AN ARCHAEOLOGY OF EUROCENTRISM
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Charles E. Orser, Jr.
The role of Europe and Europeans in the archaeology of post-1500 history has recently been critiqued. Some research has
been pejoratively labeled Eurocentrism. This paper addresses the problems with adopting an emotional understanding of
Eurocentrism and argues instead for its archaeological examination within the framework of an explicit multiscalar modern-world (historical) archaeology. An example comes from seventeenth-century Dutch settlements located in and around
present-day Albany, New York.
Hace poco se criticó el papel de europa y los europeos en la arqueología después de 1500. Algunas investigaciones han sido
prejudicialmente designado eurocéntricos. Este artículo se dirige a los problemas de adoptar un conocimiento puramente ideológico del eurocentrismo y en su lugar argumenta que se examina dentro un marco explícito de escalas múltiples de la arqueología del mundo histórico y moderno. Se proporciona un ejemplo de los asentamientos hólandeses del siglo diecisiete
localizados en los circundantes de Albany, Nueva York, pero también esta perspectiva es importante para los arqueólogos que
analizan la época antes del contacto.
W
hat is the proper role for Europeans in
the archaeology of the recent past?
This simple question has become increasingly relevant at the outset of the twenty-first
century. The mid-twentieth-century archaeologists
who founded American historical archaeology
took it for granted that the archaeology of European settlements would frame their field and they
overtly expressed a nascent global perspective by
arguing that “a comparability of artifacts [existed]
between East Africa and Virginia” (Pilling
1968:8). This approach came to be called “a comparative international perspective” (Deetz 1991:8).
Large-scale, truly international comparison
has yet to be accomplished in historical archaeology, but post-Columbian, European colonialism
has always been in the consciousnesses of historical archaeologists. In fact, as early as 1943 the
archaeology of post-1500 history could be reasonably termed “Colonial-Archaeology” (Setzler
1943:218). The earliest historical archaeologists
envisioned their research as the intellectual counterpart of precolumbian archaeology, the field in
which most of them had been trained (see South
1994). Most historical archaeologists continued to
acknowledge their interest in colonialism, if
sometimes only obliquely, and by the mid-1970s
most practitioners had accepted that their focus of
study was “the archaeology of the spread of European culture throughout the world since the fifteenth century and its impact on indigenous peoples” (Deetz 1977:5).
Today, most practicing historical archaeologists have abandoned the callow understanding
that culture contact is exposed by the quantitative
ratio of European to indigenous artifacts (e.g.,
Quimby 1939, 1966; Quimby and Spoehr 1951).
Archaeologists who have reframed the intellectual
position of the discipline toward European colonialism no longer perceive European artifacts as
historical documents designed by superior people,
nor do they believe that indigenous peoples uncritically and impassively accepted the foreign artifacts they were offered. Archaeologists no
longer imagine Europeans as the only effective
cultural performers, agents of superiority who
could perfectly enact their colonial plans in perfect conformity with their original designs com-
Charles E. Orser, Jr. 䡲 Department of Anthropology, Division of Research and Collections, New York State Museum,
Albany, NY 12230 ([email protected])
American Antiquity 77(4), 2012, pp. 737–755
Copyright ©2012 by the Society for American Archaeology
737
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738
AMERICAN ANTIQUITY
pletely oblivious to the natural environment (e.g.,
Mrozowski 2010; Rockman 2010) and to the indigenous peoples whom they encountered (e.g.,
Jordan 2008; Lucas 2006; Lydon 2009; Metcalf
2010; Middleton 2008). This new wave of research (after Stoler 1992:319–320) has profoundly altered the discourse of colonialism by
promoting concepts of identity and entanglement,
acceptance and rejection, acquiescence and resistance. In the process, the archaeological understanding of post-Columbian history has been
significantly enriched.
It would be anachronistic and retrograde to
criticize the achievements realized during the
maturation of historical archaeology into a more
culturally sensitive and anthropologically relevant endeavor. The intellectual achievements
within the realm of culture contact studies alone
have exponentially improved the appositeness
and extra-disciplinary authority of the field and
have transformed the archaeology of the colonial endeavor into a major intellectual force with
transdisciplinary relevance. Without seeking to diminish these improvements, I do wish, however,
to engage with one facet of the project to transfigure the archaeology of colonialism: recent attempts to assign Eurocentrism only as a pejorative
label rather than to investigate it as a cultural
product of post-Columbian global history.
My central thesis is that by adopting an undertheorized, purely ideological view of Eurocentrism in the effort to privilege heretofore silenced
non-European cultural histories—even in the
name of enfranchisement—has profound implications for archaeological practice. I argue that a
strict adherence to the silencing of Europe(ans) in
the name of rejecting Eurocentrism has the unintended consequence of masking the role of nationstate imperialism in the post-Renaissance world.
In attempting to rehabilitate indigenous history by
excising Europe(ans), researchers may mistakenly present conservative doxa (after Bourdieu
2003:22) and in the process offer deceptively
rosy images of past daily experience under colonial domination and oppression. Such acts of intellectual gentrification (after Žižek 1998) do
nothing to advance the decolonization of the anthropological project, but rather have the unintended consequence of “trivializing the experience of oppression” (Bourgois 1997:112). I argue
[Vol. 77, No. 4, 2012
that archaeologists interrogating the most recent
centuries have much to offer by unapologetically
interrogating the metanarrative of Eurocentrism
and thus reproblematizing the colonial European
world, believing that “understanding society often
requires a metanarrative” (Meskell and Preucel
2004:125). I explore here the critique of Eurocentrism in historical archaeology, explain the
rationale behind the creation of an explicit modern-world (historical) archaeology rooted in conscientious socio-structural framing, and address
Eurocentric expression in one part of colonial
North America, New Netherland.
Eurocentrism
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the
rulers of eight small countries in Western
Europe—accounting for only 1.6 percent of the
world’s land surface—controlled huge territories
and asserted myriad rights over hundreds of millions of colonial “subjects” (Abernethy 2000:6).
The desire of European (and later American)
rulers to transplant their citizens around the
globe—based on diverse political, religious,
philosophic, and economic rationales—was an
integral element of the imperialist project, which
at its root is “the practice, the theory, and the attitudes of a dominating metropolitan center ruling
a distant territory” (Said 1993:8). By the start of
the twentieth century, Europe’s role in colonizing,
conquering, and reshaping what came to be called
the Third World had created acute cultural crises
(Prashad 2007) as it became abundantly clear in
retrospect that “no one colonizes innocently” (Césaire 2000:39).
