Frontiers and Boundaries in Archaeological Perspective

Most archaeological studies of frontiers and boundaries are informed by a colonialist perspective of core-periphery relationships. In this review, we identify three problems with colonialist models of territorial expansion, boundary maintenance, and homogeneousc olonial populations. These problems are (a) insular models of culture change that treat frontiers as passive recipients of core innovations, (b) the reliance on macro scales of analysis employed frontier research, and (c) the expectation of sharp frontier boundaries visible material culture. In the final section, we reconceptualize frontiers as zones of cross-cutting social networks based largely on our research on fur-trade outposts in western North America. Our approach considers the study of diverse and overlapping segmentary or factional groups that cross-cut traditionally perceived colonial-indigenous boundaries on the frontier at different spatial and temporal scales of analysis.