USA (Country) (Geographic Keyword)
651-675 (35,820 Records)
The Catoctin African American Cemetery is the resting place of at least 50 individuals who labored at Catoctin Furnace and its surrounding community from the 1770s to the 1840s. Many of these men and women were enslaved workers, while others were possibly part of the free black population that also lived and worked at the furnace. In 2014, an ambitious project to preserve, protect, and interpret the cemetery was launched. Documentary research, forensic analysis, and geophysical investigations...
African American Community Building on Mulberry Island, Virginia during the “Jim Crow” Era (2024)
This is an abstract from the "MARS General Military CRM Poster Session" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 1918 the US Army purchased all 3,238 ha (8,000 acres) of Mulberry Island, Virginia to create Camp Eustis, now the Fort Eustis portion of Joint Base Langley-Eustis. English colonizers and enslaved African laborers had occupied Mulberry Island since the seventeenth century. At the time of the Army’s purchase, a significant African American...
African American Diaspora Archaeology and the National Park Service: Reflections on the Past and Goals for the Future (2016)
For 50 years archeologists from the National Park Service’s Southeast Archeological Center have actively worked to uncover, preserve, and interpret African American archeological heritage in our National Parks. SEAC’s work has spanned from the Stafford slave village at Cumberland Island National Seashore to the William Johnson House in Natchez, Mississippi, from the lands owned by a free woman creole of color in Natchitoches, Louisiana to the waters off the cays and harbors in St. Croix, U.S....
African American Life in Central Delaware, 1770-1940: Archaeology Combined with Documentary Research (2016)
The historic farm site of Samuel Dale, an AME minister and leader in the African American community around Middletown, Delaware, was identified and evaluated for the U.S. Route 301 project. The site was determined eligible, however, it was decided that a traditional data-recovery would not yield the greatest mitigation benefit. Instead, a historic context detailing the African-American community in St. Georges Hundred from 1770-1940 was prepared to mitigate the impacts to the site. The...
African American Resistance, Social Control, And The Spiritual Alteration Of The Physical Environment (2020)
This is a paper/report submission presented at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Archaeologists have unearthed artifacts associated with West African-derived spiritual belief systems in many different African American locations in the New World. What can the artifacts tell us about the social control mechanisms used within enslaved plantation quarters communities to maintain internal cohesion and collective identity? Ethnographic, historical, and archaeological...
African Americans and NAGPRA: The Call for an African American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (2016)
Increasing urbanization and gentrification have led to the rapid development of some of America's largest cities. As urban space becomes more scarce, African American heritage sites face increasing threats from developers and city planners alike. In light the 50th anniversary of the National Heritage Preservation Act and more than 25 years after the passage of NAGPRA, this paper highlights the disparities and challenges associated with preserving African American heritage sites in the USA....
African Americans in a Dominican Cemetery: Social Boundaries of an Enclave Community (2013)
This paper presents preliminary findings from an aboveground study of a cemetery in Samaná, Dominican Republic. In 1824 approximately 200 African Americans left the United States for what was then Haiti, and established an enclave in a relatively isolated area of the island. Their Anglo surnames, Protestantism, and primary use of English have defined this community in relation to the neighboring Dominican and Haitian populations for over 150 years. Using spatial data from the town’s cemetery, I...
African Americans, Resistance, and the Spiritual Alteration of the Physical Environment on the Levi Jordan Plantation, Brazoria County, Tx (2017)
In 1986, the University of Houston began conducting archaeological excavations at the Levi-Jordan Plantation in Brazoria County, Tx in an effort to recover contextual material that would reveal information about the enslaved community, sharecroppers, and tenants who lived at the plantation. Established in 1848, the plantation was home to nearly 150 slaves at its pre-civil war peak, and was a major producer of both sugar and cotton. Early excavations of the curer’s cabin and church revealed...
African Burial Ground Curation Management Plan and Recommendations (2004)
GSA, Northeast and Caribbean Region, sought assistance from the US Army Corps of Engineers, St. Louis District’s Mandatory Center of Expertise for the Curation and Management of Archaeological Collections (MCX) to assist them with the long-term curation of the associated records generated from investigations conducted at the African Burial Ground (ABG) in Manhattan, New York City. During the preliminary phases for the construction of a new building, archaeologists discovered a large historic...
African Burial Ground Project, Protocol for Loading Wagons and Crypts (2003)
This report is a detailed guide for loading and transferring artifacts and human remains from facilities, crypts, and wagons for the African Burial Ground Project.
