Situating Colonial Interaction and Materials: Scale, Context, Theory

As stated in the introduction, the editors of this volume bring together archaeological research from early colonial encounters in the Caribbean and the surrounding mainland. They sought original and fresh field data, and asked scholars to bring a material culture perspective to their interpretations. The result is an impressive body of work that brings into conversation case studies from a diverse set of indigenous cultural traditions. Although the authors draw from a range of historical data, previously excavated, and recently excavated material, each foregrounds material culture as a way to understand colonial period interactions. How do the artifacts found at early colonial period indigenous sites help us understand the relationships between European, Amerindian, and African peoples? What can these objects tell us about the culture changes that resulted from these interactions? These questions fit into a larger inquiry into the role of material culture in colonial contexts, which is summarized in the introduction. This epilogue highlights three areas of inquiry that seem critical to the case studies in this volume. What is the scale of contact and material interaction? What are the contexts in which material culture was acquired, created, and deposited? And how do we conceptualize the relationship between foreign or mixed material culture and culture change in a way that honors the indigenous peoples that made, acquired, or deposited these objects? I conclude the epilogue with a short look toward future studies, as inspired by reading these chapters.