Colonial Artifacts Research Articles

When decolonization is hijacked

AbstractThis article asks how we should reconceptualize decolonization when it is hijacked by authoritarian/fascist forces. It focuses on the notorious Bhima Koregaon case in India in which 16 intellectuals/human rights defenders from across the country were imprisoned without trial as alleged terrorists. It shows how, on the one hand, decolonization is hijacked by the Hindu authoritarian regime and, on the other hand, colonial artifacts are resymbolized by the colonized to oppose oppression by native elites. It urges attention to the questions of who is mobilizing the language of decolonization and why. It argues that the most important anticolonial intellectuals may not use the language of decolonization and may not be in universities, but on the streets, with social movements, and in prison. It proposes that contemporary decolonization debates center processes of domination and oppression created by the state and global capital nexus, processes that are cultural, psychological, political, and economic. These processes are shown to entrench casteist/racist hierarchies, work through Indigenous elites, and create internal differentiation within marginalized communities, eschewing a unitary concept of indigenous ontology/cosmopolitics/worldviews. Calls for an emancipatory politics, such as that of decolonizing anthropology or the university, would be well placed to center these global processes and local nuances.

“Asiphelelanga!” (We are not complete!): #FeesMustFall movement and higher education in post-apartheid South Africa

This article focuses on the Fees Must Fall Protests in South Africa as a decolonial strategy implemented by university students who seek a fully liberated South Africa. Students’ core demands of the access to and quality of university education embody Africans’ early ideals of freedom from the Victorian Era to the turbulence seen in the violent student protests of the 1970s and 1980s. Students underscored that their future is compromised by the ruling party’s inability to live up to a democratic blueprint of liberation. By marching and inflicting disruptive modes of politics, including vandalizing property, university students called for the removal of colonial artifacts. Through innovative uses of social media networks and viral hashtags, students documented their effort to decolonize their universities through a form of knowledge production infused with African epistemologies.

THE SILENCES SHAPING THE MEMORY OF THE MAPUCHE IN THE NATIONAL HISTORICAL MUSEUM OF CHILE

Abstract A widespread link between the process of nation‐building and the rise of museums is evident in late‐nineteenth‐century Latin America. The Chilean National Historical Museum (MHN) was founded in 1873 with the purpose of exhibiting the nation's heritage, beginning with the Spanish colonization. This article focuses on examining the narrative displayed in the MHN, particularly the silences surrounding the Indigenous Mapuche. It analyzes the implications this absence brings to the collective memory of the nation. Using museum catalogs, newspapers, and nineteenth‐century literature, this research traces the contrast between how Indigenous and colonial artifacts are exhibited in the museum, wherein the Mapuche are framed aesthetically, therefore relegating them to the past. By stripping from them any contemporary existence, the Mapuche are relegated to an anecdote of ancient times. I document how the primary collection of the museum reproduces a narrative by which European heritage is the starting point of the nation's progress, silencing the voice of Mapuche history and hence producing a script that lacks a nuanced understanding of Chile's Indigenous reality. At a time when Chile is experiencing violent conflict in the Araucanía region, the MHN obscures Mapuche identity and inhibits a dialogue between Indigenous communities and the state. [museum, Mapuche, national identity, colonialism, Indigenous]

Review: Angkor Wat: A Transcultural History of Heritage

Review: <i>Angkor Wat: A Transcultural History of Heritage</i>

Artefak Kolonial Perkebunan Panglejar, Maswati, Rajamandala Masa Hindia Belanda: Arti dan Arah Sejarah

Colonial plantation artifacts are an important cultural in the history of plantation at Bandung, West Java. What and how the plantation artifacts are the main problem in this paper. the purpose of this paper is to explain the colonial plantation artifacts in the form of inscriptions and old maps of the garden. The method used is a desk research on archeological research reports, books, and the internet. The data sources obtained are the inscription of the establishment of the old Panglejar tea factory in the IHT Building, the inscription of the establishment of the Administrator of Maswati Plantation house in the Pusdiklat Building, and the old map of the Rajamandala P lantation in the Office of Rajamandala Afdeling 1 of Panglejar Platation. The three colonial artifacts give special meaning to the continuity of plantation history since the days of the Dutch East Indies until now, as well as showing directions to search for and find historical information through colonial archival research and information from interviews with relevant informants at the present time.

