known, many anthropologists and archaeologists indeed write about European colonialism as if it was inevitable, even when they are allegedly taking the perspective of those “on the periphery” or those “without history” (e.g., Hill, 1998:166; Spector, 1993:29; Wolf, 1982:86–87, 161, 306). Such treatments underplay or gloss situations of cultural entanglement, treating them as precursors to domination rather than as open-ended processes. As a discipline fundamentally concerned with long time spans, archaeology should study not only realized domination but also the processes by which it was established and resisted.

The interests of neither colonizer nor colonized are homogenous—colonizers may grow to have very different interests than residents of the metropole and among indigenous groups some people “choose to resist, proactively or reactively, the emerging colonial order; others will choose to collude with the colonizers in such a way as to assist in the development of the colony while creating a niche for themselves in the emerging power structure” (Delle, 1999:13). Detailed studies of particular historical contexts have revealed that “colonizing” populations frequently included large numbers of transplanted indigenous people as well as numerous multiethnic households (e.g., Deagan, 1983, 1996; Lightfoot et al., 1998; Voss, 2008a). Most indigenous groups were altered greatly by engagement with colonizers; warfare, migration, and epidemic disease (particularly in the western hemisphere) forced many groups to consolidate in order to maintain a viable political, economic, and demographic base (Galloway, 1995; Lynch, 1985), creating new cultural groups and cultural forms in the process.

Roseberry’s “romanticizing the cultural freedom” of the subaltern is seen in the priority given to “traditional” forms of material culture, or what might be called “indigenisms” (Jordan, 2008:9–13). These “indigenisms” initially were used in the literature (e.g., Lindauer, 1997) to confound acculturation models that predicted near-total adoption of the cultural forms and goals of the dominant culture by subordinate populations. While “indigenisms” do represent a form of autonomy and control wherever they are found, archaeologists need to carefully examine the larger social relations in which they are embedded. The use of a Native-style bone hide-scraping tool in the industrial tanning vats of a California mission (Deetz, 1963:172) evidences only the slightest of controls over social relations. The archaeology of modern colonial engagements can no longer be content with the finding of “indigenisms”—after all, recent ethnographic research has shown that present-day indigenous institutions have retained their distinctiveness even in situations such as American Indian Christian churches (Dombrowski, 2001; Sturm, 2002). Nor should archaeologists remain uncritical of “indigenisms” in analysis: many seemingly “traditional” cultural forms actually derive from the era of European expansion, and evidence is accumulating to indicate that acceleration of intercultural differences in some instances aids in colonial domination (Dombrowski, 2004; Sider, 1997; Wilmsen and Denbo, 1990).

One way to begin to work around these limitations is to systematically address the structure of power relations, in particular spatial and temporal contexts. When one does so, it becomes evident that the European colonial expansion embodies almost as much variety in power relations as does the 5,000-year history of colonization starting with the Uruk era in Mesopotamia (Algaze, 1993; Stein, 2002).

Assessing Colonial Control (or the Lack Thereof)

While Stein (2002) has used the model of ancient trade diasporas to argue that there can be “colonies without colonialism,” perhaps a better way to describe this situation is “colonialism of limited extent.” Space itself is one of the main limits to colonialism, and the radius of control surrounding a colony is a primary variable to be investigated.

Scholars of empires (D’Altroy, 1992; Hassig, 1985) make a useful distinction between hegemonic and territorial strategies for imperial control that can be applied to the study of colonies. Hegemonic control is for the most part indirect, with obedience by subordinate groups created through threats of force and collusion. Hegemonic options are generally cheaper for imperial powers, in that a single standing army can be used to keep several subordinate populations in line, but it also gives subordinate groups a bit more flexibility in that many forms of resistance are not subject to immediate retaliation. In contrast, territorial control is based on the creation of outposts and infrastructure that directly control local populations. This type of control (typified by the later Roman and Inka empires) is economically expensive to create and maintain, but it provides opportunities for more direct surveillance and more immediate responses. Colonies typically consist of a core that is controlled territorially, even if it is a single building or quarter in a trade diaspora. This is the part of the colony that receives regular protection and surveillance, and can most confidently be labeled as being under the control of the colonizers. Archaeologically, territorially controlled areas can be recognized through the presence of distinctive architecture, military installations, and the like. Beyond the radius of territorial control, colonies typically assert hegemonic control over a greater area, within which they can stage retaliatory actions. Archaeologically, it may be possible to recognize hegemonically controlled areas through the presence of defensively oriented settlements, specialized production and storage facilities, etc.

Beyond this lie the hinterlands and frontiers of the colony, which of course remain the “core” from a Native perspective. Frontiers are indeed “zones of cross-cutting social networks” (Lightfoot and Martinez, 1995), although some zones contained more cross-cutting ties than others, as Rothschild’s (2003) comparison of Dutch-Mohawk and Spanish-Pueblo social distance demonstrates. But frontiers are also zones of differential social control, and power relationships fundamentally constrain and enable the social networks that spring up there. Attention must be paid to the structural conditions that frame the relationships that take place within them.

This approach encourages the modeling of space and time in political-economic terms, resulting in a conception of a spatial mosaic of colonial control. Far from establishing region-wide colonialism, the radius of effective colonial control for some Postcolumbian European outposts likely extended little beyond the garrison’s eyeshot. Networks of European control also left gaps and interstices where local populations could maintain relative autonomy, including the well-known maroon settlements, enclaves jointly established by escaped slaves and indigenous peoples across the western hemisphere (Agorsah, 1994; Sayers et al., 2007; Weik, 2004). Colonial control also oscillated over time, particularly in the event of successful rebellions like the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 (Preucel, 2002; Rothschild, 2003) and the “Caste War” in Yucatan, which began in 1847 (Alexander, 2004).