At its most basic, Eurocentrism is the perception that Europe constitutes the center of the universe. Eurocentrism is an internalized intellectual
space that inculcates biased cultural centering
(Sayyid 2003:128–129)—albeit in a loosely defined, relatively disorganized, and contextual
manner—that first grew to prominence during the
Renaissance among educated elites who had access to the most authoritative tracts of primitive
ethnography (see Gerbi 1973; Hodgen 1971; Lambropoulos 1993; Rabasa 1993; Smith 1999). The
most renowned polemists advised that Europe and
its peoples were specially endowed to conquer
the world as part of a universalist, evolutionary
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Orser]
AN ARCHAEOLOGY OF EUROCENTRISM
doctrine. This set of tenets—a collective “fallacy
of developmentalism” (Dussel 1993:67–68)—was
perfectly consistent with the modernist rationality
that characterized the European Enlightenment
(Kanth 2005:91) and the eventual development of
Social Darwinism (Brantlinger 2003). Eurocentrism thus developed as a rather incoherent, albeit
generally consistent and “spell-binding” (Peet
2005:937), set of distorted social theories that subjugated indigenous ways of being and knowing to
those of a collectivized Europe (Amin 1989:90;
Rabasa 1993:14). The persistence of these social
theories—often presented as tropes of liberation—
has often meant in practical terms that “Europe
works as a silent referent in historical knowledge”
(Chakrabarty 1992:2).
Widespread critical consciousness about Eurocentrism surfaced during the rise of multiculturalism, as community activists, cultural survivalists, and politically engaged scholars began
to argue that non-Western cultures—including
their traditions of art, literature, architecture,
dance, and music—have intrinsic value and deserve to be acknowledged on their own terms
(e.g., Hughes 1992). Long before the academic
“discovery” of Eurocentrism, however, a number
of oppressed groups in colonial and postcolonial
territories had voiced their opposition to the view
that the world revolved solely around
Europe(ans). The 1920s was an especially active
decade for the establishment of coteries of resistance to European imperialism. Many of these European-based organizations—such as the Ligue
Universelle de Défense de la Race Noire, La
Comité de Défense de la Race Nègre, and the
League Against Imperialism—had avowed Communist affiliations or at least had been influenced
by the emancipatory rhetoric of the Russian Revolution (Young 2001). The League specifically
openly advocated the building of revolutionary
forces to fight imperialist oppression in the cause
of global freedom and democracy (Jayawardena
1974:10; Johns 1975:216). At the same time,
Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement
and Conservation Association and African Communities League (UNIA)—founded in Jamaica in
1914—found adherents around the globe. Even in
apartheid South Africa, the Communist Party had
1,600 black members in 1928 (Cobley 1990:195).
Leaders of postcolonial resistance movements
739
continued to struggle for many years “to resolve
the problems to which Europe has not been able
to find the answers” (Fanon 1963:314), but that
Europeans, for the most part, had created or at
least exacerbated.
Individuals who directly experienced the personal cost of colonialist domination were not the
only opponents to Eurocentric policies. As early
as the 1820s, Jeremy Bentham (1830:1) had made
an impassioned challenge to France to surrender
its colonies, arguing that “justice, consistency,
policy, economy, honour, [and] generosity” all
demanded it. More recently, many prominent
scholars—largely led by literary critics—have
foregrounded the problems inherent in constructing European cultural assumptions as “the normal,
the natural [and] the universal” (Ashcroft et al.
1998:90–91). The European, post-Columbian
“obsession with self-aggrandizement” (Ephraim
2003:4)—which in history included the coalescence of capitalism, patriarchy, racism, colonialism, anthropocentrism, and Christian ideology
(Kanth 2005:91)—constructed Europe as
uniquely progressive and innovative and everyone
else much less so (Blaut 1993:18). For many, Europe became the quintessential embodiment of
cultural exceptionalism (e.g., Landes 1998).
Historians have been especially sensitive to the
charge of European exceptionalism, and many of
them have exposed the history of the exceptionalist discourse and explicitly disavowed its practice (e.g., Blaut 2000; McGerr 1991; Wilnetz
1984). Other historians have written global history from a non-Eurocentric perspective (e.g.,
Crossley 2008; Hart 2008; Marks 2002). Perhaps
the strongest, most concerted effort to demolish
the fallacy of Eurocentrism has come from Sinologists. Their examination of global history
has demonstrated that many of the cultural features generally attributed to Europe(ans) were actually first developed in Asia, most notably in
China (e.g., Frank 1998; Goody 2006; Pomeranz
2000; Wong 2000). As Frank (1998:117) has
noted, “the entire world economic order was—
literally—Sinocentric. Christopher Columbus and
after him many Europeans up until Adam Smith
knew that.” Statements such as these have understandably occasioned much debate and reanalysis (e.g., Duchesne 2001–2002). At a minimum, they proffer a global perspective on recent
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AMERICAN ANTIQUITY
history that is inclusive without being Eurocentric.
Historical archaeology in the United States
emerged as a profession during the rise of the anticolonial struggles that followed the Second
World War, but its practitioners managed to ignore
them. For the most part, they tended to segment
European and indigenous topics even in sociohistorical situations of direct, face-to-face cultural contact (e.g., Walthall 1991; Walthall and
Emerson 1992). As the field matured and began
to be refashioned as a truly global pursuit in the
1990s (Falk 1991; Hall 2000; Orser 1996), some
archaeologists responded to analytical segregation
by offering stiff critiques of the role that Europe
should play in the field. Their intellectual rationale was consistent with the emerging, more nuanced understanding of culture contact, as well as
with the developing interest in ethnogenesis, the
construction of history, and the realization that
colonization was not solely the province of postColumbian history (e.g., Cameron 2011; Dietler
2010; Dyson 1985; Gosden 2004; Lawrence and
Shepherd 2006; Lyons and Papadopoulos 2002).
These works collectively established that the creation of colonies—dependent territories situated
within empires (Abernethy 2000:21)—have a
much greater time depth and a substantially
greater geographical breadth than historical archaeologists had originally imagined. The broader
view of colonialism became archaeological
canon, even though a number of social theorists—
notably the proponents of world-systems
analysis—argued that the creation of a capitalist
world-system made post-Columbian colonialism
unique (Wallerstein 2004:23–41).
A more substantive engagement with the role
of Europe sought to reach beyond its narrowly
perceived spatial and temporal limits as postColumbian and western European, with critics
subtly questioning whether Europe was even a
valid research topic within anthropologically inspired historical archaeology. They posed numerous, trenchant questions, such as: If we are
trained anthropologists practicing archaeology,
should we not focus our considerable interpretive
power on the non-European world? Is not one
great strength of anthropology—including its archaeological component—the examination of cultures with orally transmitted knowledge bases?
