Post-Medieval and Historical Archaeology
Post-medieval and historical archaeology studies the material culture of the early modern and modern world, from roughly AD 1500 onward, addressing themes such as colonialism, industrialization, and global connection.
Definition
The archaeological study of the early modern and modern past, encompassing the material culture of the world since about AD 1500.
Scope
This topic covers the archaeology of the recent past, including the early modern period, the industrial era, and the modern world, often in dialogue with rich documentary and oral evidence. It examines settlements, industrial sites, plantations, and everyday material culture, and engages themes of capitalism, colonial encounter, slavery, migration, and the formation of the modern globalized world.
Core questions
- How does material culture illuminate the early modern and modern world?
- How did colonialism, capitalism, and industrialization shape material life?
- How do archaeology and documents together reconstruct the recent past?
- How can archaeology recover the lives of people underrepresented in written records?
Key theories
- Archaeology of capitalism and the modern world
- Orser's framing of historical archaeology as the study of the modern, globally connected world, attentive to capitalism, colonialism, and inequality as forces shaping material culture.
- Material culture as small-scale meaning
- Deetz's demonstration that ordinary objects and structures encode cultural worldviews, allowing archaeology to recover mentalities and everyday life from the early modern period.
History
Historical archaeology developed strongly in North America and Britain, initially focused on colonial-period sites and later expanding to industrial archaeology and the archaeology of slavery, migration, and the modern world. It is distinguished by its close, critical engagement with documentary, oral, and material sources for the recent past.
Debates
- Scope and definition of the field
- Scholars debate whether historical archaeology is defined by the presence of written records, by the modern globalized world, or by a particular critical engagement with capitalism and colonialism.
Key figures
- Charles Orser
- James Deetz
- Dan Hicks
- Mary Beaudry
Related topics
Seminal works
- deetz1996
- orserhistorical2004
- hicksbeaudry2006
Frequently asked questions
- What is historical archaeology?
- It is the archaeology of the recent, document-rich past—often from about AD 1500—studying the early modern and modern world through material culture alongside written sources.
- Why study the recent past archaeologically when documents exist?
- Material evidence reveals aspects of life poorly recorded in documents, especially the experiences of ordinary, enslaved, or marginalized people, and can confirm, complement, or contradict the written record.