Determining how and why colonial powers were able to exert control (however limited) over Native populations is crucial. There are two main ways in which colonial powers come to dominate indigenous groups. The first is through dependence, where Europeans provided a set of goods or services so necessary that the indigenous group was willing to remake their economic and political goals along the lines desired by Europeans. The second is through disruption, where the actions of the colonizers made previous indigenous ways of life impossible.

Archaeological research has questioned earlier scholars’ assumptions about Native dependence. For example, archaeology on sixteenth-century sites in northeastern North America indicates that the European goods in greatest demand were items of “spiritual significance” (such as glass beads) rather than utilitarian goods (Bradley, 1987; Hamell, 1992). These goods had preexisting analogues (in terms of color and composition) within Native cultures, and European goods (such as iron tools and copper alloy kettles) were extensively reworked so as to duplicate indigenous forms. Additionally, many scholars (e.g., Starkey, 1998:20) have questioned the technological superiority of European weaponry, particularly at the early stages of the Postcolumbian expansion. European firearms were bulky, time-consuming to load, ineffective in wet weather, and required external connections for gunpowder, ammunition, spare parts, and repair. In contrast, Native weapons such as bows and arrows had significantly faster rates of fire and could be locally produced. In many cases, Native demand for European goods was surprisingly limited (White, 1991), and Native technologies frequently continued to be produced alongside European ones. Indigenous reliance on European goods was therefore neither instant nor total.

European traders used other indirect measures to enforce Native peoples to continue to produce for them. In many settings traders introduced alcohol, which is both addictive and (in large quantities) destructive to health, and/or manipulated credit to create enduring indebtedness, both of which bound particular producers to the endeavor (White, 1983, 1991). In situations where Europeans clearly had the military upper hand, officials extracted tribute from Native populations, including Russian demands for furs in Alaska (Crowell, 1997), Dutch demands for shell bead wampum in southern New England and coastal New York (Ceci, 1990), and demands for cash tax payments across Africa (Rodney, 1972). Europeans also pitted indigenous groups against each other and encouraged collusion among select segments of Native populations.

While these tricks of the trade in some instances were effective in forcing Native peoples to produce for the European market, perhaps a more fundamental logic of colonialism was to make previous ways of life impossible. Europeans “crowded out” Precolumbian lifeways by enforcing choices in seasonality and scheduling (sensu Flannery, 1968) that eliminated access to previous resources. In many instances Europeans demanded particular goods that were difficult to locate and easily depleted (such as beaver or sea otter pelts). Moreover, Europeans frequently specified in excruciating detail how such goods had to be processed. Native producers often had to reconfigure their patterns of movement and labor allocation to acquire and process the resources traded to Europeans, making preexisting ways of life impossible to sustain.

European colonizers also intentionally or inadvertently changed local ecological conditions in ways that dramatically affected indigenous populations. Historian William Cronon (1983) outlines how European settlement in New England fundamentally transformed the resources available to American Indian groups, particularly due to the field clearance required for intensive agriculture and stockraising. European settlements constrained Indian options for settlement relocation, farming, hunting, gathering, and fishing, but European fields also reduced crucial “edge area” habitats, reduced ecosystem diversity, and changed water drainage patterns. European livestock invaded and damaged Indian fields, forcing indigenous groups to fence in their crops (a time-consuming and unprecedented process) to protect them. European plant and animal pests also invaded indigenous ecosystems, at times to the detriment of resources needed by local peoples. Allen (1998:42–54) demonstrates the impact of European plant and animal species on the environment around the Spanish Mission at Santa Cruz in California by documenting massive increases in European-derived crop and weed species in archaeologically recovered pollen and botanical remains.

In addition to these fundamental ecological transformations, Europeans arrived with very well-developed institutions for demarcating and protecting property (Cronon, 1983). These practices included surveying, issuing titles, and protecting ownership through trespassing laws. With the exception of well-developed states encountered by Europeans such as those of the Inkas and Aztecs, indigenous peoples rarely had the ability to contest European acquisitions of property or the clout or expertise to oppose them within European-run courts. Institutions of property provided Europeans with a competitive advantage that they often exploited to the fullest.

After colonial domination had been established, much depended on the intentions of the colonial powers; witness the differences in outcome between the “mercantile” orientations of European groups involved in the fur trade and the “missionary” goals of Jesuit and Franciscan groups (Lightfoot, 2005; Rothschild, 2003). Where they can be enforced, the agendas of colonial powers have a fundamental, formative effect. Sider (1987:16) notes how Europeans only allowed American Indians in eastern North America to become specialized dealers in limited or declining resources (such as beaver pelts, deerskins, military manpower, and land), whereas Europeans and their slaves took on the production of sustainable resources that Indians had used prior to Columbus, such as maize and tobacco.

Archaeological Illustrations

The archaeological cases that follow have been drawn from a vast universe of possible candidates in order to illustrate the points made in the preceding sections.