New Clues on the Origin of the “Inca Mirror” at the Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris

Since at least 1742, the mineralogical collection of the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle (MNHN) in Paris has hosted, under the reference number 22.U, a biconvex lens-shaped obsidian artifact, also described as a mirror, measuring 250 mm in diameter and finely polished on both faces. It has usually been ascribed to the shipment sent by Hernán Cortez in 1522 to the Emperor Charles V, which was captured by a French privateer. We investigated the object using modern techniques. The elemental composition of the obsidian determined by the particle induced X-ray emission (PIXE) method showed that the raw material originates from the Mullumica deposit (Ecuador). Documentary investigations revealed that the lens (renumbered No. 176.101) was sent in 1737 from Quito, Ecuador (at that time part of the viceroyalty of Peru), to France by members of the Godin–La Condamine geodesic expedition (1735–1743). The mirror is thus among the rare Ecuadorian archeological or colonial artifacts to have reached the Old World during the eighteenth century.

The Hut-Hospital as Project and as Practice

This article analyzes one kind of colonial equipment designed in the early twentieth century for the purpose of providing medical assistance to the indigenous populations of Angola and Mozambique. I will refer to it as a ‘hut-hospital’, although it had several forms and designations. The layout of hut-hospitals consisted of a main building and a number of hut-like units that were supposedly more attractive to the indigenous population and therefore more efficient than the large, rectangular buildings of the main colonial hospitals. Using different sources, including three-dimensional plaster models of hut-hospitals, photographs, legal documents, and 1920s conference papers and articles, I will investigate the relatively obscure history of this colonial artifact while exploring the use of imitation as part of the repertoire of colonial governance.

Archaeological Investigations at the Christopher Columbus Italian Society Property and Columbus Park: 41BX1968, the Possible First Site of Mission San Antonio de Valero

In May of 2013, the Center for Archaeological Research of The University of Texas at San Antonio was contracted by the San Antonio Conservation Society (SACS) to explore the Spanish Colonial archaeological deposits and a feature that were recently identified in a lot owned by the Christopher Columbus Italian Society and next to the San Francesco di Paola Church in north-central San Antonio, Bexar County, Texas. Based on a number of historical descriptions, the deposits were thought to possibly be associated with the first location of Mission San Antonio de Valero that was established in 1718. Thirty-one shovel tests were excavated in Columbus Park and on property owned by the Christopher Columbus Italian Society near the church. In addition, three test units were excavated at a location downhill from the church on property owned by the Christopher Columbus Italian Society. The archaeological investigations were conducted under Texas Antiquities Permit No. 6534. Steve Tomka served as the Original Principal Investigator, and Kristi Miller Nichols served as Project Archaeologist. The Permit is currently held by Dr. Raymond Mauldin. Surface collection in the open field and in the vicinity of the church produced a small quantity of Spanish Colonial Period material, including wrought iron nails, a majolica ceramic fragment, a trade bead, and melted lead. Shovel tests revealed that the upper 60 cm of soil in the park contains mostly modern and some early twentieth-century materials. Investigations found no evidence of Mission San Antonio de Valero within Columbus Park. Test unit excavations in the Christopher Columbus Italian Society’s property produced fragments of majolica ceramics affiliated with the Spanish Colonial Period and lead-glazed Galera wares of probable Colonial age. While a large proportion of the cultural materials recovered from surface and the shovel tests does consist of nineteenthand twentieth-century materials, the remainder includes a variety of Spanish Colonial artifacts such as tin- and lead-glazed ceramics, bone-tempered sherds, a trade bead, and fragments of wrought iron nails. It is likely that the materials have been re-deposited from the upper portion of the landform where the church and hall had been erected in the late 1920s. In addition, the western portion of the tract had been graded prior to the construction of a paved parking lot, and this further disturbed any buried cultural deposits. The cultural material that is affiliated with the Spanish Colonial Period is overwhelmed by artifacts dated to later periods. This is somewhat

Nombrar y representar: escritura y naturaleza en el Códice de la Cruz-Badiano, 1552

En el ICANH Resguardamos y gestionamos el patrimonio arqueológico, antropológico e histórico de Colombia, a través de la investigación, la conservación, la divulgación y la formulación de políticas públicas.

