European Journal of Archaeology 21 (3) 2018, 455–471 This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Modern Colonialism, Eurocentrism and Historical Archaeology: Some Engendered Thoughts 1 2 SANDRA MONTÓN-SUBÍAS AND ALMUDENA HERNANDO 1Departament d’Humanitats, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain; ICREA, Barcelona, Spain 2Departamento de Prehistoria, Universidad Complutense, Madrid, Spain In this article, we would like to share some thoughts related to the values and principles implemented by archaeologists when bringing ‘the other’ into focus. We situate our reflections within the archaeology of modern colonialism, and revisit some aspects related to one of the most vibrant issues in historical archaeology: Eurocentrism. It is our understanding that ‘de-Eurocentring’ the discipline not only requires introducing the disenfranchised as new agents, but also questioning the most profound logics by which narratives of the past have been written. We focus on the idea of history as change, and on the notion of social continuity from a feminist standpoint. We have noticed that certain accounts of colonial situations, even those with the opposite intention, may project the prevailing Western male way of being while trying to explain past social and personal dynamics, thus blurring ontological diversity and unwittingly reinforcing the Eurocentrism we are trying to avoid. Keywords: historical archaeology, modern colonialism, Eurocentrism, feminist archaeology, change and continuity, maintenance activities INTRODUCTION Wolf, 1982; Quijano & Wallerstein, 1992; Dussel, 1995, 2000; Lander, 2000; ‘Quand on aborde un problème aussi Castro Gómez & Grosfoguel, 2007; ’ important que l inventaire des Mignolo, 2008; and, for related ideas, possibilités de compréhension de deux Marks, 2002; Parker, 2010; Gruzinski, peuples différents, on doit redoubler 2012). Profound changes of all types fol- ’ ’ 1 d attention. (Fanon, 1952: 67) lowed. These were not only changes ‘in a In their critique of Eurocentrism, Latin known world that merely altered some of American decolonial thinkers situate the its traits’ but ‘changes in the world as such’ origins of the first true World Order in (Quijano, 2000: 547). the modern conquest and colonization of This new colonial world encompassed the Americas (e.g. Wallerstein, 1974; the emergence of Eurocentrism as a new rationale, and eventually constructed a 1 ‘When one approaches a problem as important as Eurocentric self-legitimating historical dis- that of an inventory of the possibilities for understand- ing between two different peoples, one should be course. Following decolonial authors (e.g. doubly careful’ (translation in Fanon, 1986: 84). Lander, 2000: 14; Quijano, 2000), we © European Association of Archaeologists 2017 doi:10.1017/eaa.2017.83 Manuscript received 14 April 2017, accepted 7 November 2017, revised 25 September 2017 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.202.226, on 29 Sep 2021 at 09:16:43, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/eaa.2017.83 456 European Journal of Archaeology 21 (3) 2018 understand that this new rationale orga- Eurocentrism, and strong efforts have nized all peoples of the world, past and been made ever since to identify, scrutin- present, into a single universal narrative, ize, and demolish Eurocentrism in our with Europe representing both the geo- discipline (for a discussion, see Orser, graphical centre and the summit of all 2012). Here, we would like to deepen this temporal movement. This narrative was critique. It is our contention that more fully developed in the nineteenth century attention needs to be paid to the logics (Amin, 1988; Blaut, 1993, 2000; underlying the writing of history. Wallerstein, 2006; Álvarez-Uría, 2015), Otherwise, we may end up strengthening when history and archaeology, as institu- the most profound rationale behind trad- tionalized academic disciplines, replaced itional Eurocentric narratives, hence myth as the discourse to explain the past curbing our ability to appreciate cultural (Hernando, 2012b). New understandings difference and idiosyncrasy in the past. of space, time, and human agency, and, We focus on the idea of history as basically, the glorification of history as change and on the notion of social con- change took the stage (Quijano, 2000: tinuity from a feminist standpoint. Most 547). Archaeology and history thus shared specifically, we stress: 1) that a positive fundamental conceptual foundations: the appraisal of change is always associated assumption that change was the axis with individuality; 2) that individuality