Cultural Entanglement: Seneca Iroquois, Hueda, and Dahomey

The conventional wisdom regarding Iroquois groups in the eighteenth century is that they had been “colonized” by the French, Dutch, and British. The Iroquois—after 1722, a confederacy of six American Indian Nations (the Senecas, Cayugas, Onondagas, Oneidas, Mohawks, and Tuscaroras)—were thought to have been dominated as a result of almost two centuries of involvement in the fur trade and alleged dependence on European trade goods, divisive political factionalism, demographic decline, and decay of matrilineal social institutions. However, for most of the eighteenth century, the European presence in Iroquois territory outside the Mohawk Valley was slight (Jordan, 2002, 2008, 2009). This was particularly true of the Seneca Iroquois, the westernmost group in the Iroquois Confederacy. Permanent European outposts (such as the French fort at Niagara and the British post at Oswego) were distant from Seneca villages, and there were never more than a handful of traders, diplomats, soldiers, smiths, and missionaries in Seneca territory at any given time. This situation persisted until well after the American Revolution, when the Six Nations ceded territory through treaties with the new United States and Euroamerican settlement expanded into Seneca lands. If accurate, the conventional model of “colonized” Iroquois people implies that European control over the Senecas must have been largely indirect.

Fieldwork conducted at the 1715–1754 Seneca Townley-Read site questions many of the assumptions of the “colonized Iroquois” model (this summary draws on Jordan, 2003, 2004, 2008, 2009). Excavation revealed that significant changes from local indigenous precedent had taken place at the site. Earlier Iroquois villages generally consisted of a cluster of longhouses, set in defensible terrain and frequently surrounded by a palisade. In contrast, the dwellings at Townley-Read were dispersed: built in a line, and set 60–80 m apart from one another. Many of the houses were likely to have been much smaller than previous Iroquois dwellings. Beaver pelts had been the focus of the Iroquois fur trade in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but beaver bones represented only 3.1 percent of mammalian remains at Townley-Read. Additionally, materials made in Europe made up a very large percentage of material culture at the site. Analysts working within the “colonized Iroquois” framework have looked at similar data and asserted that community dispersal occurred because warfare with Europeans “had demonstrated the uselessness of traditional stockaded [Iroquois] villages” (Snow, 1989:298); that smaller houses represented the failure of matrilineal institutions to integrate larger groups and the adoption of European-style log cabins; that the declining proportion of beaver remains signified the poor position of the Six Nations in the fur trade; and that the large proportion of European goods represented “dependence.”

However, I contend that most of these changes can be interpreted better in terms of opportunism than colonial constraint. The occupation span of the dispersed settlement at Townley-Read corresponds closely to a period of relative local peace in the region. Dispersed settlement provided Seneca women with easy access to croplands and water, significantly decreasing the daily demands of walking back and forth to fields and hauling water up the slopes of hilltop nucleated villages. The smaller houses used at Townley-Read were not “European-style log cabins,” but in fact were “short longhouses,” a traditional form that had made up a minority of the Iroquois housing stock for centuries. While direct production of beaver pelts likely did decline during Townley-Read’s occupation, 79.7 percent of the mammalian faunal assemblage is made up of deer bones, a proportion not seen in Iroquois territory since Precolumbian times. This suggests that Seneca hunters were commercially producing deerhides for trade with Europeans, a contention supported by trade statistics for the colony of New York (Cutcliffe, 1981). The copious presence of deer bone at Townley-Read suggests that Seneca men were hunting deer locally, a change from the long-distance hunting of beaver that had characterized the seventeenth century. Senecas, therefore, had ample resources to acquire the European goods found in the archaeological record, rather than being compelled to obtain them at the expense of meeting other material needs.

These changes took place in settings where other longstanding Seneca preferences continued to be expressed. For example, wild species make up 97.4 percent of the mammalian faunal assemblage (350 specimens identified to the genus or species level), and no European plant species were found among over 16,000 botanical specimens (Jordan, 2008:216, 279). There is no evidence for the use of plows, barns, draft animals, or fences that might signal the adoption of European-style systems of intensive farming and private property ownership. In combination, these opportunistic innovations and marked continuities suggest that the Seneca residents of the Townley-Read site maintained significant control over scheduling daily labor, allocating land, and providing for subsistence. The archaeological evidence therefore provides little support for the idea that the Senecas at Townley-Read were “colonized”; instead they were holding their own with European colonial powers and perhaps even thriving.

The archaeological work of Kenneth Kelly (1997, 2002) provides two additional examples of Postcolumbian cultural entanglement. Kelly (2002:96) describes how the African slave-trading kingdoms of Hueda (1660–1727) and Dahomey (1727–1894), located in present-day Bénin, were able to “regulate and manipulate” the European trading presence to a remarkable degree. Kelly’s (1999, 2002) work centered on Savi, a city that functioned as Hueda’s capital from its founding after Hueda achieved independence from the Allada kingdom in the mid-seventeenth century until its destruction by rivals from Dahomey in 1727. The site remained abandoned until excavation took place, making for excellent archaeological preservation. Kelly excavated both nonelite contexts and portions of a 6.5-ha palace compound, which was partially enclosed by a system of ditches.

Savi’s location alone shows the degree of control exerted by Hueda over its trading relationships with Europeans. The site was separated from the ocean by 10 km of marshes and lagoons, making it relatively inaccessible to European military and naval forces (Kelly, 2002:105). Hueda’s rulers stipulated that European trade enclaves be built within the royal compound at Savi, where they could be closely monitored. Similar to the Iroquois, Hueda was also able to “play” multiple European powers (including the English, Dutch, Portuguese, and French) against each other. Archaeological data from Savi indicate that most European goods were clustered in the palace compound, including European and Chinese ceramics, firearms, fine glassware, and alcohol bottles (Kelly, 1997:365). The only trade materials with wide distribution in both elite and nonelite contexts were glass beads and pipes used to smoke imported tobacco (Kelly, 1997:364). These data suggest that the rulers of Hueda maintained significant control not only over the relationships with European traders but also over their own populace.