Should not all archaeologists reject the distorted
[Vol. 77, No. 4, 2012
theories of Eurocentrism (following Asante
1999)? And perhaps most basically, is not the
study of Europe(ans) inherently Eurocentric?
The sharpest critics of allocating a prominent
role in historical archaeology to Europe(ans) have
labeled such research as irredeemably Eurocentric
(Schmidt and Walz 2007a:54, 2007b:129). This serious charge carries the implication that “African,
not to mention Asian, Native American, Australian, and Pacific, histories will remain inexcusably silenced by archaeologists unwilling to
tackle questions that count” (Schmidt and Walz
2007a:67, emphases in original). Similarly, any effort to “provincialize” Europe (after Chakrabarty
2000)—“to escape from European/Western paradigms”— merely serves to “limit the gaze of historical archaeologists upon other societies and
their pasts” (Schmidt and Walz 2007a:54). This is
a weighty condemnation of an entire subfield of
archaeology that had been explicitly created to
examine European colonialism.
An even more pessimistic view of historical archaeology has recently been offered by Dawdy
(2010:763), who argues that historical archaeologists, by attempting to examine the material and
spatial characteristics of “modernity,” have been
engaged in a clever “self-deception” that causes
them to be “condemned to repeat or simply elaborate on the grand narratives of the period.” Not
all anthropologists have apparently been “duped
by modernity,” but historical archaeologists seeking to engage with Europe(ans) have most certainly fallen prey to the trap.
Some of the archaeologists who apparently
have been duped by modernity are those who accept that culture contact involves at least two cultures. In their critique of Stahl et al. (2004),
Schmidt and Walz (2007b) oppose the plan of
“studying the lives of those on ‘both sides’ of the
power divide” and deny that this perspective “reveals how actors in a variety of positions are mutually implicated in the historical processes that
shape present sensibilities and possibilities” (Stahl
et al. 2004:96). Rather, they understand (after
Cooper and Stoler 1997) that colonialism was
shaped by unilateral indigenous “struggle,” and
propose that “this dynamic relationship is much
more than simply seeing and understanding both
sides of power interactions” (Schmidt and Walz
2007b:136). A more careful reading of the Cooper
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AN ARCHAEOLOGY OF EUROCENTRISM
and Stoler (1997:ix) quote, however, discloses
that Schmidt and Walz downplay the clause
“thinking about empire as much as the daily efforts to manage it.” Stoler and Cooper (1997:3)
continue in this vein: “Our interest is more in
how both colonies and metropoles shared in the
dialectics of inclusion and exclusion, and in what
ways the colonial domain was distinct from the
metropolitan one” (emphasis added). Their interest lies in “the contingency of metropolitan-colonial connections and its consequences for patterns
of imperial rule” rather than in subtracting Europe(ans) from the equation (Stoler and Cooper
1997:1, emphasis added).
By adopting the position that indigenous
agency is unbounded by sociohistorical context,
Schmidt and Walz eliminate domination and oppression, and consequently reinforce the European power structure. By exclusively empowering
local narratives, they effectively separate public
problems and daily life, a program that ultimately
“leads to an acceptance of the status quo, of injustice and inequality” (Rosenau 1992:84n). In
privileging “the agency of the ‘colonized,’”
Schmidt and Walz simultaneously erase history
and refute the postcolonial project. By rejecting
the “inequality of knowledge” that existed in the
suppression of freedoms associated with European colonialism (Balibar 1994:56), they reinforce the power structures reproduced by dominant elites in colonial sociohistorical spaces. Their
perspective is reminiscent of Lenin’s (1970:132)
observation that “Bourgeois scholars and publicists usually come out in defense of imperialism
in a somewhat veiled form; they obscure its complete domination and its profound roots, strive to
push into the forefront particular and secondary
details and do their best to distract attention from
essentials.”
A foundational piece of reasoning for such
critics concerns the establishment of manichean
essentialisms. They argue that the creation of dualities in archaeology—most notably history:prehistory and premodern: modern—has infused
epistemological blindness into the discipline. For
example, they argue that the employment of
“modernity” as a subject precludes cross-cultural
analysis and eliminates the close examination of
cultures not influenced by the colonizing practices
and imperialist designs of Europe(ans). The con-
741
comitant “silences” substantiate “false separations” (Schmidt and Walz 2007b:142), and the use
of “modernity” in “most social sciences and humanities” (Dawdy 2010:763)—and certainly in
post-Columbian archaeology—encourages an inherently unfair and biased perspective on the past
(e.g., Funari et al. 1999:3–5; Little 1994:16). Indeed, explicit exegesis about such dichotomies
leads to more profound introspection about the relationships between process and history (e.g.,
Kohl 2008), short-term events and long-term
structures (e.g., Harding 2005), and imposed artificiality (e.g., Lightfoot 1995; Silliman 2005).
The problems posed by the creation of the prehistory:history divide as false separation is cogently examined in the city of New Orleans by
Matthews (2007). In his careful examination of
“being Indian” in an urban environment supposedly devoid of indigenous involvement, Matthews
offers one of the most profound illustrations of the
wisdom of eliminating periodization in archaeological reasoning while at the same time refusing
to eliminate the relevant relations of power. Shifting the focus from Native American individuals—
people moving through space-time as subjects—
Matthews concentrates on the trans-temporal
performance of being Indian. This distinction has
two significant implications that defy facile temporal segmentation. First, it demands that archaeologists reflexively confront the creation of
“the Indian as native research subject” against
the backdrop of archaeologist-Native American
community politics. And second, it permits insight into the sociohistorical contexts in which the
interactions between Indians and non-Indians led
to the creation of “the practical meanings of cultural difference” in the past (with “the past” literally meaning “before today”) (Matthews
2007:274). These implications lead Matthews to
inspect the role of “being Indian” in New Orleans,
an investigation that purposefully conflates the relationships between political economy, state formation, and essentialism in archaeological practice. He determines that labeling Native
Americans “prehistoric”—a historicized and
racialized stereotype—causes them to disappear
from nineteenth-century life. This act of being effectively disappeared perpetuates multiscalar violence: to the individuals themselves, to nineteenth-century New Orleans’ society, and to the
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AMERICAN ANTIQUITY
present-day conceptualization of past lived reality. In this respect, Matthews performs an act that
is intellectually equivalent in plan if not in
methodology to the archaeology of desaparecidos
in Latin America (Funari and Vieira de Oliveira
2009:28–29) and of mass graves in dictatorial
Africa (Haglund et al. 2001).
Matthews’s thoughtful interrogation of the construction of history using power, authority, struggle, and visibility—in contradistinction to the view
offered by Schmidt and Walz (2007a, 2007b)—
raises several issues of profound significance to
contemporary archaeological practice, not the least
in importance being to call into question the prehistoricizing of the past. Matthews (2007:287) argues, for example, that “even in historical archaeology, our job is to recover for present
consumption what has been lost or buried—i.e.,
made prehistoric—about past human lives.” This
salient point resonates with the critique of false periodization, even though Matthews does not diminish the impact of European domination; the
very label “prehistoric” cannot be applied without
the purposeful European marginalization of Native
Americans living in New Orleans. With the loss of
native self-determination, because of the rise of
non-native power and authority in south
Louisiana, Native Americans were “essentialized
as persons of different culture whose principle attribute was their anachronistic ‘other’ way of life”
(Matthews 2007:284).
Matthews concretely illustrates that indigenous
archaeology of the post-1500 era—regardless of
theoretic perspective—cannot be truly informed in
the absence of Europe(ans) (also see Liebmann
and Murphy 2010). His research helps to demonstrate that to create a truly new archaeology of
post-Columbian sociohistory one must not gloss
over difference in favor of an Enlightenment-inspired “intensive universalism” (Balibar
2004:58–59). Ignoring European global dominance
does violence to the telling of the past and harms
the social consciousness that postcolonial archaeology celebrates (see Lydon and Rizvi 2010).
Modern-World (Historical) Archaeology and
Problematizing Eurocentrism
The inspiration for a different approach to historical archaeology—an explicit modern-world (his-
[Vol. 77, No. 4, 2012
torical) archaeology—that refuses to ignore Europe(ans) has developed out of the dual realization
that the purely methodological definition of historical archaeology has inherent merit, and that
the historical-archaeological research of Classical,
postcontact Mayanist, and pre-Ming-era Chinese
archaeologists provides a different discourse of
knowledge than the archaeology of the post-1500
world (Orser 2004b:9–14). Using the works of
numerous scholars from the same general intellectual tradition (Braudel 1973, 1977; Marx 1967,
1970; Marx and Engels 1970; Patterson 1997;
Wallerstein 1974, 1979, 1980; Wolf 1982, 1999),
modern-world (historical) archaeology understands the post-1500 world as a different place
than earlier eras. Accordingly, this archaeology,
like “the practices of anthropology remain[s] very
much embedded in an eschatology of modern
rupture” (Dawdy 2010:763), and explicitly so.
Rather than to accept false periodization, the
real intent is to investigate the constituents of the
process of modernity. The intellectual tension
embodied by the murky relationship between history (past actuality) and its examination (chronicle created from selected past actuality) is celebrated rather than condemned. Accordingly, all
modern-world archaeology is historical archaeology by definition, but not all historical archaeology is modern-world archaeology. The archaeology espoused by Schmidt and Walz is historical
archaeology but not modern-world archaeology
because it denies the myriad relationships of
power, dominance, and oppression forced on indigenous peoples by various European nationstates since about 1500. Their archaeology rightly
concentrates on struggle but ignores the reasons
behind the need to struggle. Modern-world (historical) archaeology necessarily relies on research
in historical archaeology but looks beyond it.
The archaeology of the modern world—
investigated as a process of becoming and being
(Orser 1994, 2004a, 2013)—produces unique opportunities but concomitantly creates special burdens. As a research project, modern-world (historical) archaeology will be forever developing
because the very word “modern” is itself contested and mutable. It does not dispute the ethnographic and historical research that illustrates the
presence of multiple modernities (e.g., Englund
and Leach 2000; Kahn 2001; Tambiah 2000;
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AN ARCHAEOLOGY OF EUROCENTRISM
Zurndorfer 1997). Rather, modern-world (historical) archaeology perceives modernity as composed of myriad, intertwined spatio-temporal levels. As such, the simplest definition of “modern”
suffices: “late, recent, not ancient, not antique”
(Johnson 1760:506). This definition relies on a
flexible temporality and presents a way “to think
about the history of power in an age when capital and [its] governing institutions [were developing] a global reach” (Chakrabarty 2002:12).
Instead of shying away from the complexities inherent in the meaning of “modern” or to dispute
the simultaneous reproduction of multiple modernities, the practice of modern-world (historical)
archaeology embraces the confusion and celebrates the dissonances between globalized, regionalized, and localized sociohistorical contexts
in the post-1500 world.
As a process, modernity need not be initialized
or periodized. It need only be stressed that modern-world (historical) archaeology commences
with the conjunction of forces, beliefs, ideas, and
independent developments that “come together in
ways that interact with one another, creating a
unique historical moment” (Marks 2002:12).
Modern-world (historical) archaeology accepts
that after about 1500, a history-altering conjucture
of four forces united to create simultaneously numerous new worlds. The four forces have coeval
planes of existence and in the broadest sense are
pan-cultural. Each is enacted in the post-1500
world through a complex, multilevel series of actions, practices, and traditions within structures
that are generally homologous though none are
teleological. Their execution in real space-time
creates history. These four forces, because they
are still being enacted, also affect the ways in
which contemporary archaeology is practiced.
These forces thus hover over archaeological
practice—the telling of history and the practice of
research—regardless of whether or not archaeologists wish to acknowledge them. The overarching, meta-forces are: colonialism—the spatial
movement of people from one culture or region
into another culture’s territory with the intent of
creating temporary, intermittent, and permanent
settlements using enforced relations of power including conquest and control (as opposed to colonization [following Rowlands 1998]);
capitalism—an economic system with significant
743
sociocultural manifestations that are expressed
on many spatial levels (collectively denoted as
“the capitalist project”); racialization—the
process of inventing biological and social inferiority using ideology, pseudo-science, administrative power, repressive authority, and other legal
and extra-legal forms of domination and oppression (see Orser 2007); and Eurocentrism—a specialized form of ethnocentrism that elevates to superiority an imagined, homogenized “European”
culture and heritage over all other cultures and
heritages. These four forces, as they were envisioned, idealized, and put into practice in the
world after about 1500, are tightly interlinked
and coterminous. For example, “without the
power of capitalism, and all the structural innovations that accompanied it in political, social,
and cultural organization, Eurocentrism might
have been just another ethnocentrism” (Dirlik
1999:12). Capitalist globalization and racialization are similarly linked in the same structural
fashion (see e.g., Weiss 2006), as are the other
meta-forces of modernity.
