Lines That Divide: Historical Archaeologies of Race, Class, and Gender. (Issues for Historical Archaeology).

Lines That Divide: Historical Archaeologies of Race, Class, and Gender. (Issues for Historical Archaeology). JAMES A. BELLE, STEPHEN A. MROZOWSKI & ROBERT PAYNTER (ed.).Lines that divide: historical archaeologies of race, class, and gender.xxxii+328 pages, 45 figures, 17 tables. 2000. Knoxville (TN): Universityof Tennessee Press The University of Tennessee Press (or UT Press), founded in 1940, is a university press that is part of the University of Tennessee. External linkUniversity of Tennessee Press ; 1-57233-086-4 hardback $52. In their origins these are two very different books, one a set ofedited papers, the other a single individual's perspective onhistorical archaeology Historical archaeology is a branch of archaeology that concerns itself with "historical" societies, i.e. those that had systems of writing. It is often distinguished from prehistoric archaeology which studies societies with no writing. and its modern day context. Both volumes share aconcern to understand and develop a theoretical framework for thearchaeology of the modern world, the archaeology of the 16th to the 21stcenturies. Both are essential texts for the historical archaeologist. Lines that divide reads very much as a set of conferenceproceedings. Though the background to the preparation of the volume andthe selection of contributed papers is not stated, the concerns of the1987 meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology are used by theeditors to introduce the `streams of change' in archaeologicalthinking in the late 1980s and 1990s -- directed here at issues of race,gender and class. At the 1987 meeting four general paradigms werethought by many to be inadequate: historical archaeology as a supplementto American history, scientific positivism positivism(pŏ`zĭtĭvĭzəm), philosophical doctrine that denies any validity to speculation or metaphysics. Sometimes associated with empiricism, positivism maintains that metaphysical questions are unanswerable and that the only preoccupied with patternrecognition, structuralist approaches and a vaguely populist concernwith the American experience. In the ensuing decade or more, the editorshave noted the shift `from scientific to more contextualepistemologies'; at the same time, the paradigms of the 1980s havecontinued to concern many archaeologists, especially within areas ofCultural Resource Management. Lines that divide reflects this mix of approaches. A few of thecontributions are firmly centred on what we might now term `hardscience' studies in pattern recognition. Perry's veryinteresting reassessment and rejection of the `settler model' forthe rise of the Zulu state in 19th-century South Africa South Africa,Afrikaans Suid-Afrika, officially Republic of South Africa, republic (2005 est. pop. 44,344,000), 471,442 sq mi (1,221,037 sq km), S Africa. is thus based onan analysis of 159 sites in Swaziland; concerns here include rank, size,logarithms and settlement hierarchies. Wall's paper on domesticityin 19th-century New York New York, state, United StatesNew York,Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of draws on similar scientific analyses, withdistributions of tableware and stemware stem��ware?n.Glassware mounted on a stem with a broad base. in three households set withinchi-square tests of association corrected for continuity. This paper isalso one of a number of studies within the volume as a whole whichsuccessfully draw on historical and other contextual data to extend ourunderstanding of and the significance of the archaeological record The archaeological record is a term used in archaeology to denote all archaeological evidence, including the physical remains of past human activities which archaeologists seek out and record in an attempt to analyze and reconstruct the past. .Other notable contextually focussed contributions include those byFawcett & Lewelling on Native American homesteads in northern Utah,by Shackel & Larsen on early industrial Harper's Ferry, and byNassaney & Abel on the cutlery industry in early 19th-century NewEngland. Archaeology and the modern world is Martin Hall's contributionto the same debate. This is an eminently readable and attractivepublication, an archaeological study set within the context ofcontemporary politics, literature and ideas. It draws extensively onHall's own experiences as Professor of Historical Archaeology inthe University of Cape Town Coordinates: “UCT” redirects here. For other uses, see UCT (disambiguation). , living through the changes of the last twodecades in South Africa. Martin Hall's study is lucid, totallyengaging, and, although in part autobiographical, is modestly written. Hall's exploration of the theoretical traditions in historicalarchaeology draws on his own experiences and knowledge of the colonialsocieties of South Africa and the Chesapeake region of Maryland andVirginia. In acknowledging the contributions made by earlier approachesto our understanding of material culture in the historic past, Halllooks closely at the perspectives of structuralism structuralism,theory that uses culturally interconnected signs to reconstruct systems of relationships rather than studying isolated, material things in themselves. This method found wide use from the early 20th cent. and criticalmaterialism. Chapter 4, `Substantial Identities', is indeed writtenwithin the context of the latter, to show the inadequacy of atheoretical perspective which focuses on the materiality of performanceand power. Chapter 5, `Hidden Voices', is at the