Archaeology and the Modern World- Colonial Transcripts in South Africa and the Chesapeake

In this book, I develop an archaeology of the modern world by examining the relationship between material things and the words through which people describe, justify and contest their circumstances. I argue that houses, landscapes, clothing, everyday possessions and urban designs are not merely illustrations of history. They are forms of expression in their own right. Their meanings emerge through their interaction with written accounts, images, memories and practices. My principal focus is the colonial world created by European expansion from the fifteenth century onwards. I compare two societies established during the seventeenth century: the Dutch colony at the Cape of Good Hope and the English colony around Chesapeake Bay. Although these colonies developed under different political and cultural traditions, both were incorporated into global systems of trade, settlement and forced labour. Both produced landed elites whose authority depended upon slavery, territorial dispossession and the conspicuous display of order. Comparison allows me to show how broadly circulating ideas and commodities were given distinctive local forms. I begin by considering the “material conditions” through which historical meanings are produced. The expansion of European colonial power generated unprecedented movements of people, objects and information. Commodities such as tobacco, porcelain, spices, textiles and furniture travelled through global networks, while architectural styles, scientific classifications and concepts of civility circulated alongside them. These global systems were realised locally through the actions of particular people, including colonial administrators, plantation owners, craftspeople, enslaved labourers and indigenous intermediaries.