Hueda’s successor Dahomey used a slightly different strategy to control European trading centers by placing them in an “easily manageable cluster” in the capital at Ouidah (Kelly, 2002:109). Although the French, British, and Portuguese each were allowed to build a small fort, maintaining a small radius of control, these forts were located 3 km from the sea, and only 300 m from each other. Dahomey also installed a regulatory official called the Yoyogan to monitor European activity. The cultural boundaries Dahomey established proved to be durable. Prior to the late nineteenth century, Kelly finds little evidence for creolization of African and European forms at Ouidah; as one example, “there is nothing to suggest any innovation or other changes in Ouidah architecture … despite increased wealth, opportunities for ‘Atlantic creole’ populations to develop, and participation in the Atlantic trade” (Kelly, 2002:112).

The Seneca Iroquois, Hueda, and Dahomey examples each illustrate how Native autonomy was used to constrain European influence, preserve boundaries, and maintain continuities in vital cultural institutions. In each case, indigenous groups appear to have been free of European territorial control (except on a very small scale) and acted largely outside the constraints of European hegemonic control as well. That these examples of long-term entanglement relied on overhunting populations of many fur-bearing mammals on a grand scale and warfare on distant American Indian groups (in the Iroquois case), and on the ongoing procurement of slaves from the interior (in the cases of Hueda and Dahomey) demonstrates that the limited autonomy of cultures “entangled” with Europeans cannot easily be valorized or “romanticized” in Roseberry’s terms.

Limited Radius of Colonial Control: Fort Ross

In 1812, the Russian-American Company established a set of outposts known as the Ross Counter in what is now Northern California to generate sea otter pelts for trade to China. This Russian colony consisted of an administrative center at Fort Ross, a port, three outlying farms/ranches, and one island hunting camp (Lightfoot, 2005:5). The colony was established in the territories of indigenous Kashaya Pomo, Coast Miwok, and Southern Pomo Indians, and Russian colonists were accompanied by Native Alaskans (primarily Alutiiq men imported for their otter-hunting skills), Northwest Coast Indians, Native Siberians, Native Hawaiians, and creoles of mixed European-indigenous descent. Despite declining otter yields over time, the colony endured until 1841, when its assets were sold to entrepreneur Johann Sutter. Excavations at sites within and adjacent to the colony (especially at Fort Ross) have provided intriguing data on this complex, multiethnic settlement (my summary relies on Lightfoot [2005], Lightfoot et al. [1998], and Martinez [1997]).

The settlement plan at Fort Ross reflected the desire of Russian administrators to materialize a four-tier ethnic and social hierarchy at the site. At the top of the hierarchy were Russian administrators, who lived inside the stockade; next were creoles, who occupied middle-level positions in the colony’s bureaucracy; third were Native Alaskans, who had their own neighborhood on the Pacific side of the stockade; and last were Native Californians, who lived in a separate neighborhood on the landward side of the fort. Extensive excavations in the Native Alaskan Neighborhood have revealed copious material traces of “interethnic households,” primarily formed by unions between Native Alaskan men and Native Californian women (Lightfoot et al., 1998). These households followed what might be called a bicultural pattern: the layout and location of the neighborhood itself (all houses could see the ocean and the boat landing), architectural principles, and hunting technology reflected Alutiiq precedents, while the organization of house interior, cooking technology, food preparation techniques, and refuse-disposal practices followed Kashaya Pomo traditions. Thus the organization of daily life facilitated the maintenance of two separate cultural identities. Bicultural households in some early Spanish colonies, such as Puerto Real on the island of Hispanola (Deagan, 1996) and St. Augustine in present-day Florida (Deagan, 1983), also exhibit this gendered and somewhat public/private dichotomy (see also Voss, 2008b).

The Tomato Patch site, a Kashaya Pomo village about 5 km southeast of the Ross stockade excavated by Antoinette Martinez (Lightfoot, 2005:161; Martinez, 1997), provides an interesting perspective on the radius of control exerted by the Ross Colony. The village was inhabited both prior to and during the Russian occupation at Fort Ross, and although the dating of individual deposits remains problematic, there is a striking degree of continuity between deposits made previous to Russian arrival and those contemporary with the fort. First, the site continued to be occupied despite the very close proximity of a colonial military installation. Architectural features, including a large structure that may have been a sweat lodge, and village layout follow indigenous precedents. Foodways at the Tomato Patch site very closely match pre-Russian sites in terms of mollusk use and very few European domesticated animal remains were found at the site; the relatively low proportion of deer bones may reflect that the colonial presence limited hunting opportunities (Lightfoot, 2005:174; Martinez, 1997:150–151). The main forms of European material culture found at Tomato Patch were glass fragments and ceramic sherds. Some glass fragments were reworked into tools using indigenous methods previously used on obsidian; some ceramic sherds were “smoothed about the edges and drilled for possible ornamentation” (Martinez, 1997:149). Martinez (1997:152) concludes that there is “strong evidence for continuity in traditional practices as well as village layout.” The Tomato Patch site certainly was close enough to Fort Ross to be subject to occasional hegemonic pressures, but it seems safe to conclude that the village was outside the fort’s effective zone of control. It is worth repeating that this village was only 5 km from the fort.

Similar indigenous material signatures are also visible in the Native Californian village at Fort Ross (Lightfoot, 2005:166). The Kashaya Pomo women who lived at Fort Ross (both in the Native Californian and Native Alaskan villages) apparently were relatively free to circulate between the fort and their home villages and documents reveal that marriages to Native Alaskans were relatively short-lived (Lightfoot, 2005:146, 171; Martinez, 1997:143). This suggests that the Kashaya Pomo who resided at Fort Ross cannot be considered distinct from the Pomo population who remained in the interior. Furthermore, colonial social controls exerted at the outlying Russian ranches and farms likely were even less than those present at the fort.

