Review

Reviewed Work(s): Historical Archaeology in Global Perspective by Lisa Falk

Review by: Norman Hammond
Source: The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Vol. 23, No. 2 (Autumn, 1992), pp. 386-
388
Published by: The MIT Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/205322
Accessed: 21-08-2017 19:37 UTC

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
http://about.jstor.org/terms

The MIT Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The
Journal of Interdisciplinary History

This content downloaded from 190.96.91.204 on Mon, 21 Aug 2017 19:37:11 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
386 | NORMAN HAMMOND

not to be reductionist, Forgacs rightly rejects the view that popular

culture is simply imposed ideology. To acknowledge cultural contradic-
tions, however, does not say much about the significance of these points
or what is distinctive about cultural commerce in Italy.
A study so condensed cannot be comprehensive, and much is left
out. State subsidies of high culture; the cultural sponsorship of banks,
industries, and parties; and the economics of cultural stardom among
athletes, writers, and academics all merit more attention. Such major
aspects of Italy's culture industry as tourism, museums and expositions,
soccer, and rock music are not discussed at all. Although not quite a
handbook, this study should nevertheless prove a useful reference, one
worth returning to for all sorts of specific information as well as for the
author's particular insights.
Raymond Grew
University of Michigan

Historical Archaeology in Global Perspective. Edited by Lisa Falk (Wash-

ington, Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991) 122 pp. $9.95 paper

This short book (four independent essays, an introduction, and a select

bibliography supplementing the chapter references) results from the
Smithsonian's planning for a major exhibition on the cultural exchanges
that followed the landing of Columbus. In the introduction, prosaically
titled "Archaeological Evidence of Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century
Encounters," James Deetz defines historical archaeology as "the archae-
ology of the spread of European societies worldwide, beginning in the
fifteenth century, and their subsequent development and impact on na-
tive peoples in all parts of the world" (1-2).
In North America this embraces the archaeology of Native Amer-
icans in the earliest decades of European contact, of European American
in the contact period, and of African and Asian Americans who came
in large numbers in the modern period under varying degrees of com-
pulsion. Taking Spaulding's discussion of multivariate analysis and ar-
chaeology as a model, Deetz uses the dimensions of space, time, and
form to approach his subject, "holding any two of these dimensions
constant while observing variations in the third" (3).1 Thus English
emigrant culture in early nineteenth-century North America and South
Africa can be contrasted, and a special study can be made of the absence
of industrialization in the latter region. Similarly, the seventeenth-cen-
tury Dutch settlements in New York state and Cape Colony can be
compared, and then contrasted with coeval English plantations in Vir-
ginia and Ulster. An international approach can make use of data that

I Albert C. Spaulding, "On Growth and Form in Archaeology: Multivariate Analysis,"

Journal of Anthropological Research, XXXIII (1977), I-I5.

This content downloaded from 190.96.91.204 on Mon, 21 Aug 2017 19:37:11 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
REVIEWS | 387

