Neal Ferris
I am interested in the ways in which we can interpret archaeological findings to access the long term histories of individuals’ and communities’ lived experiences, structures of social organisation, sense of territoriality and place, interaction, agency and internal and external notions of identity, as well as the always ongoing revision and reinforcement of these. I explore these social processes at play within and between generations primarily through the analysis of settlement-subsistence patterns and the range of material agency practices reflected in the assemblages from and between sites, and, when possible, from the archaeologically-meaningful data that can be “excavated” from archival research.
My focus has been the Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal archaeology of Northeastern North America, particularly the Aboriginal communities of the Late and Terminal Woodland Traditions of the Great Lakes; and within and between communities of European colonizers and Aboriginal Nations, and through comparative archaeologies the global British colonialism in Eastern North America and the Caribbean over the last four centuries.
I also worked for 20 years as an archaeologist for the Ontario provincial Ministry of Culture, where I developed additional research under the general heading of “archaeology as contemporary social practice.” This includes examining the intersection between Aboriginal and archaeologist rights and interests; issues in the contemporary practice of applied or CRM archaeology, including the ethics and "professionalization" of the archaeological community; the relationship of CRM to the State; and the integration of, in particular, interpretive archaeological theory into the unreflexive practices of CRM. I am most interested in theorising applied archaeological practice as the locus of competing claims to the past and contested discourses over “heritage.”
Phone: (519) 661-2111 x85059
Address: University of Western Ontario, at:
Department of Anthropology, SSC 3215
1151 Richmond Street
London, Ontario Canada N6A 5C2
Or
Museum of Ontario Archaeology
1600 Attawandaron Road
London, Ontario Canada N6G 3M6
My focus has been the Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal archaeology of Northeastern North America, particularly the Aboriginal communities of the Late and Terminal Woodland Traditions of the Great Lakes; and within and between communities of European colonizers and Aboriginal Nations, and through comparative archaeologies the global British colonialism in Eastern North America and the Caribbean over the last four centuries.
I also worked for 20 years as an archaeologist for the Ontario provincial Ministry of Culture, where I developed additional research under the general heading of “archaeology as contemporary social practice.” This includes examining the intersection between Aboriginal and archaeologist rights and interests; issues in the contemporary practice of applied or CRM archaeology, including the ethics and "professionalization" of the archaeological community; the relationship of CRM to the State; and the integration of, in particular, interpretive archaeological theory into the unreflexive practices of CRM. I am most interested in theorising applied archaeological practice as the locus of competing claims to the past and contested discourses over “heritage.”
Phone: (519) 661-2111 x85059
Address: University of Western Ontario, at:
Department of Anthropology, SSC 3215
1151 Richmond Street
London, Ontario Canada N6A 5C2
Or
Museum of Ontario Archaeology
1600 Attawandaron Road
London, Ontario Canada N6G 3M6
less
Related Authors
InterestsView All (35)
Uploads
Books by Neal Ferris
The volume provides a synthetic overview of the trends emerging from this research, contextualizing regional studies in relation to the broader theoretical contributions they reveal, demonstrating how this area of study is contributing to an archaeology practiced and interpreted beyond conceptual constraints such as pre versus post contact, indigenous versus European, history versus archaeology, and archaeologist versus descendant. In addition, the work featured here underscores how this revisionist archaeological perspective challenges dominant tropes that persist in the conventional colonial histories of descendant colonial nation states, and contributes to a de-colonizing of that past in the present. The implications this has for archaeological practice, and for the contemporary descendants of colonized peoples, brings a relevance and immediacy to these archaeological studies that resonates with, and problemetizes, contested claims to a global archaeological heritage.
Colonialism may have significantly changed the history of North America, but its impact on Native Americans has been greatly misunderstood. In this book, Neal Ferris offers alternative explanations of colonial encounters that emphasize continuity as well as change affecting Native behaviors. He examines how communities from three aboriginal nations in what is now southwestern Ontario negotiated the changes that accompanied the arrival of Europeans and maintained a cultural continuity with their pasts that has been too often overlooked in conventional “master narrative” histories of contact.
In reconsidering Native adaptation and resistance to colonial British rule, Ferris reviews five centuries of interaction that are usually read as a single event viewed through the lens of historical bias. He first examines patterns of traditional lifeway continuity among the Ojibwa, demonstrating their ability to maintain seasonal mobility up to the mid-nineteenth century and their adaptive response to its loss. He then looks at the experience of refugee Delawares, who settled among the Ojibwa as a missionary-sponsored community yet managed to maintain an identity distinct from missionary influences. And he shows how the archaeological history of the Six Nations Iroquois reflected patterns of negotiating emergent colonialism when they returned to the region in the 1780s, exploring how families managed tradition and the contemporary colonial world to develop innovative ways of revising and maintaining identity.
The Archaeology of Native-Lived Colonialism convincingly utilizes historical archaeology to link the Native experience of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to the deeper history of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century interactions and with pre-European times. It shows how these Native communities succeeded in retaining cohesiveness through centuries of foreign influence and material innovations by maintaining ancient, adaptive social processes that both incorporated European ideas and reinforced historically understood notions of self and community.
Papers by Neal Ferris
The volume provides a synthetic overview of the trends emerging from this research, contextualizing regional studies in relation to the broader theoretical contributions they reveal, demonstrating how this area of study is contributing to an archaeology practiced and interpreted beyond conceptual constraints such as pre versus post contact, indigenous versus European, history versus archaeology, and archaeologist versus descendant. In addition, the work featured here underscores how this revisionist archaeological perspective challenges dominant tropes that persist in the conventional colonial histories of descendant colonial nation states, and contributes to a de-colonizing of that past in the present. The implications this has for archaeological practice, and for the contemporary descendants of colonized peoples, brings a relevance and immediacy to these archaeological studies that resonates with, and problemetizes, contested claims to a global archaeological heritage.
Colonialism may have significantly changed the history of North America, but its impact on Native Americans has been greatly misunderstood. In this book, Neal Ferris offers alternative explanations of colonial encounters that emphasize continuity as well as change affecting Native behaviors. He examines how communities from three aboriginal nations in what is now southwestern Ontario negotiated the changes that accompanied the arrival of Europeans and maintained a cultural continuity with their pasts that has been too often overlooked in conventional “master narrative” histories of contact.
In reconsidering Native adaptation and resistance to colonial British rule, Ferris reviews five centuries of interaction that are usually read as a single event viewed through the lens of historical bias. He first examines patterns of traditional lifeway continuity among the Ojibwa, demonstrating their ability to maintain seasonal mobility up to the mid-nineteenth century and their adaptive response to its loss. He then looks at the experience of refugee Delawares, who settled among the Ojibwa as a missionary-sponsored community yet managed to maintain an identity distinct from missionary influences. And he shows how the archaeological history of the Six Nations Iroquois reflected patterns of negotiating emergent colonialism when they returned to the region in the 1780s, exploring how families managed tradition and the contemporary colonial world to develop innovative ways of revising and maintaining identity.
The Archaeology of Native-Lived Colonialism convincingly utilizes historical archaeology to link the Native experience of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to the deeper history of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century interactions and with pre-European times. It shows how these Native communities succeeded in retaining cohesiveness through centuries of foreign influence and material innovations by maintaining ancient, adaptive social processes that both incorporated European ideas and reinforced historically understood notions of self and community.