The forces provide the uniqueness of the modern world, a universe in which “the towering outline of Europe’s early modern and modern story
has been impossible to ignore. . . . The magnitude
of the effect was the central fact of human experience in the past three centuries” (Crossley
2008:107–108). Archaeologists wishing to investigate post-1500 history are “for better or
worse forced into an encounter with both Western
modernity and Western narratives of modernization” (Kahn 2001:651). Ignoring these processes
only creates new silences. While performing the
admirable work of foregrounding indigenous local narratives, disregarding the meta-forces submerges the often-terrible realities of lived history
(Eagleton 1996:52). Re-problematizing Europe(ans) is thus a central task of modern-world
(historical) archaeology. Part of this work of intellectual adjustment involves coming to terms
with the meta-forces of modernity.
Instead of viewing Eurocentrism unidimensionally as an intellectual deficiency to be overcome, modern-world (historical) archaeology
seeks both to expose and overthrow the historical
dangers of Eurocentrism at the same time that it
explicitly interrogates its beginnings, manifestations, and continuance. Rather than constituting a
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AMERICAN ANTIQUITY
triumphalist view that exploits European exceptionalism (Bagchi 2005:10), this interrogation of
Eurocentrism is a process of discovery and recovery. Part of this process involves reinvesting in
multiscalar analysis.
Archaeologists’ interest in multiscalar analysis
may have begun for many with the discovery of
Braudel’s (1966) three temporal rhythms (e.g.,
Ames 1991; Bintliff 1991; Ferris 2009; Little and
Shackel 1989; Smith 1992; Voss 2008). Still others have employed multiscalar analysis without
explicit reference to Braudel (e.g., Crumley and
Marquardt 1987; Lightfoot et al. 1998; Miroff
and Knapp 2009; Nassaney and Sassaman 1995).
One of the inherent strengths of a multiscalar
perspective is that it exploits the tensions in archaeology between multifarious scales—the myriad spaces of social practice (after Lefebvre
1991)—by opening a space “to grasp the relationship between the small scale” and the “wider
processes of transformation” (Johnson 2006:13;
also see Hall and Silliman 2006:8; Orser
2010:116–120). This practice permits analysts to
perceive the “coherence and collective causal
power” (Linebaugh and Rediker 2000:193) of
discrete archaeological sites that may appear unlinked when viewed exclusively at one scale.
One way to conceptualize the multiscalar
analysis in archaeology is by adopting the
metaphor of a photographer adjusting a camera’s
zoom lens:
Imagine a photographer focusing on the broad
outlines of a large object located far away in
order to learn something about the object. The
photographer then twists the zoom lens to
obtain a more detailed, higher-resolution
image of a selected part of the distant object.
As a result something new is observed through
greater attention to the part’s details. The zoom
lens may be adjusted further to permit more
precise examination of an even smaller part of
the object. Each adjustment permits a novel
visualization of reality by enabling the
observer to come closer to whatever is being
observed, in a subjective if not literal sense.
For this reason each twist of the zoom lens can
generate a new description of reality and perhaps new ideas to account for what the lens
adjustment has revealed [Abernethy 2000:31].
[Vol. 77, No. 4, 2012
This metaphor allows for “socio-structural framing” (the selection of levels of resolution) that, for
modern-world (historical) archaeology, must necessarily be reflexive. Individual archaeologists must
understand that they consciously select specific
space-time frames, they must ponder and accept the
reasons for selecting the frames of analysis, and
they must appreciate the role that frame selection
plays in interpretation. Unlike the archaeological
practice advocated by Schmidt and Walz, modernworld (historical) archaeology overtly conceptualizes the various socio-structural frames, seeking
dialectically to engage critically with “entities and
the relationships between entities, past, present,
and future” (Marquardt 1992:103).
Brief reference to the European-enforced enslavement of people of African heritage will suffice to demonstrate the analytical promise of sociostructural framing. Shortly after 1500, the major
European nation-states all adopted the structure of
African enslavement as a core element of their Eurocentric belief system, arguing that non-Europeans were slaves “by nature” as an element of
their philosophical doxa (Gerbi 1973:74–76), developed partly as a response to their own enslavement by North Africans (Colley 2004:56–65).
Thus, in the largest frame, we may accurately
view post-Columbian, European-enforced slavery as an element of Eurocentrism (which also
contains the necessary inclusion of colonialism,
capitalism, and racialization). On the next, more
circumscribed frame, however, the careful analysis of European nation-state slavery reveals that
not all slavery was the same: Anglocentric, Lusocentric, Francocentric expressions of African
enslavement appear in various sociohistorical contexts. Taken deeper, differences appear in the practice of Anglocentric slavery. During the American
Revolution, for example, many slaves decided to
flee to the British because they perceived Anglocentric slavery to be milder than Americentric
slavery (Jasanoff 2011:48–49). At the smallest
frame, particular differences might be viewed between individual plantations or households within
the Anglocentric world.
This hypothetical example illustrates that no
need exists to denigrate research conducted within
the boundaries of any socio-structural frame. On
the contrary, the reflexive knowledge inherent in
accepting the presence of individual frames—
Orser]
AN ARCHAEOLOGY OF EUROCENTRISM
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both in the lived past and in the analytical
present—strengthens the overall interpretive
power of the archaeology. At the same time,
though, we must acknowledge the inherent danger of working within only the smallest frame
(i.e., site). By invoking the uniqueness of a specific space-time frame—and concentrating on it to
the exclusion of all else—we run the risk of reproducing the “partitioning strategies” of the colonialist project (Young 1995:165).
The Dutch in the Upper Hudson Valley
as Eurocentrists
To demonstrate what an archaeology of Eurocentrism has to offer, I wish to focus upon Dutch
New Netherland as an example of one small
frame within colonial North America. I specifically confine myself to the Upper Hudson River
Valley in the region around present-day Albany,
New York, during the years 1624–1664. Detailing
the complex specificity of intercultural contact
and conflict in this region—enacted variously between Dutch, English, French, Mohawk, Mohican, and numerous smaller native cultures (e.g.,
Bradley 2007; Cantwell 2008; Dunn 1994; Parmenter 2010; Rothschild 2003)—is far beyond the
scope of this paper. This brief examination will illustrate only that Eurocentrism can be investigated in various socio-structural frames from the
largest (the Dutch nation-state as European) to the
smallest (the space-time of the individual inhabited property). My separation of Eurocentrism is
purely heuristic because its practice was tightly
entwined with and inseparable from the other
metanarratives of modernity.
