Código de Infancia y Adolescencia, ley 1098 de 2006

Within the framework of colonizer archaeology, a very different discourse is occurring than that of the archaeology of the colonized. The archaeology of the colonizer encompasses groups that are considered to be of the dominant political and social status. The traits that constitute these dominant groups of people are fluid and contextually specific. For example, depending on the researcher’s conceptual leaning, the colonizer in regions of North America could be framed explicitly as white, upper-class men, or all Euro-Canadians. Generally, the latter is favoured as a broader conceptualization of the archaeology of the colonizer that is premised on the exclusion of Aboriginal peoples. The structured nature of the political and social relationship between the colonizer and colonized is often framed as an explicit hegemonic relationship resulting from direct physical domination and control (Lightfoot 2005; Paterson 2008; Voss 2008), the movement of populations and establishment of

colonies (Gibbs 2011), a process of an economic relationship (Knappett and Nikolakopoulou 2008), or other factors. A more insidious form of colonial relationship is the purposeful or latent act of forgetting or ignoring. Within this discussion, I follow the Canadian convention that the archaeology of the colonizer includes all historical archaeology that discusses Euro- Canadians.

As previously stated, who is considered to be the colonizer within the dominant narrative is contextually dependent and shifts through time. For example, within the United Kingdom, the Irish are often framed as colonized peoples, somewhat akin to the African experience in the Americas (O'Neill and Lloyd 2009), and are under the domination of the British

oppressor (see Horning 2004; Klingelhofer 2003; O'Keeffe 2009; Rynne 2009 for

discussion). That Irish colonized identity initially transferred itself to the North American context (Akenson 1984; Brighton 2004, 2008, 2009; Brighton and Orser 2006; Elliott 2004; Kenyon et al. 1984; A. Smith 2004) but shifted through the 19th century into a position that embedded the Irish heritage firmly within a British colonizer identity (Brighton 2011). As such, where the Irish fit within the continuum of the colonial process is dependent on temporal and spatial contexts, as well as on how a particular researcher has chosen to define the limits of these colonizer/colonized categories. The shift in the perception of the Irish is only a single example of an identity that is able to tack between colonial categories, but it raises an important precedence for the archaeology of colonialism: colonial categories are not absolute, and as such the categorization of the colonizer/colonized cannot be assumed or applied without question.

Researchers of colonizers have the privileged conceptual position of assuming theirs is the de

facto definitional group imagined within much of historic archaeology, and thus are able to

ignore many of the issues of identity and categorization within the colonial narrative. For example, the new standards and regulations for commercial archaeology within the province of Ontario (see Doroszenko 2009; Ferris 2003; Ontario Ministry of Tourism and Culture 2011) generally follow the long standing convention that 18th- and 19th-century historic sites are ‘Euro-Canadian’. There are historic sites that are classified as First Nations (i.e.

within a region that is close to a modern-day enclave, or otherwise identified as such by an informed researcher of local context. The predominant assumption about the colonizer and ‘their’ material culture in turn “typically represent colonized peoples through a series of essentialist binary oppositions that favor colonial (Western) cultures, presenting colonized Others as variously inferior... in contrast to the superior... modern colonial Self” (Liebmann 2008:6). As such, it establishes the framework within which legitimate histories and

narratives are created and accepted, and it necessarily dictates how counter-narratives can be presented and evaluated (Appadurai 1981; Gullapalli 2008). Within the context of

southwestern Ontario, being European is to be the dominant colonizer, which becomes the default category through direct legislation (Doroszenko 2009; Ferris 2003), or through the subversive omission of alternative perspectives (Babiarz 2011; Gosden 2001; Rowlands 1998; Wilcox 2009).

Since being European is considered the default assumption archaeologists adopt when thinking about the occupants of historic sites, researchers are liberated from justifying why that is their starting position and do not have to deconstruct what it means to be European. This assumption creates a basic level of understanding that people are living as Europeans

adapted to their local context. Since this European-ness is assumed, researchers do not need to justify why or how they know the site occupants were European, and can instead focus on various other foci, like gender (Rotman 2009), economic class (Spencer-Wood 1987), or assorted incarnations of agency (Groover 2003). Recently, research has emphasized an exploration of material identities within the varied European ethnicities and colonizer tropes (e.g., Ferris and Kenyon 1983; Johnson 2003; Lawrence 2003[ed]; MacDonald 2004; Tarlow and West 1999). The archaeology of the colonizer often relies on the direct comparison between sites and groups, rather than an amorphous colonizer, allowing for a deeper

exploration of these concepts, and for the circumvention of being of the colonizer as the cause of any distinctions between other colonizers.