Ivor Noël Hume: Historical Archaeologist

Abstract Ivor Noël Hume is one of the founders of historical archaeology in North America and has long championed the integration of documentary and archaeological evidence for understanding the past. As the chief archaeologist at Colonial Williamsburg for three decades, he directed numerous excavations and literally wrote the book on colonial artifacts. Committed to sharing research findings with the public, he led the way through varied publications and films and developed the first major exhibits about colonial archaeology in the United States. His most well-known project is the exploration and exhibition of the early seventeenth-century Virginia settlement of Martin's Hundred.

Jerry Wasserman, ed. Spectacle of Empire: Marc Lescarbot’s Theatre of Neptune in New France%

JERRY WASSERMAN, ed. Spectacle of Empire: Marc Theatre of Neptune in New France. Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2006. 108 pp. Illus. Jerry Wasserman's Spectacle of Empire is exciting compendium presenting the original 1609 French edition of Marc Le Theatre de Neptune en la Nouvelle-France, Harriette Taber Richardson's 1927 English translation, Eugene and Renate Benson's 1982 translation, and, as example of similar court masques: Ben Jonson's allegorical 1605 The Masque of Blackness. Wasserman's introduction draws on rich variety of historical and theoretical frameworks ranging from ritual performances, mumming, the cultural hegemony of Renaissance ideology, Margaret Atwood's Survival, Daniel Francis's The Imaginary Indian, Alan Filewod's Performing Canada, and Richard Schechner to Joseph Roach's explorations of circum-Atlantic interculture. Seen through this post-colonial lens, The Theatre of Neptune in New France emerges as an elaborate, small-scale spectacle of wishful imperial triumphalism, as a snapshot of European strategies for imperial conquest, and as Lescarbot's Franco-Christian imperialism and Noble Savage romanticism. Twenty-two lavish illustrations by Lescarbot, Champlain, and of the reconstructed Port Royal in Nova Scotia, as well as costume designs by Inigo Jones and illustrations of European court spectacles, localize the performance of text on 14 November 1606 and the theatrical, imaginative, and ideological sources from which it emerged. A substantial bibliography completes this handsomely-designed 400th-anniversary edition of The Theatre of Neptune. In his preface, Getting to Know Neptune, Wasserman describes the thrill his theatre students experienced in discovering masque, performed in the harbour of Port Royal six weeks before Shakespeare's company premiered King Lear in London. He demonstrates the potency of The Theatre of Neptune as a living colonial artifact in postcolonial age by referring to Montreal's Optative Theatrical Laboratories Sinking Neptune project, intervention designed to subvert and deconstruct text and to interrupt the 400th- anniversary re-enactment of the masque by the Musique 400 Society. Optative's extensive website (Google Sinking Neptune) features the deconstructed text--a mixture of agit-prop and living newspaper documentary theatre forms--a brief video of its performance and Donovan King's thirty-page dramaturgical toolbox analysis of the play that rivals Wasserman's. …

Contagion and Alterity: Kowoj Maya Appropriations of European Objects

ABSTRACT From initial contact with the Europeans until their conquest (C.E. 1525–1697), the Itza and their political rivals, the Kowoj, dominated Petén, Guatemala. Colonial artifacts at Zacpetén record the initial appropriations of European objects by the Kowoj. All such objects rested in ceremonial contexts, indicating that the Kowoj considered them positive sources of sacred power. The Kowoj were in contact with the Spaniards and knew they were the source of the valued materials; hence, the materials also signified otherness. Social elites frequently retained objects obtained from long distances, even those of oppressive colonial groups, as positive contagion. I argue that the Kowoj incorporated colonial objects into their rites to harness the power of alterity.

THE GUYANA ETHNIC QUAGMIRE: PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS FOR RECONCILIATION

The multi-ethnic state of Guyana, as in many parts of the Third World, was a colonial artifact. State and nation were not co-terminus entities; rather, the colonial state deliberately spawned an ethnically segmented social and cultural fabric. The inherited political institutional apparatus through which state power was contested—specifically, the competitive parliamentary system–-engaged the ethnically based parties in a zero-sum struggle for power. The article offers an analysis of the fundamental issues related to status and recognition of the ethno-cultural communities which express fears of discrimination and domination as well as charges of skewed state policies regarding resource allocation and suggests directions in which change toward inter-ethnic reconciliation and political consociation may proceed.

