The archaeology of identity construction: Ceramic evidence from Northern Chile

Abstract

Although ethnicity has a long history in archaeology (e.g., Aldenderfer, 1993; Athens, 1992; Auger et al., 1987; Cordell and Yannie, 1991; Kelly and Kelly, 1980; Oakland Rodman, 1992; Penner, 1997; Pollard, 1994; Sackett, 1977, 1986, 1990; Shennan, 1989), its study as a shifting, contextual phenomenon in conjunction with the idea of identity construction is relatively new and represents an interesting manifestation of postmodern archaeological variants that attempt to import modern models into the past (e.g., Bowser, 2000; Emberling, 1997, 1999; Hill, 1998; Jones, 1996, 1997; MacEachern, 1998, 2001; McGuire, 1982; Terrell, 2001; Wells, 1998). New understandings of identity construction stem from a modern interest in subverting imposed identities and examining the contextual and historical conditions for the strategic homogeneous construction of group identity. This perspective presumes that group formation and definition, or the construction of difference, is intimately related to the exercise or rejection of power (i.e., Comaroff, 1985, 1996). In this vein, archaeologists interested in power relations in the past have recently explored two modes of ethnic identity construction: identification and attribution (Brumfiel, 1994). Ethnic identification1 implies members of an inferior faction or community actively (re)define ethnic categories as a mechanism of unification and of negotiating for economic or political resources. We find this perspective in several of Ian Hodder's (1979, 1982) early texts. Ethnic attribution implies the imposition of ethnic categories or qualities and traits on certain communities by dominant groups. As such, ethnic identity construction does not usually involve the development of new ethnic categories, but rather the struggle for the right to define extant categories, usually using essential and value-laden characteristics. This process suggests that cultural homogeneity is a product of intercultural communication and interaction instead of isolation. © 2005 Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, New York.