Pomo communities (and women especially) therefore utilized the resources (material and sexual) at Fort Ross intermittently and opportunistically, and preserved their relative autonomy by deploying foodstuffs, goods, and information received in the Russian colony for the benefit of the home villages (Lightfoot, 2005:180). Fort Ross’s small radius of control no doubt facilitated the significant degree of Native Californian cultural continuity seen both at the fort and in its hinterland. All of this suggests that the relationship between the Russians and the bulk of the Kashaya Pomo population is better described as cultural entanglement than as colonialism.

Complicating Colonizer and Colonized: Ireland, Cape Colony, and Colonial California

The three cases discussed in this section more readily fit the definition of “colonialism”: in each instance, large groups of colonists were able to establish direct territorial control over indigenous groups. Such colonial situations demonstrate the intricacies of group interest and identity politics. Complex “cross-cutting social networks” (Lightfoot and Martinez, 1995) were established and the creation and negotiation of new, creolized cultural forms and novel forms of identity were both widespread and intense (Deagan, 1983, 1996; Loren, 2001, 2005).

Irish responses to the large-scale English attempt to extend spatial control over their homeland in the sixteenth century provide a clear demonstration that colonized populations are heterogeneous and divided in their interests. James Delle (1999) discusses the 1565–1605 English expansion into Munster, the southwesternmost of Ireland’s four provinces. Sixteenth-century English encroachment in Munster followed on an earlier instance of English colonialism: Anglo-Normans had expanded into the region in the twelfth century, where they established themselves as local elites and eventually adopted many local cultural forms (including language, architecture, and kinship norms). Although these “Old English” populations had maintained some ties and allegiance to England, they were as adversely impacted by the sixteenth-century colonization as were Gaelic populations. The Anglo-Norman family of the Earl of Desmond led a series of major rebellions against the incursions of the “New English” during 1569–1583, which were bloodily repressed.

Delle (1999) uses elite architecture constructed during the lengthy process of English re-assertion of control in Munster to monitor the responses of Gaelic and Anglo-Norman elites to the renewed English colonial project. Major contrasts exist between Gaelic tower houses—four- or five-storied buildings where the main hall was located on the top floor—and English-style structures that were symmetrical, oriented horizontally rather than vertically, and had diplomatically significant spaces on the ground floor (Delle, 1999:23). Some local elites used combinations of Gaelic- and English-style architecture to express their allegiance to the colonists, while other leaders continued to build traditional tower houses as a gesture of resistance.

Early on, Thomas Butler, the “Old English” Earl of Ormond (a distant cousin of England’s Queen Elizabeth and a self-professed Protestant), constructed a Tudor-style house in Carrick-on-Suir during the 1560s, clearly expressing his sympathy to the English colonial project (Delle, 1999:23). Kanturk Castle, erected by the Gaelic chieftain McDonough McCarthy in the 1590s, provides an example of what Delle (1999:27) labels “spatial collusion.” The never-completed castle contains a multistory “flanker” at each corner reminiscent of the tower house form, but the overall plan was “more likely built to resemble the English house forms being constructed by the new English elite” (Delle, 1999:27). Intriguingly, the castle contains two separate entrances (Delle, 1999:Figs. 8 and 9): an ornate doorway with multistory columns that copied English models, and a simpler doorway “very similar in form and decoration to arches found in tower houses throughout Munster” (Delle, 1999:29). Loughmoe Castle in County Tipperary expressed a similar mixture of styles by attaching an English-style house to a preexisting tower house, with a second tower added to complete the symmetry of the building (Delle, 1999:Fig. 10). In contrast, other Irish elites continued to construct tower houses in traditional form, exemplified by the circa 1585 Ballynacarriga Castle (Delle, 1999:Figs. 11 and 12).

While the social effects of these elite materializations depend on their being seen and used by varying segments of the colonizing and colonized populations (see Matthews et al., 2002:113–119), the diversity in responses to English colonization illustrates that colonized groups were far from monolithic, and that responses to colonial incursions are difficult to predict based on preexisting allegiances and antagonisms. Both Anglo-Norman and Gaelic leaders built “creolized” dwellings that made nods to English cultural forms, and Gaelic and “Old English” leaders resisted English colonialism, both symbolically and militarily. English colonial officials used this mix of allegiances and antagonisms to their advantage, often pitting Irish factions against another.

A contrasting point about the tensions and contradictions in the designs of colonizing elites is presented by locally made, coarse earthenware copies of Dutch ceramic vessel forms found in the Cape Colony in South Africa. Stacey Jordan and Carmel Schrire (2002) explore the interesting social implications of these vessels, arguing that the local copies served to “articulate the statuses and identities being produced” within the colony (Jordan and Schrire, 2002:255). The vessels serve as a key to social tensions and contradictions within the colonizing population.

The Dutch East India Company (or VOC) established a post at the Cape of Good Hope in 1652 to provide meat for ships heading east (see also Hall, 2000; Schrire, 1995). The Cape Colony became a thoroughly cosmopolitan community, including (among others) Dutch immigrants, indigenous Khoikhoi, Indonesian slaves, and Chinese convicts. Little Dutch pottery was imported to the colony, but by 1665, the VOC brought the first of what proved to be at least 19 European potters to the Cape. Thin-section analysis has determined that these potters made local versions of Dutch vessel forms such as tripod cooking pots, skillets, saucepans, and dripping pans (Jordan and Schrire, 2002:246–248). While this might appear to be a straightforward attempt to replicate homeland culture in a colonial location, archaeology has revealed that the coarse earthenware vessels were used entirely by lower-class residents of the colony; elites used metal vessels and imported ceramics (such as porcelain) instead.