The Hot and the Cold: Ills of Humans and Maize in Native Mexico

The Hot and the Cold: Ills of Humans and Maize in Native Mexico J. M. CHEVALIER AND A. SANCHEZ BAIN UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS, TORONTO, 2002 344 PP. $65.00 HARDCOVER In The Hot and the Cold the authors enter an ongoing debate regarding the in Latin American ethnomedical systems championed by Foster (e.g., 1994) and Lopez Austin (e.g., 1980 and 1986) respectively. The central thesis of this work is that George Foster's theory of the humoral origin of the Latin American hot/cold system is incorrect. In addition, they argue that the basic hot/cold system should be modified include a heliotropic model. This shirting focus plagues die book and weakens dhe authors' argument throughout. Chevalier and Sanchez Bain, following Lopez Austin, take the position that the hot/cold system in Latin America is of pre-Columbian origin, not a Spanish colonial artifact. The claims against the Spanish humoral source are threefold. First, the authors argue, the humoral system has no humors. Because there is no reference blood, phlegm and the biles, nor air, earth, wind and fire, the system must not be humoral. They then argue that, furthermore, there is no wet/dry continuum consider alongside the hot/cold and that this is of prime importance. Fosters (1994) position is that the system has been reduced over cime via transmission from colonizers colonized and from individual individual. Chevalier and Sanchez Bain categorically do not accept this possibility and suggest that the acceptance of this position is racist because it denies New Worlders the ability perform abstract and complex thought. Instead, they assume that the humoral system would have been transferred carefully from specialist specialist. In Fosters model, the system was transferred from the Spanish the general population, with the specialists holding on their traditional system, while the secular masses picked up a bit here and there. Second, the authors contest Foster's argument that the medical system is empirically based. They claim that if the humoral categories of medicinals and illnesses are learned, the system can not be empirical. Thus, they argue, Foster is wrong. It seems chat the authors' faulty logic misses the point-while one may label diarrhea, for example, as a illness, this has no effect on the empirical observation that a particular plant cures it. Furthermore, they ignore the work of Matthews (1983) who demonstrates how inconsistent che ethnomedical system is, which allows it conform disjunctures between empirical observations and theories. This suggests that the system is a recent adoption as a theoretical framework explain observed results. Third, it is suggested by Chevalier and Sanchez Bain that according Foster's model, there is one perfect and rarely attained thermal value for health and chat any activity is risky to the point chac a stable health condition becomes painfully rare (Foster 3335) (p. 17). In fact, on the pages cited here from Foster's work, he discusses how hot and cold insults body equilibrium usually do not precipitate illness unless they are extreme. I will further discuss this issue below. One of the goals of this book consists of developing a heliotropic, as opposed the basic humoral, model of health. By heliotropic the authors refer a cyclical model that not only varies in the course of the day, as the term suggests, but also over the lifetime of the entity in question. Here lies the book's strong point. Rich edinographic data is explored in the realms of health and illness, agricultural beliefs and practices, and mythology. Health and agricultural practice are shown be interrelated in very direct ways while the inclusion of multiple versions of the corn myth adds the ethnographic documentation and helps support facets of the heliotropic model. Also included are a series of related graphic models that are informative, easy understand, and distill the text quite nicely. …

LEGACY OF COLONIAL ARCHITECTURE IN KHULNA CITY

Khulna city was established during the British colonial period as a sub divisional center in 1842. The city is characterized by a number of colonial buildings along K.D. Gosh Road forming civil line of the government. On the other hand, artifacts of private nature are scattered within the city. These colonial artifacts have distinct aesthetic value but may not be categorised according to definite tenets of style. A City can be judged from two approaches; one is being the historical approach, other being the structural analysis. These judgments are in fact value judgments and the basis of urban aesthetics. For that reason aesthetics emerges as a tool for the investigation of the study. However the study is confined only with the visual qualities for judgment of buildings as artifacts in Khulna city in historic time frame of British Colonialism. Typological significance of urban artifacts that also determine the character of the aesthetics and have been taken care. As a case study, city aesthetics of Khulna was assessed by identifying the nature and the type ofinvolvement in their development process. From the findings, types and the quality they produce as building block of urban image divided the whole artifacts into components of urban aesthetics. The outcome of the study will help city dwellers to receive, synthesize, assimilate and classify the colonial artifacts as components of perceiving the colonial image of Khulna city. Again a significant practical value of such studies would be drawn from an area of concern to those architects, planners and policy makers whose primary problem is the design of housing for the rapidly expanding urban areas of the so called developing world. Here as elsewhere design solution must be congruent with the value system and culture of the community being housed.

