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“Race” and Ethnicity, Archaeological Approaches to

Concepts of race and ethnicity have played an important role in the production of archaeological knowledge throughout the history of the discipline. One of the first questions that antiquarians and archaeologists have asked of the physical remains that they deal with is, Who was responsible for these creations? The answers have almost always been sought in terms of named groups of people, and embedded in these attributions are theories about the nature of the groups concerned. Here, the concepts of race and ethnicity have taken center stage, alongside the related concepts of culture, nation, and tribe. Yet despite their apparently straightforward role in the initial naming and classification of archaeological remains, race and ethnicity have a checkered history within the discipline. Their complex and overlapping meanings and uses have changed dramatically over time, as have the different theories surrounding them. They have also been implicated in some of the major epistemological shifts within the discipline. Finally, archaeological interpretations of race and ethnicity have been intricately bound up with the construction of modern ethnic, national, and racial identities, adding greater weight and urgency to the development of critical approaches to these concepts within the discipline.

Race, Culture, and Language

During the nineteenth century the study of archaeological remains became intertwined with the task of defining the “races” of humanity. A complex range of theories and definitions developed over this time, but a number of general trends can be observed. Race was thought to be the primary basis of human differentiation. Other concepts that later became associated with very different forms of group identity—concepts such as nation, ethnic group, and tribe—were often used interchangeably, but they were all heavily racialized. Races were regarded as discrete, objective entities, each possessing its own unique character. Scholars attempted to identify and describe the different races of humanity on the basis of empirical criteria. Physical and anatomical features were given a primary role in the definition of races, but language, psychology, and cultural and intellectual ability were also seen as important. Indeed, racial theories posited a direct relationship between biological and cultural capabilities, and it was argued that physical features such as cranial shape and size determined cultural and intellectual ability. Research was also devoted to explaining the origins of different races, which entailed the study of the historical and evolutionary relationships between them. Many different disciplines were involved in the study of race, including anthropology, archaeology, philology (historical linguistics), biology, psychology, and anatomy, and the individual scholars often moved between two or more disciplines. Recent historiographical studies of nineteenth-century theories of race include George Stocking’s Culture and Evolution (1968), Michael Banton’s The Idea of Race (1977), and I. Hannaford’s Race: The History of an Idea in the West (1996).

Archaeological research played an important role in the development of racial typologies and in historical and evolutionary theories of race.