The Challenge of Race to American Historical Archaeology

Abstract

Historical archaeologists should be leaders in examining the archaeological dimensions of race and racism in the United States. With few exceptions, though, this has not been the case, as most archaeologists have conflated race and ethnicity. American historical archaeologists have a great opportunity to provide new insights to the anthropological investigation of race and racism if they choose to take this course of action,

The Archaeology of Poverty and the Poverty of Archaeology

“…I have explored the archaeology of poverty elsewhere by advancing the proposition that poverty and race are ineluctably linked in Western society through capitalist practice (Orser 1998(Orser , pp. 664-665, 2004(Orser , pp.…”

Creating a Diasporic Archaeology of Chinese Migration: Tentative Steps Across Four Continents

“…When such an artifact and its intense emotional influence are combined with the knowledge that similar circumstances exist today, it speaks directly to the historic roots of modern racism in immediate and accessible ways. Such a project becomes part of a larger development within anthropology, one aiming to resituate race at the forefront of research as a key issue in decolonizing our discipline (Harrison 1997(Harrison , 1999Orser 1999Orser , 2001Orser , 2004. I believe that involving historical archaeology in the resituating of race as a central concern in anthropology joins a growing chorus of archaeologists looking for ways to make our discipline meaningful to the modern world (Gadsby and Chidester 2007;McGuire 2008;Rathje 1977;Shackel and Chambers 2004;Wilk and Schiffer 1979;Wood 2002).…”

Materializing Inequality: The Archaeology of Tourism Laborers in Turn-of-the-Century Los Angeles

“…Many scholars (Hodder 1986;Johnson 1996;Leone 1981Leone , 1995Leone et al 1987;Mullins 1999Mullins , 2003Orser 1998Orser , 2004Potter 1999;Scott 1994;Shanks and Tilley 1987;Wylie 1999) have argued that exploring the roots of modern day politics and transnational economic systems should be central to archaeological research. Consequently, it is surprising to find that very few archaeologists have examined the foundations of tourism since it is presently the "largest industry on earth, employing somewhere between 100 and 230 million people, handling over 600 million arrivals a year, and having an estimated value between $476 billion and $3.4 trillion dollars" (Adler and Adler 2004, p. 4).…”