through which to think the world, the runs parallel to the emergence and perception of time as a linear trajectory, increase of social hierarchization and and the idea of space as a bi-dimensional technological development; 3) that indi- parameter that could be expanded end- viduality is a type of personhood that, in lessly. This particular, and situated, way of Europe, has characterized most men since understanding the world, which has domi- the Early Modern period; 4) that persons nated the social order since the nineteenth in non-hierarchical societies appreciate century, was considered to be universal stability and continuity more than and inherent to any human reading of the change; 5) that while human history has world. But it was not universal, as we will been a combination of continuity and the discuss in this article. search for change, history as a discourse In the 1960s, modern colonial processes has mainly emphasized change; 6) that, were used to demarcate historical archae- therefore, the logics behind the historical ology, a subfield of the discipline that ori- and archaeological discourse is an expres- ginally emerged in the United States and sion of the modern hegemonic individua- was soon defined as the ‘archaeology of lized masculinity (sensu Connell & the spread of European cultures through- Messerschmidt, 2005); and 7) that the out the world since the fifteenth century, perception of change typical of Western and their impact on and interaction with male individuality has been wrongly the cultures of indigenous peoples’ (Deetz, projected onto the interpretation of the 1996 [1977]: 5).2 Historical archaeologists past. Consequently, we understand that soon expressed concerns against Eurocentrism was/is not so much the imposition of the European understanding 2 We are well aware that historical archaeology is a of the world, but of a specific European controversial term and that there has been an energetic debate about its narrow versus wide chronological adop- understanding of the world: the male or tion. Here, we use the term to refer to the study of all processes connected to the European expansion, con- quest, and colonization that began in the Late Middle shape (Leone & Potter, 1988; Orser, 1996; Little, Ages, and that have moulded the world to its present 2007). Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.202.226, on 29 Sep 2021 at 09:16:43, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/eaa.2017.83 Montón-Subías and Hernando – Modern Colonialism, Eurocentrism and Historical Archaeology 457 patriarchal one operating in Europe at the explanations of the past. Eurocentrism time of the continent’s worldwide expansion. (and androcentrism) has found here one of its most impregnable hideouts, to the point that it often goes unnoticed. An SOME THOUGHTS ON EUROCENTRISM anecdote from a few years ago will illus- AND HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY trate this point (see Montón-Subías & Abejez, 2015: 25). In the session Since Wolf’s(1982) Europe and the People ‘Entangled Colonialism: Changes in Without History, and partly as a reaction to Material Culture and Space in the Late burning critiques of Eurocentrism, many Medieval through to the Modern Period’ historical archaeologists have considered it that took place at the 2012 European an important goal to give voice to the voice- Association of Archaeologists Annual less and, thus, rescue from oblivion all Meeting, Richard Ciolek-Torello those unrecalled in traditional historical explained that some Native American sub- narratives (e.g. Funari, 1991; Orser, 1996; sistence strategies in southern California Hall, 1999; Kelly, 2003; Leone, 2011; had been profoundly modified after the Escribano-Ruiz, 2016). At about the same implantation of the Spanish Catholic mis- time as this goal permeated historical sions. In this way, he emphasized, some archaeology, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak social dynamics that had remained rela- (1988), a feminist and postcolonial scholar tively stable had been truncated. In the scrutinizing pervasive Eurocentrism in Q&A session that followed, one of the postcolonial discourse, was already ques- attendees considered this vision of Native tioning whether it was possible for the Americans as Eurocentric. According to subaltern to speak, making reference to her, in thinking that it had been the mis- the most Western embedded structures of sionaries who had first brought change to thought in the production of knowledge. the area, he was reinforcing an image of Coloniality, a term used later by decolonial native