The Still Unexplored Parts of Southeast Asian Archaeology: Colonial Archaeology Singapore

Existing archaeological studies have focused predominantly on 14th century Singapore while colonial archaeology in Singapore remains understudied. With most archaeological sites in Singapore also yielding artifacts from the 19th to early 20th century, there is an enormous potential for the development of the field (Miksic 2013, p.419). Although colonial records can provide information on colonial Singapore, more mundane daily activities and lives of the people are under-documented. This paper seeks to identify the potential and importance of studying Singapore and Southeast Asian’s colonial archaeological record.

Andean Ontologies

Andean ontologies can be used to improve the interpretation and understanding of pre-Hispanic societies and their history. Relevant anthropological, archaeological, historical and linguistic sources are reviewed from which the main Andean ontologies have emerged. Furthermore, in this chapter, Andean terms such as Camay, Pacha, Huaca and Runa are discussed, as well as their origins, their explanatory potential of Andean phenomena and their applications to pre-colonial archaeology. Finally, this chapter reviews the reasons why Andean ontologies should be considered in archaeological explanations.

Construction of the racialised and colonised other: global comparatives in imperial and colonial archaeology

Whereas Sarr and Savoy (2018) focus on artefacts taken from various African countries after 1885, Incidental archaeologists, considers “the first four decades of the French conquest and pacification of Algeria under the authority of the French military Government General” (p. 24). Throughout the volume, Effros presents a convincing argument in which the social history of military infrastructure lays the groundwork for the future of the French civilising mission. She is clear about the magnitude of the task that the book is engaged in; it provides links between early French archaeologists and epigraphers and their place within the development of the disciplines. It also considers the ways by which romanticised narratives, created by French officers, about the classical archaeology of Algeria led to irresponsible destruction of antiquity, violence against local resistant populations and classifications that became constitutive of colonial archaeological interest and practice.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

This chapter transposes the analogical investigation of ancient astronauts as a source of geopolitical meditation in Ancient Aliens to a SF film that make this connection explicit: Steven Spielberg's Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of Crystal Skull (2006), which adapts the cinematic antecedent of 1950s B SF movies—in which aliens function as a trope for governmental conspiracy, atomic anxiety, and Soviet hysteria—into ancient astronaut discourse. An interesting subtext of Spielberg’s nostalgic throwback to SF film history is the nature of the aliens themselves. As archaeologists and collectors, they replicate the kinds of colonial archaeology that Jones and even the audience may take for granted. These beings function within the SF métier as an external threat, but they simultaneously sanction the civilizing activities undertaken by democratic institutions like the British Museum, Louvre and Metropolitan Museum. The film thus neatly closes the hermeneutic circle on the Indiana Jones franchise by mining its latent SF tropes: the intrepid figure of colonial archaeology is reinvigorated through the exotic adventures of technologically-advanced beings from outer space. Archaeology is a device for manifesting threats that can be foiled by the very scientific structures and geopolitical forces that inform the entertaining world of action and adventure.

“Great Powers” in the Pacific Islands

The application of a comparative approach in Spanish colonial archaeology is a vital, but infrequent, enterprise that strengthens the historical anthropology of Western imperialism. This chapter compares early Spanish and Anglo-American colonialism in the Marianas and Hawaiian islands. Because these archipelagos were colonized by different Western powers, they offer archaeologists an opportunity to examine colonialism within a comparative framework. Colonialism in the two island groups was markedly different, but this study revealed the following similarities: 1) The indigenous desire for iron in both societies provided them a powerful incentive to provision Western ships, and such trade instigated their engagement with global capitalism, and 2) Western contact attenuated the spatial segregation of gendered labor, thereby altering the household economy. In each case, however, archaeology confirms that these changes were contextually nuanced and protracted.