On Materializing Colonial Encounters: A Commentary

Abstract

This commentary chapter assesses broad thematic commonalities across the volume, as well as some shortcomings. It examines the book’s contributions to finer understandings of colonial worlds and materialities, focusing on questions of circulation, mediation, memory-making, and power. One of archaeology’s keen virtues is its ability to investigate colonial experiences through multiple archival, at different spatial and temporal scales. In this respect, archaeology is particularly well positioned to attend to the complex historicities and temporalities making up colonial situations—and thus expand the purview of colonial studies. The volume could have opened further analytical vantages, however, by attending more closely to archaeology’s entanglements with descendent communities, and expanding its geographic scope.