Dear Colleagues,

Natascha Mehler and I are organising a session on the historical archaeology of national identity and nationalism for the 2014 conference in Quebec City, and we would warmly welcome additional contributions from colleagues working in any country; we'd ideally like to get a good mix of North American and international contributions, and we've written the abstract so as to embrace a broad geographical remit.

Please contact either myself ([log in to unmask]) or Natascha ([log in to unmask]) if you're interested in contributing.

A full session abstract follows below.

With thanks,

Alasdair Brooks




"Enfants de la patrie": Historical Archaeologies of National Identity and Nationalism  

Organisers: 
Alasdair Brooks (University of Leicester) and Natascha Mehler (University of Vienna)

Since the Peace of Westphalia (1648) and the beginning of the French Revolution (1789), the western world has seen a rapid rise in modern conceptualisations of national identity and the nation state, as extensively studied and theoretised by historians via the "invented traditions" of Hobsbawm and Ranger, the "imagined communities" of Arnold, the "nation forging" of Colley, and other approaches. While historical archaeology has a rich tradition of studying ethnicity and race, particularly among immigrant communities, it has traditionally been somewhat less willing to look at how archaeological data and archaeological practice form and inform the concept of national identity in the post-1500 period, the formation of the modern nation state over the same period, and how this identity is intimately and inseparably entangled with, yet still distinct from, ethnicity and race. Arguably complicating any archaeological study of the phenomenon in global context are two issues. First is the extent to which global experiences of national identity differ, from the self-conscious conception of the United States as a multi-ethnic immigrant state, from postmedieval Europe's transition from plurinational empires to conceptually mono-ethnic nation states, to Canada's delicate balancing of Anglophone and Francophone identities, to the contrast between France's 'jus soli' and Germany's 'jus sanguinus', to Australia's arguably incomplete transition from an ethnically British colony and postcolonial state to the modern multi-ethnic Australian state, and many others besides. Second is the extent to which archaeological approaches to nationalism and national identity have been manipulated in the service of state ideology in the 19th and 20th centuries, something which has received greater attention from prehistorians and classicists than historical archaeologists. The present session seeks not only to present specific case studies of the historical archaeology of national identity, but also to examine and critique the study of nationalism within historical archaeology specifically, as opposed to archaeology generally.