The development of historical archaeology in South America is closely connected to the history of the discipline in the United States. Since the second half of the twentieth century, American historical archaeology defined itself as a distinct field of study oriented towards the discussion of Europeans’ past in the New World. As a consequence, it managed to take distance from prehistoric archaeology, related to anthropology and the analysis of cultural others (aboriginals). Historical archaeology in South America rapidly adopted this perspective.
Historical archaeology was conceived in all manners of ways along time, generating a lot of controversy within the discipline. Some authors considered that historical archaeology represented the study of material culture associated with historical or literate periods. In the meantime, other researchers defined it as a methodology which combined the interdisciplinary use of archaeological and documentary evidence. This perception limited the specificity and autonomy of the field, transforming it into the ‘handmaiden’ of history.
In recent bibliography, historical archaeology has been understood as a discipline concerned with the analysis of modernity - associated to European expansion and the consolidation of capitalism. Specifically, conformation of modern society has been explained as a result of changes involving everyday life. Ideas used to describe this social order stemmed from the analysis of nineteenth-century English colonies in North America. Finally, they were completed with the study of Georgian Order’s genealogies in England, where archaeologists sought to extend modernity’s time and space boundaries to understand its origins.
Nowadays, modern society is associated with the appearance, spread, and maintenance of capitalist practices. It implies a change in relationships among individuals, as well as between individuals and things. It has been proposed that individualism, segmentation, standardization, and consumerism are key concepts to analyze transformations in practices during modernity. Following this idea, some archaeologists try to identify sets of rules which might be applied to understand material culture and lifestyles in recent past. This theoretical perspective - along with its variants - is commonly used to explain conformation of modern society in different geographical contexts.
In recent years, several South American archaeologists have started to discuss the singularities of social
World History