Why did the VOC go through the effort of importing potters to make wares for the lower social stratum? Jordan and Schrire (2002:258) argue that copy vessels expressed VOC officials’ belief that they could engineer society within the colony. The use of locally produced, Dutch-style ceramics created spheres of material culture that separated elites from commoners and also Europeans from “others.” In the eyes of company elites, by allowing lower-class Europeans to make daily material reference to the Netherlands, these vessels helped distinguish lower-class Dutch residents from slaves (two groups who otherwise were treated in a relatively similar fashion). The copy wares also had an assimilative purpose, in that they were intended to introduce the African and Asian wives of lower-class European men to Dutch-style domesticity.

In practice, company-funded ceramics ended up doing something far different than creating a “Holland on the Cape.” The VOC elite’s fantasy of control was subverted by the social realities of the vessels’ users. Dutch copy pottery predominantly ended up being used by non-white women, particularly local Khoikhoi women and Indonesian slaves, who produced a cuisine that was far from Dutch; cooking on the Cape was highly creolized, using rice, Indonesian-style spicy relishes, and other culinary elements foreign to the metropolitan table. Jordan and Schrire (2002:264) conclude that “[d]espite the fact that the vessel forms were intended to be icons of Dutch domesticity and morality, they actually contributed to a specifically colonial Eurasian household, participating in the creolization of both the foodways milieu and the Cape household itself.”

Barbara Voss’s (2005, 2008a) study of settler dynamics in the San Francisco Presidio in California demonstrates broadscale changes in the assertion of identity among a colonizing population. Spanish colonization of Alta California proceeded after 1769 in order to secure the region against Russian and British expansion. Spain deployed a time-tested colonizing plan, using three types of settlement: missions, where Native Californians were to be converted to Christianity and agricultural labor; pueblos or civilian settlements; and presidios, fortifications that also served as “the administrative centers, judicial seats, marketplaces, and residential nuclei of isolated frontier districts” (Voss, 2005:462). The degree to which Spanish colonists were able to assert control over the indigenous population in Alta California is remarkable. Extension of colonial dominance likely rested on European-induced environmental alterations in a somewhat brittle ecosystem; major enforced changes in subsistence practices toward agriculture and away from gathering, hunting, and fishing; the military backup presidios provided to missions sparsely populated with Europeans; and raw force, including systematic use of sexual violence (Allen, 1998; Lightfoot, 2005; Voss, 2000).

Within presidios and pueblos, the settler population was controlled in part through the sistema de castas, a complex set of legal categories for social identity based on “purity of blood” (Voss, 2005:463). The casta system made core distinctions between Spanish, African, and Native American ethnicities and established categories for the children of interethnic marriages; one’s position within the system helped determine the range of occupations that could be occupied, potential marriage partners, and legal treatment. However, as with “top-down” VOC plans for ceramic use in the Cape Colony, the social reality in Spain’s California colonies was significantly more complex. Voss documents that many of the settlers living in the San Francisco Presidio (founded in 1776) were themselves the descendants of Mesoamerican Indians and Africans: “the colonizers were themselves the very product of colonization” (Voss, 2005:465). The casta system also encouraged a certain amount of fluidity; certain people were able to manipulate their status over time, and at times changing dress and behavior was sufficient to alter the category within which one was placed (Voss, 2005:463–464; see also Loren, 2005). Census records indicate that Presidio residents were classified as Español, Mestizo, Mulato, and Indio.

Despite the potential for social division inherent in the casta system, archaeological evidence from the San Francisco Presidio suggests that its residents used material culture, foodways, and architecture to develop a shared identity that transcended their multiple origins. Excavations at the site focused on a very large trash midden within Building 13 that has been tightly dated to 1780–1800 (Voss, 2005:465). A variety of evidence from the Building 13 midden demonstrates relative material homogeneity among the ethnically diverse presidio population (Voss, 2005:465–467). Hollowware cooking pots—many of which were locally produced, undecorated wares—predominate in the midden ceramic assemblage, and vessel size analysis indicates that most households cooked and consumed meals individually. Food remains are also relatively uniform and overwhelmingly consist of domesticated species, such as cattle, wheat, corn, buckwheat, peas, and beans. Adornment items were relatively scarce.

The architecture at the site reveals a complementary pattern. Initial residential construction at the Presidio was done with a wide variety of building materials and techniques, many of which were “endemic to the northwest Mexican provinces from which the presidial settlers had been recruited” (Voss, 2005:468). However, by the 1790s, adobe began to be used with much greater frequency, and an 1815 expansion of the quadrangle appears to have been built entirely of adobe. Mud–brick architecture does not function particularly well in foggy Northern California, and contemporary observers expressed their frustration with the material. Rather than being adopted for a functional reason, Voss (2005:470) suggests that adobe’s main advantage may have been that it alone “was distinctly colonial.” Residential forms and house size also became increasingly standardized over time, and the presidio compound was fully enclosed and its exterior facade made uniform.

