Transnational artifacts: Grappling with fluid material origins and identities in archaeological interpretations of culture change

Ross, Douglas E.

doi:10.1016/j.jaa.2011.10.001

Cited by 13 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…Passelac 2007). Although we cannot but agree with this, rather more is to be said – in relation to the methodological argument of this paper – beyond the identification of origins, influences and investment (Ross 2012; Silliman 2009).…”

Section: The Practices Of the Production Of Southern Gaulish Pre-sigimentioning

confidence: 59%

“…Pots are labelled x or y , dishes are squeezed into numbered typologies, and variability is tamed. Others have critiqued the equation of artefact categories with cultural origins before (Ross 2012; Silliman 2009; 2010), but this paper has tried to push their criticism by tracing it back to its roots: the separation between a single, static world of things out there and its multiple, fluid, negotiated meanings. An ontological perspective has been introduced to mediate this initial separation and to argue that things do not always exist in the focused, delineated way of a category.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Other scholars have touched upon the inadequacy of conventional artefact categories for analysing similarity and difference, or continuity and change, in situations of cultural encounter (Ross 2012; Silliman 2001; 2009; 2010; Stahl 2010). Within anthropology, more than two decades ago Stoler (1989, 135) already critiqued how ‘the objects of our study, if not the units of our analysis, have remained much the same’, despite the post-colonial deconstruction of bounded, homogeneous cultural or social categories.…”

Section: An Ontological Critiquementioning

confidence: 99%

“…physical characteristics] but whose cultural affiliations [i.e. meaning] shift over time’ (Ross 2012, 39). Similarly, Silliman's claim for a privileging of practices concerning use risks simply reifying the consumption/production imbalance discussed before.…”

Section: An Ontological Critiquementioning

confidence: 99%

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Towards a post-colonial artefact analysis

Oyen¹

2013

Arch. Dial.

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This paper argues that material culture should be brought even more to the forefront in post-colonial archaeology. At present, post-colonial analyses start from a baseline of pinned-down, delineated things as processed through artefact analysis, to proceed to interpretations of how these things were used in fluid, multidirectional, ambivalent social and cultural interactions. But what if things themselves can be fluid rather than bounded? Can we look into the various ways in which things were defined in the past, and the various relations they enabled? Such a change of perspective can also help redress the imbalance within post-colonial studies between, on the one hand, consumption as the field in which meaning is negotiated and, on the other hand, production as offering merely a template for the inscription of that meaning. A case study of so-called pre-sigillata production in southern Gaul articulates the benefit to be gained from considering these issues.

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Section: The Practices Of the Production Of Southern Gaulish Pre-sigimentioning

confidence: 59%

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: An Ontological Critiquementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: An Ontological Critiquementioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Towards a post-colonial artefact analysis

Oyen¹

2013

Arch. Dial.

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“…These interpretations often rely on generalized and at times stereotyped notions of “Chineseness” that are used as a reference point for interpreting recovered materials. Transnational approaches that build on historic and ethnohistoric research have provided alternatives to conventional studies of change and continuity (e.g., Byrne 2016; Chung and Wegars 2005; Fong 2013; González-Tennant 2011; Heffner 2015; Kennedy 2015; Kraus-Friedberg 2008; Lydon 1999; Molenda 2015a, 2015b; Ross 2011a, 2013a; Voss 2016), but the absence of comparable archaeological data from qiaoxiang continues to hamper development of the field. Interpreting Chinese diaspora sites requires both the development of a comparable body of evidence from qiaoxiang and an understanding of the ways in which China-produced goods were distributed to diaspora communities.…”

Section: Homeland Research In the Archaeology Of Diasporamentioning

confidence: 99%

THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF HOME:QIAOXIANGAND NONSTATE ACTORS IN THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE CHINESE DIASPORA

Voss

Kennedy²,

Tan³

et al. 2018

Am. Antiq.

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The archaeology of the nineteenth-century Chinese diaspora is a well-developed archaeological subfield, but research on Chinese migrants’ homelands is lacking. Survey of a qiaoxiang (home village) in China's Pearl River Delta provides the first archaeological evidence from a home village of Chinese migrants. Transnational comparative analysis with collections recovered from Chinese diaspora settlements reveals stark differences in the use of China-produced goods between qiaoxiang and Chinese settlements abroad. Qiaoxiang residents primarily used locally produced ceramics, while residents of Chinese diaspora settlements consumed ceramics produced in Gaobei and Jingdezhen, major pottery centers located in northeast Guangdong Province and Jiangxi Province, hundreds of kilometers to the north. Additionally, qiaoxiang residents were engaged in global networks of consumption, using British refined earthenwares and other products produced in Europe and the United States. These findings challenge the common assumption made in diaspora research that artifacts produced in migrants’ homelands are evidence of tradition, while those produced in migrants’ adopted countries are evidence of culture change. Instead, the results of qiaoxiang archaeology indicate the significance of nonstate actors, especially import-export companies, in shaping the material worlds of both homeland and diaspora communities. (Spanish abstract available as Supplemental Text 1.)

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Local and Global Lessons from 20 Cesspits from Australia

Murray

Crook

2019

Exploring the Archaeology of the Modern City in Nineteenth-Century Australia

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Transnational artifacts: Grappling with fluid material origins and identities in archaeological interpretations of culture change

Cited by 13 publications

References 25 publications

Towards a post-colonial artefact analysis

Towards a post-colonial artefact analysis

THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF HOME:QIAOXIANGAND NONSTATE ACTORS IN THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE CHINESE DIASPORA

Local and Global Lessons from 20 Cesspits from Australia

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