Collection: Directories and Documents > Tanis Thorne Native Californian & Nisenan Collection

About This Item:

Title: Reconsidering the Legacies of Colonialism in Native North America (January 2013) Collection Type: Directories and Documents Collection Name: Tanis Thorne Native Californian & Nisenan Collection Author: Lee Panich Published: January 2013 # of Pages: 19 Download PDF: User Login Required Download OCR Text: User Login Required

Date Scanned: 2017-09-22 18:20:22 OCR Software Version #: tesseract 5.4.1 Item Sourced From: PDF First Created: 2025-03-17 05:52:12 Last Updated: 2025-03-17 05:52:12

Original Held At: Searls Historical Library Location: 161 Nevada City Hwy, Nevada City, CA 95959

Page: of 19  

108 2004; Thomas 2000). In focusing on differences between Indian and European artifacts, we perpetuate a flawed, colonial distinction that masks variation and sets up problematic expectations for what native identities will look like archaeologically (Silliman 2009). Instead, it may be more fruitful to examine how native peoples actively constructed their identities socially over time— both before and after the onset of colonialism. Identity, however, is multiple and overlapping. As with constructivist notions of identity more broadly, archaeological applications usually rely on concepts of ethnic identity developed by Barth (1969) and others (see Wilcox 2009:56—68). Ethnic affiliation is but one aspect of an individual’s social being, however, and we should therefore be attentive to the differential participation of groups or individuals based on age, gender, or status within a particular Native American society. Groups, families, and individuals all have different histories and motivations that may be reflected in the archaeological record (Frink 2010; Rubertone 2000:43 1-432). For developing archaeologies of persistence, one of the most useful findings of earlier acculturation research may be that significant variation existed within native societies in regards to the negotiation of colonialism. Members of a particular group were often seen as constituting “conservative” factions that maintained stronger ties to precontact ways of life or “progressive” groups that more eagerly adopted aspects of EuroAmerican culture (Linton 1940). Although each case will vary, we must take such differential motivations and participation into account in thinking about how and why cultural identities are transformed and/or perpetuated over time. Ethnogenesis, in particular, has been employed as a framework for understanding the presence of myriad Indian identities in the Americas. Archaeologists studying ethnogenesis in the colonial period have focused on instances of identity creation and transformation, in which groups came to be internally defined and/or externally recognized due to shared practices, experiences, or goals. In this way, ethnogenesis can be seen as a process, or even an intentional strategy, of indigenous resistance or persistence in certain contexts (Hill 1996; Preucel 2010; Weik 2009; Wilcox 2009). As Voss suggests, the wide acceptance of ethnogenesis in the social sciences has AMERICAN ANTIQUITY [Vol. 78, No. 1, 2013 “put to rest debates about ‘cultural authenticity’ by demonstrating that ethnic identities are in a continual process of interaction and transformation” (2008:36). Although I feel that a focus on persistence, as opposed to ethnogenesis, may in many cases better capture the idea of continuity through change (Panich 2010a:230; and see below), the archaeological literature on ethnogenesis offers a prime example of the applicability of constructivist ideas about identity to the archaeology of colonialism in North America. Practice Many archaeologists investigating the persistence of indigenous groups utilize agent-centered and practice-based approaches based primarily on the writings of Bourdieu (1977, 1990) and Giddens (1979). The archaeological applications of agency and practice theory have been thoroughly discussed elsewhere (see Dobres 2000; Dobres and Robb 2000; Dornan 2002; Hegmon 2003; Joyce and Lopiparo 2005; Pauketat 2001), leaving scholars in general agreement that agents are both enabled and constrained by the material and social conditions of life. Within this context, people are understood to embody their own cultural predispositions and traditions, but it is also given that such traditions are always in the process of being negotiated and modified even as they are reproduced (Pauketat 2001:79). For archaeologists interested in persistence, a focus on practice provides a window into daily life and offers a way to highlight the short-term trends that may be lost in the examination of long-term diachronic processes (Silliman 2010:268). As Pauketat suggests, practices are “both the medium of tradition and the medium of social change” (2001:80). By examining the ordering of daily life, we can begin to understand the interrelationship between change and continuity that played out in colonial situations (Lightfoot et al. 1998). In contrast to trait-list models of cultural change in which the adoption of new materials by indigenous communities signals a loss of cultural authenticity, a focus on practice forces us to examine not just where an object originated but who was using it and how (Silliman 2009:15). Accordingly, a broadly conceived practice-based approach allows for a consideration of the colonial period as a context for native action, rather than