This book posits that there are certain times when who we think we are requires our attention, performance, and negotiation. These moments of dissonance—when normalcy is upended, challenged, or under threat—are evident archaeologically because the practice of identity is put at the forefront and thus made more material. Changes in how people dress, adorn, act, house, settle, and think about themselves and others are the focus of the 13 chapters in this book, with case studies that range from Roman Britain to the Viking North Atlantic to the colonial and postcolonial United States. The book is framed as addressing the creation of identity in times of dissonance at four scales: people, space, place, and time. Following the introduction by George and Kurchin, each section consists of three chapters, providing balance for thinking broadly about the way people in the past faced shifting dynamics of culture, history, and power that forced them to be who they were in more overt ways.
The first chapters consider identity acts at the individual level. MacLean examines the performance of a white creole masculine identity at the Little Bay Plantation Site in Montserrat. Caught between the cultural worlds of British metropolitan civility and the tropical creole degeneracy of the plantation, MacLean argues that the men who ran Little Bay sought to evade negative associations by performing white Britishness, especially in the way they dressed. She highlights an intaglio fob seal recovered from the site, which was a visible adornment marking English identity. Linn contributes a chapter following a similar framework that documents how Irish immigrants in nineteenth-century New York City used clothing, cosmetics, and hair dyes to alter their appearances to overcome anti-Irish stereotypes. Geiger looks at how sex workers in colonial Algiers were transformed under French colonial rule into a highly regulated and generic indigènés class. Geiger's argument is a counterpoint to Linn and MacLean, showing how women evaded this identity and French colonial attempts to control their bodies.
The next section of the book considers space and the built environment. Spott considers two houses built by Miami Tribal Chief Richardville in colonial Indiana. Richardville was Métis; spoke Miami, French, and English; and thus served as an intermediary, a profitable position that afforded control of vital portage lands. He used his wealth to build a massive brick Greek Revival house, which served as his political home where he hosted lavish parties. He also built a second home that was used for more mundane trading and business activities. Separating his world allowed him to perform both sides of his identity as a culture broker and businessman. Watson's chapter is a study of the complication of northern slavery at the Lott House in Brooklyn, where a space that was appropriated by enslaved workers was later used as a hiding spot for escapees on the Underground Railroad. Finally, Kurchin and Bianciardi consider the diversity of spaces created along Hadrian's Wall, including official constructions such as the wall and wall forts as well as informal spaces, such as the “straggling, unplanned” vici settlements that provided services to the soldiers.
The third section examines connections between identity and place. Wall, Rothschild, and Linn examine how nineteenth-century African Americans in Seneca Village in New York City struggled to negotiate multiple expectations of middle-class identity as defined by their white neighbors as well as their African American peers. Maher and Bond explore how different places in the Viking North Atlantic fostered varied expressions of Norse identity. Martin contributes a fascinating study of the Dogtown community and the stories told about the people who lived there. Located outside of Gloucester, Massachusetts, Dogtown became associated with stories of “witches (who were mostly Revolutionary war widows) and their canine consorts” (p. 183). Examining these stories and their sources, including the work of those charged with managing Dogtown's heritage, Martin shows that the status of Dogtown as an “outsider community” is the principle attribute being preserved.
The final section of the book considers how identity manifests in the dimension of time. George explores the materiality of American exceptionalism in contemporary and archaeological settings, especially in the way George Washington was virtually deified after his death. Diaz sees similar issues in Puerto Rico, where the Institute for Puerto Rican Culture (ICP) denies the legitimacy of Taino descendants and their claims to the site of Caguana. Rather than respecting this postcolonial claim, the ICP considers the Taino identity as “invented and re-creational” (p. 247). The final chapter by Benavides and Kurchin looks at how the past informs constructions of identity in three works of science fiction. They conclude that the search for the past can be framed in one of two ways. The easier process is the search for the exotic, or the past of the other. The harder is the search for the past that is our own. It is in the latter that we see anxiety emerge most clearly, for in the search for our own past, we are faced with the “fear, blindness, and especially the lies in [our] future/present” (p. 283).
The book exceeds its expectations, which are to examine and elucidate the production of identity in dissonant conditions. It adds to our knowledge of how we interpret social action during moments of change, especially connected to colonial occupations, migrations, and the effects of marginalization.