The seventeenth-century Dutch are especially
renowned for their expertise in developing “commercial pragmatism” (Schama 1987:67). In 1598,
speculators from five trading companies sent
ships to Indonesia to trade for spices and other
valuable commodities. The public rejoiced when
the ships returned the following year loaded with
cargo and the shareholders realized a 100-percent
profit (Boxer 1973:25). This success led, in 1602,
to the union of the individual companies into a
single monopoly, the Dutch East India Company
(VOC). The creation of the Dutch West India
Company (WIC) followed in 1621. The creation
of the VOC existed within a global socio-struc-
745
tural frame because its originators designed it as
a competitor to the English East India Company,
chartered in 1600 (Arrighi 2010:143) and as a direct assault on the power of Spain in the New
World (Boxer 1973:54). Many of the features
common to today’s global capitalism were established by seventeenth-century Dutch entrepreneurs (Dash 1999:101–102; Garber 1989; Irwin
1991; Robins 2006; Scammell 1981:403; Schama
1987:347–348).
The commercial success sought by Dutch merchant-speculators could not be accomplished
purely as a powerful European nation-state, because globally they required the collaboration of
numerous indigenous peoples. This situation obtained in the smaller socio-structural frame of the
New World. In the still-smaller frame of the Upper Hudson River Valley, the Dutch first staked
their claim with the construction of Fort Nassau
near present-day Albany, New York, in 1614. This
small fort, created for mercantile reasons within
Mahican territory, “provided both a year-round
base for resident traders and a clear destination for
Native people” (Bradley 2007:35). Dutch traders
inhabited this fort for at least three years (Huey
1988:12–13; Jameson 1909:48). The Dutch West
India Company made a permanent claim to the region in 1624 with the construction of Fort Orange
(Huey 1991:30, 2010:143). In 1630, an Amsterdam diamond merchant named Kiliaen van Rensselaer received authorization to develop a huge
patroonship—named Rensselaerswijck—in the
vicinity of Fort Orange, again on Mahican land
(Bradley 2007:59; Dunn 1994:100; Jacobs
2005:116–119; Merwick 1990:7–8; Nissenson
1937; Venema 2010:241–267; Wilcoxen 1984:
9–10). In 1652, the multicultural settlement that
had developed north of Fort Orange, technically
within Rensselaerswijck, was delineated and
named Beverwijck, to indicate the residents’ commitment to commerce based on the beaver rather
than an allegiance to van Rensselaer as landlord
(Venema 2003:53).
Eurocentrism can be observed in each of these
Dutch creations in various socio-structural
frames: globally, continentally (the New World
frame), regionally (the Hudson River Valley
stretching from New Amsterdam to Rensselaerswijck/ Beverwijck-Fort Orange), and territorially
(Rensselaerswijck/Beverwijck-Fort Orange). In
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746
AMERICAN ANTIQUITY
every frame, the Dutch economic designs were
explicit and appeared to be foremost: “Commercial rather than political matters, the enhancement of trade rather than the transplantation of a
Dutch society, became the first order of business
for the West India Company in New Netherland”
(Condon 1968:70). But the Dutch mission in New
Netherland was not purely economic; they also
had cultural designs on the region. The earliest
Dutch settlers in the region established Dutchness
in the Upper Hudson Valley as an element of
their Eurocentrism. They accomplished this Low
Country version of Europeanization with their
buildings and their portable objects.
Excavations at Fort Orange (Huey 1988, 1991,
1998a, 2010) reveal that the Dutch built the fortification in the typical, bastioned style of European forts. Dutch military engineers were the first
to follow the Italians in building forts with bastions (Duffy 2006:10), and like most colonial European powers, they attempted to construct such
forts wherever they intended to stay. Thus, they
built Forte Oranje in Pernambuco, Brazil, in 1631,
to be nearly identical to Fort Orange on the Hudson River (Menezes and Rodrigues 1986:
110–111). Identical European fortifications built
in disparate colonial territories represent “the violent beginnings of colonial occupation” (Pels
1997:170) and overtly espouse Eurocentrism. As
imposing, foreign structures they visibly proclaim
the pan-European, global universality of Eurocentrism by their very presence.
The artifacts excavated at Fort Orange are
equally pan-European in nature. The ceramic assemblage, for example, includes majolica and
delft manufactured in the Netherlands, as well as
other earthenwares and stonewares from Italy,
England, the Iberian Peninsula, and Germany.
The presence of porcelain, originally from China
but filtered through European networks, indicates
the expanse of the Dutch trading empire and references their adoption of non-European cultural
traits into their quotidian lives. Their glass drinking and storage vessels were similarly European
in manufacture, made in workshops throughout
the Netherlands, Venice, and Germany. These
findings were duplicated at seventeenth-century
Dutch house sites in the area belonging to various
settlers: a brickmaker (1631–1653), an independent trader (ca. 1639–1648), Jurriaen Theunissen
[Vol. 77, No. 4, 2012
(1654–1664), Arent van Curler (1643–1660), and
Volkert Jansen Douw (ca. 1652–1685) (Bradley
2005; Fisher 2008; Huey 1987, 1996, 1998b;
Moody 2002, 2003, 2005; Wilcoxen 1999:14).
The global expression of Dutch Eurocentrism,
through the mechanism of transoceanic, intercultural trade, is demonstrated by the presence of
identical artifacts found at contemporaneous sites
in the Netherlands (e.g., Baart 1987; von Dongen
1995). Their transplantation of European fort design is perfectly homologous with the overall pattern of their portable material culture, as both
overtly express Eurocentrism.
The co-occurrence of artifacts in and around
Fort Orange and in the Netherlands is not surprising; historical archaeologists take for granted
the presence of European artifacts at colonial settlements. The unquestioned expectation is that
colonialist settlers sought to recreate tiny pieces
of their homelands in their new environments. But
why should this be so? Why did European
colonists not take just a few objects that would ensure their initial survival—cutting tools and firemaking equipment, for example—with the expectation that they could live off the land? Why
did they not expect to learn from the indigenous
inhabitants? Why did the colonial Dutch transport
such a vast amount of material culture across the
Atlantic Ocean and then up the Hudson River
just to create “Holland on the Hudson” (Rink
1986; see also Huey 1991:50)?
The answers to these questions seem so
patently obvious that perhaps we need not even
ask them: as anthropologists we know that people take their cultures with them when they emigrate. By not asking such apparently obvious
questions (even tacitly to ourselves as reflexive
conundrums), however, we ignore them and dismiss the reflexivity they inspire. Our expectation
that Dutch settlers would bring Dutch materials
with them and that they would thus turn up in archaeological excavations is Eurocentrism simultaneously operating in temporally distinct
socio-structural frames. The importation of European objects outside Europe informs a global
Eurocentrism, just as the differences observed
between patterns of seventeenth-century Dutch
and English importation (see Rye 1865:71) suggest nation-state distinctions in the presentation
of Eurocentrism.