are too coarse-grained to be informative at the local or regional level,

and can also demonstrate that the simplest explanation is not always th
correct one: the documentary dimension of historical archaeology offers
a caution to prehistorians.
After the breadth of Deetz' introduction, the particular nature of
the next three chapters is disappointing although the research reporte
is excellent and clearly explained. Carmel Schrire and Donna Merwick
briefly compare Dutch-indigenous relations in New Netherland (New
York state) and Cape Colony in the seventeenth century, noting the
different trajectories of settlement and the sharply contrasting attitudes
toward the natives: whereas the Iroquois were viewed as wilden (people
of strange customs), the Khoikhoi were seen as scarcely human at all.
Paul R. Huey follows with an account of the rise and decline of the
Dutch at Fort Orange (now Albany, New York); their struggles with
Mohawks, Mahicans, and English; and a useful description of the I970-
7I excavation of the remaining traces of the fort before it disappeare
under Interstate 787.
Schrire gives a comparable description of Dutch-Khoikhoi inter-
action as documented by her excavations at Oudepost I, a tiny fortle
on the Churchaven Peninsula near Saldanha Bay, I20 km from Cape
Town and first occupied in 1669. Schrire, a South African trained in
Australia and teaching in New Jersey, is better-equipped than most to
appreciate the necessity of a global perspective, and her identification of
a Batavian palm scribed on an ostrich eggshell fragment at Oudepost I
the vision of a soldier of "Jan Compagnie" on a distant shore, shows it
Kathleen Deagan's final essay on how historical archaeology can
help us understand early colonial America takes up some contemporary
concerns. She shows that more source materials for the history and
archaeology of Africans and colonial black Americans exist than had
ever been believed. Deagan also reinforces Deetz' message that th
definition of historical archaeology as "the most expensive way in the
world to learn something we already know" is wrongheaded (I). Many
things, even in a documented society, can be ascertained only by ar-
chaeology. "Unself-documented non-elites" (as Deagan dubs them)
illicit activities, and behavior too quotidian to be worth written com
ment emerge only from the testimony of the trowel (o08-o09).
Overall, these essays show us the archaeology of ethnic interaction,
the impact of seventeenth-century Europeans on specific African and
American indigenes during the wave of colonization that followed the
age of discovery. Documentary and archival sources are used skillfully
to complement, and sometimes to direct, the archaeological action.
Nevertheless, the global perspective promised by the book's title and
Deetz' introduction is lacking. Where is the historical archaeology of
Europe itself, the culturalfons et origo of these diasporate settlers? Where
are the French in Canada, the Portuguese everywhere from Brazil to
Japan, the Spanish from Peru to the Philippines, and the English in
America, India, and Australia? Implicit throughout the book is the ide

This content downloaded from 190.96.91.204 on Mon, 21 Aug 2017 19:37:11 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
388 | SUSAN A. NILES

that historical archaeology is something invented in North America

Falk's "selected bibliography" contains only one citation from the vas
literature of European post-medieval archaeology, and the entire book
cites only a dozen or so non-United States publications. Deetz' procla
mation of a global historical archaeology is visionary, but on the ev
dence herein, somewhat premature.
Norman Hammond
Boston University

Columbian Consequences. III. The Spanish Borderlands in Pan-Americ

Perspective. Edited by David Hurst Thomas (Washington, D.C., Smi
sonian Institution Press, I991) 592 pp. $45.00

In the third and final volume in the Spanish Borderlands series, scho
from a variety of disciplines contribute twenty-nine articles assessing t
impact of European contact on indigenous American populations. T
seminars out of which the series grew were conceived as intentiona
interdisciplinary. As Thomas tells us in the introduction, "we search
borderlands for both traditional and novel approaches, augmenting
positive aspects of Boltonian scholarship with newer insights from other
directions, including historical archaeology, Native American stud
historical demography, and ethnohistory" (xvii). The earlier volum
were organized around culture areas, the first considering the west
Borderlands (including the southwestern United States and the Calif
nia coast), and the second focusing on the southeastern United Sta
and the Caribbean.1 The present volume lacks a geographical focus,
is intended to provide perspective on these regions by looking at ot
parts of the Spanish-occupied New World, and by contemplating t
history of and future trends in Borderlands research.
The chapters are organized into three sections. The first, "Ret
spective on a Century of Borderlands Scholarship," comprises a vari
selection but only one actually considers Borderlands scholarship-"T
Idea of the Spanish Borderlands" by David J. Weber. Three papers
Don D. Fowler and Catherine S. Fowler; Raymond D. Fogelson;
IraJacknis) comment upon the image of the American Indian as reflected
in museum exhibits and in the World Columbian Exposition. I com
mend them to all who seek an enlightening historical respite from
Columbian Quincentenary hoopla.
The second section, "The Native Context of Colonialism in South-
ern Mesoamerica and Central America," is the most successful. The
fourteen articles it comprises include data-rich case studies of contact-
period society for such groups as the Pech, Lenca, and Cakchiquel Maya;

I Thomas (ed.), Columbian Consequences: Archaeological and Historical Perspectives on the

Spanish Borderlands West (Washington D.C., 1989), I; idem, Columbian Consequences: Ar-
chaeological and Historical Perspectives on the Spanish Borderlands East (Washington, D.C.,
I990), II.

This content downloaded from 190.96.91.204 on Mon, 21 Aug 2017 19:37:11 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms