An Archaeology of Colonial Identity: Power and Material Culture in the Dwars Valley, South Africa (Contributions To Global Historical Archaeology)

This book examines how colonial identities were constructed in the Cape Colony of South Africa since its establishment in the 17 th century up to the 20 th century. It is an explicitly archaeological approach but which also draws more widely on documentary material to examine how different people in the colony – from settler to slave – constructed identities through material culture. The book explores three key groups: The Dutch East India Company, the free settlers and the slaves, through a number of archaeological sites and contexts. With the archaeological evidence, the book examines how these different groups were enmeshed within racial, sexual, and class ideologies in the broader context of capitalism and colonialism, and draws extensively on current social theory, in particular post-colonialism, feminism and Marxism. This book is aimed primarily at archaeologists, but will also attract historians and those interested in cultural theory and material culture studies. Specifically, historical archaeologists and students of historical archaeology will be the primary readership and buyers. This book is the based on the work of many people, and while I discuss many of them in the general context of this book in Chapter 1,1 would like to emphasize here the contribution of all those people involved. My apologies in advance to any I have omitted to mention. The backbone of the book is based on a project, 'Farm Lives' conducted between 1999 and 2002, funded exclusively by the McDonald Institute for Archaeolog­ ical Research at the University of Cambridge; without their essential financial support, this would not have been possible. The project involved three components: archaeological fieldwork, archive research and oral history interviews. For the fieldwork, spe­ cial thanks goes to Marcus Abbott, Jenny Bredenberg, Glenda Cox, Olivia Cyster, Andy Hall, Odile Peterson, and Sarah Winter; for po- excavation analysis of materials, I thank Duncan Miller (University of Cape Town), Peter Nilsson (South African Museum) and Jane Klose (University of Cape Town). For the archive research, I would like to thank J. Malherbe (Huguenot Museum) and Harriet Clift (South African Heritage Resources Agency), but most of all, Jaline de Villiers (Paarl Museum). For the oral history, my thanks go to Sarah Winter, Rowena Peterson and Jaline de Villiers for conducting interviews, and to the informants, Johanna Dressier, Louisa Adams, Geoffrey Leslie Hendricks, William Davids, Absolom David Lackay, John Cyster November and Lillian Aubrey Idas.

This book examines how colonial identities were constructed in the Cape Colony of South Africa since its establishment in the 17th century up to the 20th century. It is an explicitly archaeological approach but which also draws more widely on documentary material to examine how different people in the colony-from settler to slave-constructed identities through material culture. The book explores three key groups: The Dutch East India Company, the free settlers and the slaves, through a number of archaeological sites and contexts. With the archaeological evidence, the book examines how these different groups were enmeshed within racial, sexual, and class ideologies in the broader context of capitalism and colonialism, and draws extensively on current social theory, in particular post-colonialism, feminism and Marxism. This book is aimed primarily at archaeologists, but will also attract historians and those interested in cultural theory and material culture studies. Specifically, historical archaeologists and students of historical archaeology will be the primary readership and buyers.

"An Archaeology of Colonial Identity examines how colonial identities were constructed in the Cape Colony of South Africa from its establishment in the 17th century up to the 20th century. It is an explicitly archaeological approach but one which also draws more widely on documentary material to examine how different people in the colony - from settler to slave - constructed identities through material culture." "This book is aimed primarily at archaeologists, but will also attract historians and those interested in cultural theory and material culture studies. Specifically, historical archaeologists and students of historical archaeology will be the primary readers of this volume."--Jacket Globalism is not solely a contemporary phenomenon but has an important history as archaeologists routinely demonstrate by unearthing traces of this process at numerous sites around the world. For example, 18th century Chinese pottery has been found from the Netherlands to North America, and from South Africa to Iceland. Not only does this international dispersal of material culture demonstrate an emergent global network of commodities, it also gives an insight into the people who defined themselves by such possessions. It is this material culture in the form of buildings and broken objects, which provide an alternative perspective from the textual and visual sources at our disposal. This book examines how colonial identities were constructed in the Cape Colony of South Africa since its establishment in the 17th century up to the 20th century. It takes an explicitly archaeological approach, which also draws more widely on documentary material to examine how different people in the colony from settler to slave constructed identities through material culture. With the archaeological evidence, the book examines how these different groups were enmeshed within racial, sexual, and class ideologies in the broader context of capitalism and colonialism, and draws extensively on current social theory, in particular post-colonialism, feminism, and Marxism.