Archaeology, Minorities, Identity, and Citizenship in the United States

Abstract

This chapter explores the complicated means by which archaeology has contributed to a collective identity for citizens of the United States. Many historians, including the legal historian Phillip Bobbitt, contend that after the dissolution of states in the ancient world, viable states reemerged only in the fifteenth century, beginning then as entities that claimed legitimacy based in the divine right of kings and changing to those in which the basis for authority rested upon a legal framework. Clearly, however, regardless of the constitutional state, the notion that a nation is comprised of people who share the same language, religion, ancestry, and history has endured as a powerful geopolitical force. There are today, for example, many in the United States who resist the use of any language but English, or who insist that the United States is a Christian nation, and even more who would severely limit immigration from non-European countries. We then report on the ways that archaeological research has been directed to emphasize or explore the roles played by certain ethnic groups and social classes in the history of the United States. This ranges from archaeological research conducted during Colonial Revival eras to that done at African-American slave and Native American massacre sites. It then looks at how this research and the results of it have been incorporated into the national narrative and the role that the experience of visiting an archaeological or historic site plays in constructing that narrative. Finally, it examines the relationship between narrative and identity. I argue that the viability of a sovereign state is bolstered when a shared history replaces shared language, religion, and ancestry as focal points of identity and that this can be facilitated by developing a “fictive kinship” based upon a common narrative.