10
Colonialism and the Archaeology of
the Primitive
Westerners encountered a wide variety of societies in their colonial expansion.
Politically these were categorized from the most complex—the state societies
in regions of Asia and North Africa—to those perceived as formed by savages
and primitives, with the simplest types of political organization. Their
entrenched belief in a philosophy of progression took Western scholars to
assume an uneventful and unchanged past for these societies. It was com-
monly argued that savages did not have a history. Hence, they were considered
as living fossils, as ‘survivals’ from earlier stages of culture long passed in
Europe. In stark contrast to the awe that the ancient Great Civilizations had
inspired in imperial Europe, the antiquities of primitive societies evoked a
distinctly lesser regard. Instead of appropriating them as part of their own
past, Western scholars remained unreceptive: no genetic links were created
with the archaeology of the ‘uncivilized’, rather, they were considered to be a
distorted image of the remote European—and, from the end of the century,
also Japanese—past. This position was not completely new, for primitives had
been regarded as a source of information with which to understand the
prehistoric past in Europe since the eighteenth century, although at that
time this was made within the biblical framework (Sweet 2004: 149–51).
This chapter will aim,Wrst, to explore how, during the nineteenth century,
the archaeology of the primitive was used in the formation of the colonial
discourse. Secondly, the following pages will also assess the interpretations
Westerners provided to explain the presence of monumental antiquities in
areas considered primitive and, therefore, without a distinguished past.
It is important to note that the encounter with primitive societies not only
took place within newly established colonies, but also within the frontiers of
century-long political formations. This chapter, therefore, regards coloniza-
tion as operating at two diVerent levels. First, colonialism in the classical
sense—based on territories appropriated by a foreign power in a diVerent part
of the world. Secondly, internal colonialism, a concept which in this book is
employedtodeWnethephysicaloccupationbywhitesettlersofterritoriesusually
inhabited by non-state societies, both within already deWned boundaries of