Archaeologies of Cultural Contact At the Interface

Archaeologies of Cultural Contact undertakes an exploration of cultural transfer, with a particular focus on the combination and modification of both material and behavioural attributes under conditions of contact. From globalization and displacement to cultural legitimization and identity politics, the modern world is characterised by, and articulated through, dynamics of contact and transfer. This book recognises that creolization, ethnogenesis, hybridity, and syncretism are analytical concepts and social processes, relevant not only to the postcolonial contexts of the twentieth century but also to wide-ranging instances where contact is made between cultural groups. Indeed, in representing the re-working of pre-existing cultural elements, they were crucial and ever-present features of the human past.

Ranging in their analytical frame, scale, and geographical and temporal location, the chapters in this volume demonstrate the diverse understandings that can be gained from explorations into the material remains of past contact, exposing and overcoming various limitations of competing models of cultural change. They permit insights into not only cultural change and difference but also the processes of appropriation, resistance, redefinition, and incorporation. Together, the contributions articulate the perspectives that concern practices in relations to people, places, and things, and note how power dynamics mediate social interactions and sustain and constrain forms of cultural contact. This book will be of interest to researchers and students in archaeology as well those from cognate disciplines, particularly anthropology and history.

Timothy Clack, Chingiz Gutseriev Fellow in Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Oxford,Marcus Brittain, Senior Project Officer, Cambridge Archaeological Unit

Timothy Clack is Chingiz Gutseriev Fellow in Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Oxford, UK. In addition to cultural contact, his current research concerns heritage and armed conflict, environmental change as a driver of violence, and landscapes and identities. He is Senior Editor
Cultural Heritage of the journal Cogent - Arts & Humanities.


Marcus Brittain is a Senior Project Officer at Cambridge Archaeological Unit and Member of the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge, UK. His research interests include pioneer communities of the later prehistoric and later historical periods, the social value of
archaeology, and archaeological methods and theory, primarily related to the UK, its overseas territories, and various parts of Africa.

Archaeologies of Cultural Contact: An Introduction, Marcus Brittain and Timothy Clack
Dealing with Difference
1. The Domestication of Difference: Globalisation, Hybridity, and Material Culture in Archaeological Perspective, Nicole Boivin
2. Nodes of Interaction: Changing Rock Paintings in the Eastern Cape Mountains of South Africa, Lara Mallen and David Pearce
3. Becoming One or Many: Material Mediation of Difference in Honduras, Rosemary A. Joyce and Russell N. Sheptak
4. Other than Human Hybridity?, Timothy Clack
5. Disentangling Neanderthal-Modern Human Interactions in Western Europe: A Heuristic Odyssey, Brad Gravina, Francesco d'Errico, and François Bachellerie
Conflict, Power, and Belief
6. The Biographies of Resistant Material Culture in Occupied Landscapes: The Channel Islands and World War II, Gilly Carr
7. Unblended America: Contesting Race and Place in Nineteenth-Century New England, Karen Ann Hutchins-Keim and Mary C. Beaudry
8. 'Such was the End of Their Feast': Violence, Intimacy, and Mimetic Practice in Early Modern Ireland, Audrey Horning
9. Tacit Knowing of Thralls: Style Negotiation among the Unfree in Eleventh- and Twelfth-Century Sweden, Mats Roslund
10. Cultural Interaction at Palmares: An Archaeology of South American Maroons, Pedro Funari and Aline de Carvalho
11. Creole Identity and Syncretism in the Archaeology of Islam, Andrew Petersen
12. Syncretism and Cognition: African and European Religious and Aesthetic Expressions in the Caribbean, Jay B. Haviser
Concluding Thoughts
13. Observations of a Diverse Discussion on Power and Diversity, Jeb Card