Surprisingly, material traits associated with indigenous Californians are nearly absent at the San Francisco Presidio, including Native-produced ceramics, ground stone tools, wild foods (particularly the deer, shellfish, wild grass seeds, and acorns typical in the local diet), and (eventually) indigenous forms of house construction. Voss suggests that the settler community at the presidio gradually adopted a relatively uniform set of material culture and residential practices that served purposes of internal unification. Crucially, it also differentiated residents from local Native Californian groups: “Given that most of the colonists were themselves descended at least in part from colonized Mesoamerican Indians, it seems possible that colonial military settlers were materializing through these practices what could not be accomplished through biological phenotype alone: a physical distinction between colonizers and colonized” (Voss, 2005:467). Voss suggests that the presidio’s residents as a community created a new regional settler identity as Californios and that this can be termed a process of ethnogenesis (Voss, 2005:465).

These three cases complicate the colonizer/colonized dynamic in situations of true colonialism. Elite architecture in Munster illustrates that colonized populations were internally divided and that some local leaders actively sought out positions of power as intermediaries for the colonizing group. The Cape Colony ceramics show the unintended consequences of elite actions upon diverse subordinate groups within settler society. The San Francsico Presidio evidence demonstrates that the cultural diversity seen in many colonial contexts, a product both of the intermingling of people from diverse backgrounds and the divisive intentions of legal codes like the casta system, could on occasion be overcome with new forms of unity. It should be noted that the new unity of Californios was primarily an assertion and solidification of the power over indigenous groups that the presidio’s residents continued to hold.

Postcolumbian Archaeology as Colonialism/Decolonizing Postcolumbian Archaeology

It is crucial to note that the archaeology of the modern European expansion not only studies colonialism, but also in some ways embodies colonialism. Postcolumbian archaeology often impacts the members of descendant communities who had subaltern positions historically and continue to do so today, and if they are not vigilant archaeologists may use their privileged social position to reinforce the political-economic relations of domination present in the wider society. Descendants of the people who lived at the sites being excavated arguably have the most at stake when archaeology takes place, since archaeology may desecrate the graves of their ancestors, legitimize or delegitimize claims to occupation of an area in the past, and/or form the basis for land-use and policy decisions. But descendant communities frequently are legally, physically, and intellectually barred from interpretation of their own past, and receive little of the material benefits of archaeology (including jobs, prestige, knowledge about cultural resources, and the like).

There is no question that archaeology in the past acted in a colonial manner; this colonialism encompassed the day-to-day conduct of fieldwork, the theoretical models used to interpret archaeological remains, and the structure of archaeological discourse. Archaeologists were primarily upper-class white men from Europe and its colonies and their careers and research agendas were pursued with little to no input from subaltern descendant communities. McNiven and Russell (2005) provide a critical overview of the colonial aspects of theories about cultural difference and history that have been (and in some cases continue to be) invoked by archaeologists.

The 1915–1929 excavations undertaken at Pecos Pueblo, New Mexico, under the direction of Alfred V. Kidder (1958; Thomas, 2000:106–110, 216–218) provide a key example of archaeological colonialism. Pecos Pueblo was occupied from the 1200s until its abandonment in 1838; the site contained four sequential Spanish mission churches used in the seventeenth through nineteenth century (Levine, 1999:18–26). While Kidder’s rigorous use of stratigraphic excavation and seriation and the project’s contributions to the chronology of the region rightly have been cited as methodological breakthroughs in American archaeology (Thomas, 1999), the project also unearthed 1,938 burials, including 56 interments from the nave of one of the mission churches, and 59 “burials at length” (extended burials), most of which Kidder (1958:279, 299–305) felt were “post-Spanish.” Excavations took place with minimal input from the descendant community living only 110 km away at Jemez Pueblo. The excavated skeletons (subsequently housed at the Robert S. Peabody Museum in Andover, Massachusetts) were used by the physical anthropologist Earnest A. Hooton to argue that the inhabitants of the Pueblo were composed of multiple racial stocks, some “primitive” and some “capable of higher cultural development” (Hooton, 1930:355, 362). As a consequence of the federal Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) of 1990, the remains were returned to descendants and reburied at Pecos Pueblo in 1999 (Thomas, 2000:216–218).

While legislative action and ethical reassessments over the past 25 years have blunted some of the most colonial aspects of archaeology, traces of earlier practices remain. As Smith and Wobst (2005a:5) note, “relationships between archaeologists and members of Indigenous groups continue to be unequal and asymmetrical.” Colonialism remains ingrained in some legal processes. For example, in New York state, American Indian graves on private property receive little legal protection (since most are unmarked, they are not legally classified as “cemeteries”), and many cultural resource management regulations have not been amended so that American Indian Nations receive timely notification about impacts on archaeological sites and other areas of significance (Amato, 2002). Even NAGPRA, hailed as a significant victory for indigenous groups in the United States, imposed tight deadlines and severe financial pressure on indigenous groups seeking to recover human remains and artifacts under the law (Ferguson et al., 1996; Fine-Dare, 2002). Developments in the high-profile Kennewick Man case seemingly guarantee mainstream archaeologists relatively unrestricted access to older sites occupied by Indian ancestors in the name of investigating “universal” human heritage (Fine-Dare, 2005; Thomas, 2000).

Many archaeologists agree that there is a pressing need to “decolonize” the practice and theory of contemporary archaeology (e.g., Silliman, 2008; Smith and Wobst, 2005b; Watkins, 2000). The most direct means to this end is to facilitate greater indigenous participation in archaeology and increasing numbers of indigenous people are becoming archaeologists and cultural resource managers (Smith and Wobst 2005a). However, archaeological practitioners (perhaps especially in Postcolumbian archaeology) remain overwhelmingly of European descent, suggesting that revision of standard procedures to produce relations of cultural entanglement should be an initial goal. One of the major ways to do so is to replace the “top-down” structure of archaeological discourse with one that integrates members of the descendant communities, archaeologists, and other interested parties into the research process as equal partners.

