Between the Longue Durée and the Short Purée: Postcolonial Archaeologies of indigenous history in colonial North America

Authors

  • Stephen W. Silliman University of Massachusetts

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.31239/vtg.v1i13.15128

Keywords:

Archaeological Theory, Scales, Colonialism

Abstract

Archaeologists who study Indigenous cultures in the context of European colonialism are frequently caught in a conundrum of temporal scale. How do we represent, render, and interpret Indigenous practices and peoples in ways that not only respect the complexities of the colonial world and their actions therein but also situate their lives in the context of their own unique short- and long-term cultural histories? Capturing this duality has not been easy. Part of the problem is that archaeologists have not fully heeded the call by Lightfoot (1995) to conduct truly multiscalar, diachronic studies of colonialism and Indigenous responses to its many forms. Part of it also relates to the ways that archaeological concepts, terms, and methods are not
yet decolonized and not yet attuned to the ways that people, past and present, relate to their own histories.

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Published

2022-04-21

How to Cite

Silliman, S. W. (2022). Between the Longue Durée and the Short Purée: Postcolonial Archaeologies of indigenous history in colonial North America. Vestígios - Revista Latino-Americana De Arqueologia Histórica, 13(1), 161–175. https://doi.org/10.31239/vtg.v1i13.15128

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Translation