This paper explores the ways subordination has been sidelined in the archaeological interpretation of the evidence, in both prehistoric and historical archaeologies, and the recent, less restrictive, developments in the discipline in Brazil and how national identity has been shaped by material culture study and display. It deals with an Imperial discourse on the origins of civilisation, followed by the demise of Imperial archaeology and the early twentieth century and the scholarly archaeology from the 1940s.
archaeology and subordination; imperial discourse; scholarship