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Orser]
AN ARCHAEOLOGY OF EUROCENTRISM
The only true variation we might see in the
overall affiliations of the artifacts by household
appears in the presence of Native American objects. Excavations at the brickmaker’s house in
Beverwijck, for example, produced a bear effigy
smoking pipe that has an Iroquois affiliation, as
does another pipe found at Fort Orange (Huey
1991:57–58; Moody 2005:127). Similarly, the
mid-seventeenth-century trader’s house also in
Beverwijck yielded numerous pieces of chipped
stone, including bifaces and projectile points
(Moody 2002:3.21). Nevertheless, indigenous objects in Dutch homes constitute the exception
rather than the rule; the artifacts found inside the
remains of Dutch houses are overwhelmingly European in manufacture.
Another way to perceive Eurocentrism among
the Dutch is to interrogate their attitudes to and relations with the indigenous cultures that surrounded them. Their feelings toward and understanding of Native Americans were complex
(Rothschild 2003:81). Whereas Henry Hudson
was reported to have said that “The natives are a
very good people,” the Reverend Jonas
Michaëlius described them as savage, wild, “uncivil and stupid as garden poles” (Jameson
1909:49, 126). Economic realities rested beneath
the intercultural relations between Dutch colonists
and indigenous Native Americans, and these often translated into bad European behavior: “Empires of trade did not simply crank over smoothly,
one deal, one trading season, one fleet departure
after the next. They required ruthlessness” (Merwick 2006:267)
One of the factors of the sociohistorical landscape that the Dutch did not appreciate upon their
arrival in the Upper Hudson was the long-term,
intercultural rivalry between the Mahicans and the
Mohawks (Burke 1991:283). The rivalry had
long-standing reasons having nothing to do with
Europeans, but if the Massachusetts Puritans had
indeed encouraged the Mahicans to go to war
with their indigenous neighbors (Jennings
1976:315), then the global intra-European conflict
between England and the Netherlands had truly
intermeshed with the regional socio-structure
frame. At the same time, “it is impossible to understand Dutch-Indian relations in New York
State independently of French-Indian ones in
Canada” (Trigger 1971:277). The Dutch at Fort
747
Orange needed the support of the Native peoples
around them to survive: they “could not afford to
offend either the Mahicans, on whose land they
lived, or the Mohawks, who supplied most of the
furs” (Bradley 2007:58). The Puritans’ possible
goading of the Mahicans exacerbated conflict
within a regional frame and simultaneously intensified it within a global frame. The Dutch in
New Netherland were caught in a unique “ambiguity of universalism” (after Balibar 2004:15)
because of the legal theory that had outlined their
moral authority.
The legal basis for Dutch expeditions around
the world was created in response to an inter-European conflict that had occurred within the global
frame. In 1603, the renowned Dutch jurist Hugo
Grotius came to the aid of the VOC in a dispute
with the Portuguese in Southeast Asia
(Borschberg 1999; Buckle 1991). In arguing
against the concept of Portuguese primacy in the
region, Grotius maintained that every nation-state
had equal rights of navigation, fishing, and trading everywhere in the world (Hart 2008:102;
Merwick 2006:52). The resultant “law of nations”
that Grotius helped formulate—which at its core
also substantiated an individual’s natural rights
(Brook 2008:68)—was soon twisted “to justify
the assertion of public authority by European
states in the extra-European world” (Keene
2002:62). In other words, Grotius’s humanist writings about personal freedom, self-preservation,
and natural rights meant that some people could
express themselves “in extreme ways [such as]
submitting to tyrannical government” (Haakonssen 1996:28). Though Grotius may not have approved of all the ways in which his dense legal arguments were used, a close relationship
developed between his writings “and the modern
practices of colonialism and imperialism” (Keene
2002:62). This, then, is the legal establishment of
Eurocentric doctrine, not only for the Dutch, but
also for the English and the other European nation-states (Haakonssen 1996:30). This pan-European understanding was applicable in all sociostructural frames: globally, regionally, and locally.
Dutch settlement design helped to reinforce
Eurocentrism by transfiguring physical distance
into cultural distance. Unlike French coureurs de
bois, who tended to live within the Native villages,
the Dutch were required to have Native traders
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748
AMERICAN ANTIQUITY
come to them (Jacobs 2009:176; Vernon
1978:206). The prohibition against allowing Dutch
traders to visit Native villages was surficially
economic—because the WIC wished to limit illegal trade—but it was also inherently Eurocentric.
The Dutch, realizing that their fragile New World
economic structure was built upon furs acquired
and traded by Native Americans, strove to maintain good relations with the Mahicans and the
Mohawks, but at the same time they could not
avoid expressing their Eurocentrism. Dutch traders
often allowed visiting Native traders to stay on
their lots and even sometimes to lodge with them
in their homes (Venema 2003:91–92), but while
specific Dutch individuals may not have been
racially biased against Native Americans, Dutch
culture was Eurocentric. Adriaen van der Donck,
the law enforcement officer in Renssalaerswijck
explicitly referenced the “Universal Law of Nations”—drawing directly from Grotius—even as
he referred to the indigenous peoples as wilden
(van der Donck 2008:103). The racialized rationale present in his use of the term wilden (Dutch
for “savage” or “wild men”) is clear:
First, on account of religion, because they have
none or so little as to be virtually in a state of
nature. Second, as regards to marriage and in
the recognition of landed property, they deviate so far from the general laws that they may
well be called wilden, because they act in those
matters almost at will. Third, as the Christians,
to set themselves apart, give foreign nations
the names of Turks or Mamelukes or barbarians, since the term heathen is too general and
little used abroad, they did not wish to include
the American natives in that term either. Similarly, the terms black and white are customary among those who have business overseas,
to distinguish the Negroes from our and similar nations, but neither of those names quite
fitted the Americans, who tend toward the olive
colored [van der Donck 2008:75].
This quote reveals that “by calling the Indians
wild men, the Dutch maintained an ambiguous
description of them which suggested that they
were not quite human, but neither were they unquestionably animals” (Otto 1995:98).
Such views, rooted in Eurocentric attitudes,
necessarily created tensions. On January 12, 1630,
[Vol. 77, No. 4, 2012
van Rensselaer gave Bastiaen Jansz Crol instructions to purchase land “from the Mahijcan,
Maquaas [Mohawks], or such other nations as
have any claims to them,” with the admonition
that Crol should treat them “with all courtesy and
discretion.” Further on, van Rensselaer included
an important caveat: “In case he can not purchase
the said lands from one or two nations, that he
purchase the same from all who pretend any right
to them” (van Laer 1908:159, emphasis added).
