Historical Remembering and Forgetting: Black Men's Service

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Historical Memory, Archaeology, And The Social Experience Of Conflict and Battlefields" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Fort Davis, marginally associated with particular campaigns in the "Indian Wars" during the postbellum period supported the settlement of the Western United States. "Marine Farm" as it currently known, was a Loyalist Period (1785-1835) plantation in the Bahamas which included a fortified signal post and cannons to defend trade along the Crooked Island Passage (including the Jamaica packet) from piracy. The enlisted men of Fort Davis,1867-1880, were exclusively Black men, whereas the identity of the men who manned Marine Farm is less clear. Some oral history has suggested troops of the Black West India Regiments were stationed at the site. In this paper, I will discuss the contrasts in the way these two spaces are remembered relative to their role in conflicts, and the ways that archaeological evidence speaks less to conflict and more to day-to-day role of military personnel in shaping colonial societies.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2020   •
• Historical Memory, Archaeology, And The Social Experience Of Conflict and Battlefields

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Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

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PaperId(s): 198