Historical Archaeology and Capitalism,Subscriptions and Separations: The Production of Individualism

Abstract

It is argued that much of American archaeological research proceeds in the ignorance of a fundamental paradox which continues to befuddle the rest of anthropology. If historical archaeology reinvents itself as the processual interpretation of emerging capitalist society, then it becomes less difficult to differentiate the practical reason of the modern West from premodern cultural orders. Henry Glassie and James Deetz have begun to renovate the discipline through a structuralist theory of meaning yet they have mischaracterized the history of early modern America. Data associated with a variety of historical episodes and institutions demonstrate that one characteristic of modern ideology — individualism — did not begin to emerge until well after the American Revolution. This process of cultural separations was reflected in both texts and artifacts, was enacted in everyday life, and seemed to represent new social and economic orders. While the analysis is preliminary, it does reveal that historical archaeology can be transformed through an alliance with Neo-Marxist thought.