Social Construction of the Past examines how mainstream scholarship constructs the past and, in creating a people's cultural history, appropriates it and turns it into a form of domination by one group over another.

George C. Bond is Professor of Anthropolgy and Education at Teachers College and Director of the Institute of African Studies at the School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University, New York. Angela Gilliam is Professor of Anthropology at the Evergreen State College, Washington.

Part I The Representation of Ethnicity 1. Ethnicity and Representation Leith Mullings 2. Racial Representations, Power and Dependent Development in the United States South Pem Buck 3. Sexual Politics and the Mediation of Class, Gender and Race in Former Slave Plantation Societies: the case of Haiti Carolle Charles 4. Representation and Power: Blacks in Colombia Peter Wade 5. From Eden to Limbo: the construction of indigenism in Brazil Alcida Ramos 6. Literacy and Power in Colonial Latin America Thomas Cummins and Joan Rappaport Part II The Social Construction of Antiquity 7. Social Constructions of the Past in the Present William Shack 8. The Image of Ancient Greece as an Instrument of European Hegemony Martin Bernal 9. The Politics of Identity in Archaeology Michael Rowlands 10. Gender Divisions of Labour in the Construction of Archaeological Knowledge in the United States Joan Gero 11. Interpreting Silences: symbol and history in the case of Ram Janmabhoomi/Babri Masjid Nandini Rao Part III The Scholarship of Inequality: the South African case 12. Lifting the Veil of Popular History: archaeology and politics in Urban Cape Town Martin Hall 13. Struggling with Tradition in South Africa: the multivocality of images of the past Andrew D. Spiegel 14. Intellectuals in South Africa and the Reconstructive Agenda Mala Singh