Royal Exhibition Building
- PDF / 5,604,039 Bytes
- 183 Pages / 504.567 x 720 pts Page_size
- 67 Downloads / 224 Views
Race in Archaeology Charles E. Orser Jr. Department of Anthropology, New York State Museum, Albany, NY, USA
Introduction The explicit archaeological interest in race as a topic of inquiry only developed in the 1990s. Before this, but only beginning in the 1980s, many historical archaeologists investigated ethnicity rather than race, seeking to develop ways to use excavated artifact assemblages to identify members of historically known ethnic groups. The goal of much of this research was to correlate specific objects or kinds of objects with certain peoples. Accordingly, for example, many archaeologists equated white clay smoking pipes decorated with shamrocks with Irish men and women. By the 1990s, many historical archaeologists had decided that this sort of easy correlation neither matched the complexities of daily life nor reflected the ways in which perceived personal characteristics created social hierarchies. As a result, some archaeologists began to think explicitly about race rather than ethnicity as a focus of examination.
Definition Diverse studies by anthropologists have proven that only one human race exists. The physical
variations apparent in the world’s peoples result from myriad genetic adaptations rather than the presence of true races. The biological fallacy of race, however, does not mean that racial theory has not been a continual force in modern history or that the perception of race has not had consequences, as more powerful groups have used their ideas about racial difference to cement their authority and power. The appearance and application of racial theory has meant that people identified as belonging to an inferior “race” could be justifiably denigrating and discriminated against. People seeking to create or maintain strict social hierarchies used the pseudo-science of racial theory to reinforce their claims of inferiority and superiority, claims that placed them at the top and those they despised at the bottom. The attribution of racial designation is usually a byproduct of relations of power, and so many scholars find it useful to speak of “racialization” rather than race per se. Racialization is a process of “assigning men and women to essentialist groups, based upon physical appearance or some other readily identifiable characteristics, that allow them to be perceived as biologically inferior or socially unequal” (Miles 1989: 73). This means that people in power can use cultural elements – patterns of dress, language, dialect, religious belief – to assign whole groups of people to a inferior “race” in addition to, or even exclusive of, their physical appearance. Nonetheless, much racial theory rests on physical characteristics that may be real or imagined.
C. Smith (ed.), Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-0465-2, # Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014
R
6224
The racial assignment that results from the process of racialization comes from outside the group being so designated. Racialization allows those classified as members of a specific “race”
Data Loading...