Applied anthropologists (e.g., Chambers, 2004; Van Willigen, 2002) have developed a typology that describes different forms of participation; their distinction between consultation and collaboration is particularly useful. Consultation describes situations where archaeologists present the descendant community with a fully developed research plan and descendants are given the opportunity to comment. While this process provides descendants with the opportunity to restrict the actions of archaeologists (by curtailing actions that are culturally interpreted as desecration, for example), the descendant community’s role is largely reactive. Collaboration describes a situation where archaeologists and descendant communities mutually develop the structure and content of an archaeological endeavor. Two projects in the archaeology of Postcolumbian indigenous sites illustrate the distinction.

Janet Spector’s (1993) well-known investigation at Little Rapids, a nineteenth-century Wahpeton Dakota village in present-day Minnesota, provides clear examples of both processes. During the early stages of her project, Spector sent a letter to the Minnesota Indian Affairs Intertribal Board (an organization of indigenous groups) describing her intended fieldwork, and the board responded with their approval for the project (Spector, 1993:10–11). Here, Spector consulted with the board and gave them an opportunity to assess and potentially alter her research design, but she did so only after plans for the dig were already at a relatively advanced stage—the site to be excavated had already been picked out, and the research goals of investigating the site from a gendered perspective had been determined. Spector subsequently developed ties with Chris Cavender, a Wahpeton cultural leader. Together they collaboratively developed a curriculum for the 1986 field school at the site, incorporating lessons in Dakota language and culture, and interdisciplinary presentations on local history and ecology (Spector, 1993:13–17). Even here, however, indigenous involvement with the archaeological end of the project was limited: while the Minnesota Indian Affairs Council called off excavations that had impacted a possible dance ground (Spector, 1993:121), Dakotas had little positive impact on the conduct of fieldwork.

As Spector’s work demonstrates, many projects begin with consultation and develop into collaboration only when both parties have enough experience with each other to form a relationship of mutual, if not unqualified, trust. Few archaeological projects to date have fully realized collaboration at every step of the archaeological process, which requires descendant community input into deciding whether excavation is to take place; forming research questions; selecting sites; making decisions about field procedures; determining what types of evidence should and should not be collected in the field; specifying where collections should be curated and how they should be treated; analyzing the data; and writing up and publishing the results of the project. The 1993 Pathways project between the Innu Nation of Canada and the Arctic Studies Center of the Smithsonian Institution (Loring and Ashini, 2000:180–184) provides an excellent example of a thoroughly collaborative project that accomplished each party’s distinctive goals.

The project, developed by Smithsonian archaeologist Stephen Loring and Daniel Ashini of the Innu Cultural Center, focused on Innu use of their ancestral territory in the early twentieth century, prior to their resettlement in sedentary villages by the Canadian government. Innu goals for the project were to obtain cultural resource management training for Nation members, facilitate on-site intergenerational contact between elders and youth in their traditional territory, and help document occupation of that territory for land-claims purposes. Archaeologists intended to collect excavation data, document new sites, and record oral histories associated with specific sites. Project members spent a month in ancestral Innu territory. The group initiated some excavations, aided by thoroughly trained community members. But mainly the group traveled to different sites and resource areas at the bequest of elders who had hunted, fished, and gathered on the land before resettlement. The elders taught Innu youth subsistence practices, including hunting, processing, and cooking techniques. The opportunity to record Innu oral histories about specific sites and practices as they were being told to the youths perhaps provided the main value of the project to archaeologists.

Collaboration in the Pathways project did not stop with field procedures; it has also extended to written work. Loring and Ashini’s (2000) co-written piece contains explicit discussion of contemporary Innu political-economic problems, linking the past to the present in a way that few archaeological texts do. It also frankly recognizes that local knowledge and archaeological data do not always agree. The authors outline how archaeology provides information that (a) confirms what the Innu already knew; (b) contributes to an elaboration of Innu perceptions of the past; and (c) offers perceptions “not generally recognized by the Innu” (Loring and Ashini, 2000:174). The final category includes the surprising finding that sustained Innu reliance on caribou hunting first developed during the eighteenth century as a consequence of their displacement from coastal environments by Inuit groups (Loring and Ashini, 2000:175). The article demonstrates that coauthorship need not mean watered-down “writing by committee” but instead can include an acknowledgment of differences. Control over writing is something that archaeologists very rarely surrender (see also Warner and Baldwin, 2004), but coauthorship may be one of the most important steps to developing collaborative projects with lasting and widespread effects. Excavations only affect the small number of people that actually participate and those they tell about the project, but durable books, reports, and articles can be read by many people across time and space. “Digging together” may be the most effective way to improve relations in the short term, but long-term improvement in the relationship between archaeologists of European descent and subaltern descendant groups requires that archaeologists learn to write in new ways as well.

To sum up, these examples of archaeological projects investigating the post-1415 European expansion illustrate that archaeologists must be vigilant in determining the specific contours of power relations. Not all Postcolumbian intercultural relations can be characterized as colonialism, and to label situations as “colonial” without adequate analysis of the structural limitations on the actions of both colonizer and colonized may underestimate the power and autonomy of indigenous groups in the past. Archaeologists must also be attentive toward the political-economic implications of their actions in the present, so as to transform the colonial structure of prior archaeological discourse and practice into a pluralistic archaeology thoroughly entangled with the concerns of descendant communities.