One of the greatest powers of Historical Archaeology as an interdisciplinary approach to the past, is its ability to shed light on the everyday lives and struggles of the majority of people who left no written record describing their experiences under colonialism. The second two books assigned in this course, Uncommon Ground: Archaeology and Early African America, 1650-1800, by Leland Ferguson, and The Archaeology of Refuge and Recourse: Coast Miwok
Resilience and Indigenous Hinterlands in Colonial California, by Tsim Schneider, explore the cultural worlds created by African Americans and Indigenous Californians in the context of colonial oppression. In this essay, drawing from your reading of the assigned texts, compare and contrast each author’s approach to answering the following questions:
1) How does archaeology shed light on the structural forces that shaped the experience of colonialism for African-Americans and Indigenous Californians in each context?
2) How does each author seek and identify archaeological evidence for cultural continuity and persistence in each case study?
3) How does each author discuss the social or cultural mechanisms that structured cultural change in each context?