Archaeology and the Postcolonial Critique

In recent years, postcolonial theories have emerged as one of the significant paradigms of contemporary academia, affecting disciplines throughout the humanities and social sciences. These theories address the complex processes if colonialism on culture and society--with repect to both the colonizers and the colonized--to help us understand the colonial experience in its entirety. The contributors to Archaeology and the Postcolonial Critique present critical syntheses of archaeological and postcolonial studies by examining both Old and New World case studies, and they ask what the ultimate effect of postcolonial theorizing will be on the practice of archaeology in the twenty-first century.

Matthew Liebmann is assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology at Harvard University. Uzma Z. Rizvi is assistant professor in the Department of Social Science and Cultural Studies, and of Critical and Visual Studies at the Pratt Institute.