An archaeology of colonial identity : power and material culture in the Dwars Valley, South Africa / Gavin Lucas.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Lucas, Gavin, 1965-

Contributor:

Alumni and Friends Memorial Book Fund.

Series:

Contributions to global historical archaeology

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Material culture--South Africa--Dwars Valley (Western Cape).

Material culture.

Land settlement--South Africa--Dwars Valley (Western Cape)--History.

Land settlement.

Excavations (Archaeology)--South Africa--Dwars Valley (Western Cape).

Excavations (Archaeology).

History.

South Africa--Dwars Valley (Western Cape).

Dwars Valley (Western Cape, South Africa)--Antiquities.

Dwars Valley (Western Cape, South Africa).

Physical Description:

x, 223 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

New York : Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, [2004]

Summary:

Globalism is not solely a contemporary phenomenon but has an important history as archaeologists routinely demonstrate by unearthing traces of this process at numerous sites around the world. For example, 18th century Chinese pottery has been found from the Netherlands to North America, and from South Africa to Iceland. Not only does this international dispersal of material culture demonstrate an emergent global network of commodities, it also gives an insight into the people who defined themselves by such possessions. It is this material culture in the form of buildings and broken objects, which provide an alternative perspective from the textual and visual sources at our disposal.

An Archaeology of Colonial Identity examines how colonial identities were constructed in the Cape Colony of South Africa from its establishment in the 17th century up to the 20th century. It is an explicitly archaeological approach but one which also draws more widely on documentary material to examine how different people in the colony - from settler to slave - constructed identities through material culture.

The book explores three key groups: The Dutch East India Company, the free settlers, and the slaves, through a number of archaeological sites and contexts. With the archaeological evidence, the book examines how these different groups were enmeshed within racial, sexual, and class ideologies in the broader context of capitalism and colonialism, and draws extensively on current social theory, in particular post-colonialism, feminism, and Marxism.

This book is aimed primarily at archaeologists, but will also attract historians and those interested in cultural theory and material culture studies. Specifically, historical archaeologists and students of historical archaeology will be the primary readers of this volume.

Contents:

Chapter 1 Working Contexts 1

Introduction: Global Networks 1

From Cambridge to Capetown: The Politics and Production of Knowledge 4

Narrative Genres: The Textual and Visual Archive 7

Chapter 2 The Archaeology of Dutch Capitalism and the Colonial Trade 19

The New Republic and The Dutch East India Company 20

The Cape Colony, 1652-1795 29

Goede Verwachting: The Silver Mine on the Simonsberg 39

Landscapes of Labour 47

The Role of Silver in the Indian Ocean Trade 61

Chapter 3 Status and Settlement in the Cape Colony 67

The Settlement of the Southwestern Cape, 1657-1717 67

Settlement in the Dwars River Valley, 1690-1795 72

De Goede Hoop: Anatomy of a Settler Farm, 1688-1897 86

Consumption, Material Culture and Social Differentiation at the Cape in the 18th and 19th Centuries 109

Chapter 4 Farm Lives 119

Slavery at the Cape, 1652-1834 120

From Madagascar to the Dwars Valley: The World of Slaves 130

Landscapes of Slavery 136

Emancipation and the Pniel Mission Station 142

Architecture and the Articulation of Post-Emancipation Identities 149

From Emancipation to Apartheid: Pniel and the Dwars Valley in the 20th Century 158

ERF 776: The Anatomy of a House Lot 165

Apartheid and Identity 171

Chapter 5 Forging Identities 177

Race, Class and Gender 178

Questions of Identity and Culture 185

The Nature of Colonial Space and the Development of Capitalism in the Indian Ocean 188

Colonial Identity and Material Culture in the Metropole 193.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 199-217) and index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Alumni and Friends Memorial Book Fund.

ISBN:

0306485370

0306485389

0306485397

OCLC:

54881998