Archaeological Testing and Monitoring of a Service Drive at Mission San Juan Capistrano, San Antonio, Texas

Archaeological testing for the installation of a new service drive and monitoring the removal of the existing service drive at Mission San Juan Capistrano was conducted in November, 1997 and October, 1999 respectively, by the Center for Archaeological Research (CAR) at The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) for the National Park Service (NPS). The results of the testing and monitoring indicated that no intact Colonial midden deposits were observed, and few Colonial artifacts were recovered within the proposed service drive right-ofway. Three post-Colonial trash deposits were documented within the project area; however, due to the disturbed nature of these deposits which contain stratigraphically mixed nineteenth and twentieth century materials the research potential of such deposits is considered minimal and it is recommended that no further archaeological investigations are required prior to the construction of the service drive. Also included as an Appendix to this report is a brief analysis of an isolated burial discovered during a monitoring project at Mission San Juan in 1999. These remains have since been reinterred by NPS.

BOOK REVIEW: Colum Kenny.TRISTRAM KENNEDY AND THE REVIVAL OF IRISH LEGAL TRAINING, 1835-1885.Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1999.

Reviewed by: An Enlightenment Tory in Victorian Scotland: The Career of Sir Archibald Alison Gordon Bigelow (bio) Tristram Kennedy and the Revival of Irish Legal Training, 1835–1885, by Colum Kenny; pp. xviii + 270. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1999, £30.00, $45.00. Modernity is a colonial artifact. This is perhaps the central insight of postcolonial criticism for scholarship in nineteenth-century Europe, and it is borne out by the obscure histories brought to light in Colum Kenny’s book on legal education in Victorian Ireland. The standardization of the professions has been a common theme of nineteenth-century cultural history, but it is only recently that we have begun to see liberal institutions like these as products of colonial culture, imported only latterly back into metropolitan use. One useful example of this phenomenon of reverse migration is the brief establishment of a law school in Dublin between 1839 and 1842, a school which, though short-lived, would set standards for the training of lawyers that would be gradually adopted throughout England and Ireland over the course of the next fifty years. Colum Kenny’s book presents this story and the life of its protagonist, Tristram Kennedy, attorney, land agent, off-and-on MP, and founder of the Dublin Law Institute in 1839. British legal training up to this point was carried out by apprenticeship, a system that privileged birth and family connection over ability. Beyond this period of unregulated study, students were only required to “keep” a certain number of terms at one of the inns of court in London. Though seemingly intended to familiarize students with court practice, the requirement was monitored only by the students’ attendance at a fixed number of dinners at the inns for each term. Daniel O’Connell once remarked that under this rule legal training was made a matter of “so many legs of mutton” (x). Dublin had its own Law Society at the King’s Inns, formed in 1541, just a generation after the practice of the Brehons, the legal counselors of Gaelic Ireland, was outlawed by London. But Irish students were forced by the Statute of Jeofailles, passed the following year, to keep terms at one of the London inns before returning to be called to the Irish bar. University graduates could keep a reduced number of terms, but this gave advantage only to the Anglo-Irish elite at Trinity College. Meanwhile, Kenny writes, “training in the common law had been utterly neglected by the universities and the inns of court” (148). In 1838, a Parliamentary commission headed by Irish member Thomas Wyse delivered a report on Irish education. This classic liberal document provided the argument for broadened access to the professions in Ireland, England’s nearest colony until its nominal incorporation into Great Britain with the 1800 Act of Union: “[An] appropriate system of education for the middle class is the [End Page 347] only means by which they may be enabled to acquire and maintain that proper position in society to which they are entitled, and by the maintenance of which the community can be fully protected from the chances of internal disorder” (81). Kennedy founded the Dublin Law Institute the next year, in 1839, setting up formal courses of lectures and providing for the first time an opportunity to train in the law without the patronage of an established practitioner. “Protestant, dissenter, roman catholics [sic], whig, tory, conservative and radical” (87), he argued, should be united in the goal of standardized legal training, given that such a common rule, and the merit-based system it aimed at, would reduce “the chances of internal disorder.” Kennedy’s Institute fell when a Tory government returned to power and canceled its meager support, but its liberal vision would set the program for gradual reforms through the rest of the century. The Statute of Jeofailles, requiring Irish students to attend the English inns, was repealed in 1885, by which time courses and examinations in law were becoming the norm in Irish and English universities. The paradox of these reforms, however, is the great paradox of liberal ideology itself. Conceived as a means to unite all parties, to find the common core of...