In many contexts, researchers of the colonizer use two frameworks for engaging with identities: the search for iconic vestiges, and the use of historic records to contextualize symbolic dispositions of identities. The former is the search for, and fetishization of, overt symbols that connect to an identity or heritage by the researcher. The adoption process of these symbols can range from an explicit form of defiance to an unspoken connection to the past (e.g., Cobb 2003; Fennel 2007). The types and meaning of symbols are fluid and can range from designs (Brighton 2004; Fennel 2007), to jewellery (Ferris 2009), to stone tools (Silliman 2004), to knapped glass (Harrison 2003), and more. Whatever the symbol or context, researchers seek out specific icons that become or are presumed emblematic of an identity. The presence and identification of symbols act as a conceptual shortcut for the researcher to assert an associated identity with material remains, and thus create meaning from past peoples’ material engagements. It is important to emphasize that the recognition of these symbols is happening in the researcher’s present, and the symbols’ associated meanings might have changed through time (e.g., Brighton 2004; Ferris 2009; Harrison 2003; Mann and Loren 2001; Silliman 2004).

In contrast to the search for iconic vestiges, the use of symbolic dispositions is a more nuanced, and thus complicated, conceptualization. It is derived from practice and

structuration theories (cf. Bourdieu 1977, 1990; Giddens 1979; Mauss 1973; Pauketat 2001) and emphasizes the search for both conscious and unconscious habitual dispositions.

Habitual dispositions represent ascertained, assigned, argued, adopted, and adapted understandings and practices imbued with explicit and implicit meanings for public and

personal consumption. These incorporate the various social and personal restrictions placed on people’s practices that have been reinforced or rejected by ignorance, heterodoxy, or orthodoxy. In a sense, how every person acts, the tasks they perform, and the objects they use are a confluence for the innumerable identities in which they are continuously engaged (Casella and Fowler 2004; Cipolla 2008; Jones 1997; Lele 2006; Meskell 2007). The issue here is determining how these varied dispositions differentially engage with the material world and become expressed in the archaeological record. For example, chipped glass could be indicative of Aboriginal dispositions (Silliman 2004; Warrick 2009), but framing it as such without deconstructing why this association is made frames the discourse in a manner that minimizes other possibilities (Harrison 2003). Could chipped glass also be a disposition of a poor European man, or even a woman or child? Alternatively, could chipped glass be the simple result of the functional necessity of the time that may be divorced from any broader dispositions? Why should our preconceptions limit our interpretations without a reflexive evaluation? Presently, researchers often rely on historic records to highlight dispositional meanings. While effective, the weaknesses of historic documents have been repeatedly touted (cf. Andrén 1997; Brumfiel 2003; Feinman 1997; Galloway 1992; Jones 1999; Last 1995; Small 1999; Voss 2007), and limited efforts have been made to understand and explore this relationship without this additional data set. Research frameworks where European is the default are troubling, as modern colonized peoples become invisible (Bell 2005; Wilcox 2009).

Both the search for iconic vestiges and symbolic dispositions has been effectively used to search for, and locate, various ethnic identities in the past; however, both have their own conceptual drawbacks. Respectively, they readily identify unique symbols and differences in patterns, but assigning meaning to either is a practice loaded with assumptions. Considering

the conventional, and insidious, colonial conceptualizations within historical archaeology, it is important to continuously consider how can we disentangle the colonizer and colonized distinctions from essentialist categories that serve to reify the colonizer/colonized dichotomy. Our research practices must be able to get beyond ‘historic ceramics = Europeans / knapping = Aboriginals’ and ‘eating more domesticates = Europeans / eating more deer = Aboriginal’, neither iconic vestiges nor symbolic dispositions alone can complete that task. Instead, the combination of iconic vestiges with contextual consideration of symbolic dispositions

generated from historical sources and archaeological data, while maintaining a critical eye on our own colonial dispositions as researchers can help identify innovative methods to

disentangle colonizer/colonized identities and make new connections between iconic and symbolic material engagements and various forms of fluid identities.