core ofHall's own position. To understand the historical archaeology ofthe colonial past there must be the means of reading through thematerial record the reactions, voices and thoughts of the oppressed and poor, the enslaved and the people `without history'. Inexploring new theoretical approaches, Hall, like Charles Orser, drawsprincipally on the ideas of Scott, Spivak and Bhabha -- the subjugatedleave their own impress on the archaeological record. Lines that divide and Archaeology and the modern world share anumber of concerns. The first is neatly summed up in Hall'sconclusion that `the study of the past is a unitary endeavour shared bymany areas of study' -- many `disciplines' are arbitrarydivisions, inventions of the 19th century. Hall's own study movesseamlessly from the material to the documented record, from the SouthAmerican literature of the magical realist imagination to contemporarypolitics. Without exception the papers in Lines that divide entwinehistory and archaeology. The editors speak of archaeology as a`discipline', but a good number of the papers move through widerstudies of the past that are both archaeological and historical in theirapproach, for instance James Delle in his study of slavery on Jamaicacoffee plantations, and Terence Epperson on the panoptic qualities ofJefferson's Monticello. A second shared interest is the question ofscale. Historical archaeology is concerned with the global context. Atthe same time our understanding of the past must be informed by anunderstanding of individual lives. Hall addresses these issues and atthe same time moves success fully across the wide canvas of colonialpower and oppression. A number of the papers in Lines that divide show asimilar awareness. I particularly liked Jamieson's piece on DonaLuisa's two houses. Here the life of Dona Luisa was set within awider archaeological and historical study, drawing on the detail of twoexcavations in rural and urban Ecuador, and on the more global contextof Spanish colonialism. Archaeology and the modern world and Lines that divide share aconcern for issues of race, gender and class. Both Hall and a number ofthe contributors to the latter seize the chance to link such issues tothe politics of the present. For Hall, the history and archaeology ofCape Town's District Six, razed to the ground for apartheid, andthe destruction of the cultural heritage of Croatia and Bosnia areinseparable, a counter-culture of hatred and violence that underlies`the triumphalism of global dominance and a new economic order' (p.190). Many of the contributions to Lines that divide share this concernfor issues of today. Both Hall and Epperson discuss at length thecontemporary implications for the admirers of Thomas Jefferson wroughtby the DNA analysis DNA analysisAny technique used to analyze genes and DNA. See Chromosome walking, DNA fingerprinting, Footprinting, In situ hybridization, Jeffries' probe, Jumping libraries, PCR, RFLP analysis, Southern blot hybridization. of the descendants of Jefferson and his black slaveSally Hemmings. Epperson's paper goes further in linking thepreservation of the `viewshed' of Monticello to contemporaryplanning issues in northern Virginia. In northern Utah, the previous lack of archaeological study ofNative American homesteads was seen as a form of archaeologicalgenocide. Archaeologists studying a more distant or elaborate past,`while denying the existence of contemporary Native Americans', arecommitting genocide `far more effectively than the U.S. military wasever able to do' (p. 54). Fawcett & Lewelling's claim alsohighlights a lacuna lacuna/la��cu��na/ (lah-ku��nah) pl. lacu��nae ? [L.]1. a small pit or hollow cavity.2. a defect or gap, as in the field of vision (scotoma). in both volumes. Although Martin Hall explores at length the subjugation SubjugationCushan-rishathaim Aramking to whom God sold Israelites. [O.T.: Judges 3:8]Gibeonitesconsigned to servitude in retribution for trickery. [O.T.: Joshua 9:22–27]Ham Noahcurses him and progeny to servitude. [O. of thenative peoples of the Cape, it is somewhat disappointing that no similarstudy is attempted of the fate of the Native Americans of theChesapeake. `Uprisings' and `massacres' by the Native Americanpopulation of the 17th-century Chesapeake might be rephrased andre-evaluated in the context of colonial violence and invasion.Hall's discussion of ambiguities, violence, subalterns and thirdspaces necessitates a north American North Americannamed after North America.North American blastomycosissee North American blastomycosis.North American cattle ticksee boophilusannulatus. as well as a southern Africancontext. The controversies and threats of racial tension and violence inthe 1990s that accompanied white South African celebrations of colonialorigins might be contrasted with the apparently uncontroversial andapproaching celebrations for the 400th anniversary of the founding ofJamestown, Virginia. The editors of Lines that divide echoed earliermisgivings on the prominence given in historical archaeology studies to`the vaguely populist concern with the general theme of the Americanexperience' (p. xi). The absence of a paper devoted to thearchaeological deconstruction of the thinking that culminated in theconcept of Manifest Destiny is the more to be regretted. ROGER H. LEECH, Department of Archaeology, University ofSouthampton In the most recent RAE assessment (2001), it has the only engineering faculty in the country to receive the highest rating (5*) across all disciplines.[3] According to The Times Higher Education Supplement , Southampton SO17 1BJ, England. rl2@soton.ac.uk