By 1634, it had become clear, at least to van
Rensselaer, that the Mahicans had decided to sell
their land because their leader had died and because of “the defeat they suffered in 1629” at the
hands of the Mohawks (van Laer 1908:306). Van
Rensselaer erroneously believed that he had completely disinherited the Mahicans from their land,
but by the 1650s, the Mahicans and the Mohawks
were beginning to complain about land purchases
that “lasted forever” (Dunn 1994:101). Reacting
to the tension, in 1659, the residents of Beverwijck built a palisade around their village to guard
“against a sudden incursion of Barbarians” (O’Callaghan 1868:385). This palisade inculcated a
symbolic meaning that was embedded within its
function: it “confirmed that Beverwijck was increasingly becoming a place with its own
identity—for some, perhaps, a true ‘Dutch’ home
base . . . [one in which] arriving new settlers
[were] now separated from the natives” (Venema
2003:95). The palisade also reinforced attitudes
about land use that mirrored those prevalent in the
Netherlands (Merwick 1980:66). The separation
enforced by the construction of the palisade was
entirely homologous with the separation enforced
by the European ceramics and glass: both reinforced the pan-national concept of Eurocentrism
that existed outside and above nation-state pride.
So, while historians have generally viewed
the Dutch to have been more benevolent than the
English in dealing with their Native allies, the
Netherlanders did not act altruistically because,
just like the English, they, too, were Eurocentric.
As Eurocentrists, the Dutch required its agents to
obtain legal title to the land they occupied so that
they could obtain full legal rights by contract
(Jennings 1988:14). The continuation of the
story begun by the embryonic expression of Eurocentrism in the New World has been cogently
summarized:
AN ARCHAEOLOGY OF EUROCENTRISM
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Colonization by the Dutch and land sale by the
Mahican slowly started after 1630, receiving
impetus only in the last decades of the seventeenth century. The colonists along the Hudson River appear to have preferred the Indian
garden lands for their farms. Together with the
quest for furbearers in more distant areas, this
resulted in the slow removal of the Mahican
away from the Hudson River to more remote
corners of their territory” [Brasser 1978:203,
emphasis added].
Conclusion
It remains true that one of the most important and
yet challenging tasks of historical archaeology is
to give voice to the voiceless, to represent archaeologically all those people who have been silenced by the powerful (Orser 1996:160–182).
Historical archaeologists have been adept at
preparing monographs that outline the ways in
which excavation has illuminated past life in myriad sociohistorical settings. A central task of modern-world (historical) archaeology is to use archaeology to listen to the voiceless (as historical
archaeologists), while simultaneously illuminating the forces that explain why the voiceless have
been silenced in the first place (as modern-world
archaeologists). Modern-world (historical) archaeologists do not simply use Eurocentism as a
pejorative indictment but rather embrace the view
that powerlessness in the past must be thoroughly
investigated as part of the postcolonial project to
help comprehend powerlessness in the present.
Rather than to rehabilitate the telling of history,
ignoring the reasons for the silences ultimately
creates new and perhaps even more dangerous silences. By failing to acknowledge domination,
oppression, and bigotry, archaeologists run the
risk of alienating themselves from the peoples
whose history they investigate.
Modern-world (historical) archaeology openly
accepts the significance of colonialism, racialization, capitalism, and Eurocentrism as primary,
powerful meta-forces that operate in the postColumbian world. The modern-world (historical)
archaeologists’ critiques of these forces are designed to destroy the artificiality of the localglobal dichotomy by overtly employing multiframe analysis.
749
Consciously adopting socio-structural framing allows archaeologists to conceptualize Eurocentrism as one force in modern life that has substantial, dialectically relevant consequences for its
advocates and its victims. The understanding of
Eurocentrism by colonizing Europeans united the
disparate programs of the individual nation-states
into an overarching principle of post-Enlightenment thought. Despite each nation’s jingoistic attitudes, desires, and plans—and frequent intercultural wars—most Europeans simply accepted
their collective supremacy over the world’s nonEuropean peoples. At the same time, the colonial
agents of the Netherlands, England, Spain,
France, and all the other superpowers that have
grown to power since about 1500 enacted their
nationally specific Eurocentrisms. The originality
of post-Columbian Eurocentrism—unlike the universality of ethnocentrism—is that it acquired a
terrible power when combined with colonialism,
capitalism, and racialization. Each force fed off
the others and intersected in complex, historically significant ways.
The Dutch in the Upper Hudson Valley acted
like colonial Europeans elsewhere in the world. Instead of constructing permanent settlements that
conformed to the realities of local environments,
they built structures in villages that were European
in design and plan. The similarity between Fort
Orange in New Netherland and Forte Oranje in
Brazil alone substantiates the urge to re-create
Europe in the non-European world. Further homology is indicated in the Dutch desire to import
heavy, costly objects into their colonial outposts as
expressions of Eurocentrism with a Dutch flavor.
All archaeologists, regardless of area of expertise, know the terrible toll experienced by indigenous peoples when foreigners from Europe
invaded their native territories seeking land and
wealth. But it is the commonness of modernity’s
meta-forces that is most poignant. Eurocentrism,
capitalism, colonialism, and racialization are such
a strong part of the world’s collective history that
archaeologists may tend to overlook them, causing them to become naturalized and thus beyond
the realm of analysis. A conscientious archaeology dedicated to decolonizing anthropology cannot treat Eurocentrism strictly as a contemporary
perspective intellectually extracted from its history. Such an archaeology must completely reject
AMERICAN ANTIQUITY
750
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Eurocentric analysis as it simultaneously argues
that ignoring the histories, effects, and lasting
implications of Eurocentrism naturalizes its material manifestations and masks its tenacious sociocultural consequences, thereby minimizing the
brutality that often accompanied its practice
throughout the world.
Acknowledgments. The ideas expressed in this paper have
evolved over several years and have benefitted from the works
and comments of scholars and friends too numerous to mention. The final revisions were completed during a two-month
stay in the Department of Anthropology and Archaeology at
the University of Otago, New Zealand. I wish to thank Ian
Smith, Angela Middleton, and everyone in the department who
made my stay productive and memorable. I also wish to acknowledge the careful reading and fine suggestions offered by
Elizabeth Scott, Janice Orser, and the four reviewers. Rani
Alexander very kindly translated my abstract into Spanish and
I deeply appreciate her assistance. Of course, the responsibility for the final product rests solely with me.
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Submitted June 3, 2011; Revised October 12, 2011;
Accepted November 1, 2011.