African Diaspora Archaeology "The Bocas Way" (2015)
This research is an investigation into the African Diaspora and an archaeological approach that is based on exploring the African Diaspora in a complex, multi-ethnic, multiracial situation, where I was able to draw on excavations, archival documents, and ethnography to infer the process of culture change and emergent identities. The research takes place within the western Caribbean island community of Bocas del Toro, Panama. In this presentation I will present my perspectives and approach to...
The African Diaspora in West Africa: The Atlantic Slave Trade and Colonial Eras on the Gambia River (2015)
The Gambia River was an active site of the Atlantic slave trade and British efforts to legitimize trade in the 19th century. African peoples were brought from the Gold Coast and Sierra Leone as part of different commercial and colonial ventures while others were sent to the Americas as enslaved. Geographically part of the African Diaspora as both a site of departure and settlement, this paper explores African populations resettled along the river as slaves and liberated Africans in the 18th and...
African Habits: Archaeology of the Saint Joseph Mission, ca. 1863-1940 (Ngasobil, Senegal) (2020)
This is a paper/report submission presented at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Mission archaeology often identifies a dichotomy between missionaries and indigenous populations. This dynamic is complicated in the case of nineteenth-century French missionization in Senegal where local converts were increasingly relied upon as missionaries themselves. Drawing on archaeological and archival research, this paper focuses on the African Daughters of the Holy Heart of...
African Mortuary Dreams in Alabama: A First Look at the Old Plateau/Africatown Cemetery Burial Patterns (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Cemeteries and Burial Practices" session, at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. The last slaver to make the TransAtlantic Crossing did so in 1860. Those who survived the passage built a community at Africatown, just northeast of Mobile Alabama. At Africatown, they mixed African and European elements in their daily practices and material culture. This paper explores burial patterns at the Africatown/Old Plateau Cemetery. It...
African Slave Spells and Root Work: Crossing the Boundary of Past to Present in Contemporary Cemeteries (2015)
Recurring evidence of "root work" or "hoodoo" and other African magic rituals have been found periodically in and around the graves of the recently dead in contemporary cemeteries located in the South. This paper is an exploration of the connection between the author’s excavation site, a slave street on a former rice plantation located in the South Carolina Low Country, and descendants that maintain conjuring traditions and practices. Slaves used "root work" and rituals for health curatives, to...
African-American Foodways at Early American Plantations: A Comparative Zooarchaeology of Monticello and Montpelier (2020)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Plantation Archaeology as Slow Archaeology" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Several decades of zooarchaeological research at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello and James Madison’s Montpelier provide an opportunity to compare the food experiences of the enslaved communities at these Virginia Piedmont plantations. These observations are key to understanding the African-American roots of American cuisine. In this...
African-American In-Ground Vaults: An Investigation Into Differential Burial Practices Identified Through A Public Archaeology Initiative (2016)
Historic cemeteries are some of the most threatened cultural resources in the state of Florida; of these, historic African-American cemeteries are most at risk. Subject to neglect, rapid urbanization, and the loss of community remembrance, these sites are in need of immediate preservation efforts. This paper discusses investigations into these sites through the work of the Florida Historic Cemeteries Recording Project (FLHCRP), a volunteer-driven effort overseen by the Florida Public Archaeology...
After Authenticity at an American Heritage Site (1993)
This resource is a citation record only, the Center for Digital Antiquity does not have a copy of this document. The information in this record has been migrated into tDAR from the EXARC Bibliography, originally compiled by Roeland Paardekooper, and updated. Most of these records consist of a document citation and other metadata but do not have the documents themselves uploaded. If you have a digital copy of the document and would like to have it curated in tDAR, please contact us using the...
After the Gear is Gone: Perspectives from the Digital Index of North American Archaeology on How Archaeologists Implement Digital Instances of Past Peoples and Scientific Concepts (2018)
Archaeologists today engage with digital records of primary data, derivative interpretive information, and ontological descriptors used to represent intellectual models of individual research, and instantiations of theoretical constructs from the local to the landscape. Prior to and into the digital age, the archaeological record writ large as a testable and defensible set of hypotheses and factual statements is constructed from a melange of meaningful information expected to correlate with...
After the Golden Spike: Over 150 years of Maintenance and Preservation along the Promontory Branch of the Central Pacific Railroad Grade (2020)
This is a poster submission presented at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. The Promontory Branch of the Central Pacific Railroad, encompassing over 90 miles of the historic railroad grade, is significant for its well-preserved water divergence infrastructure. Cannon Heritage Consultants recently completed a full inventory of features, including photo-documentation and description, along this section of the Transcontinental Railroad and recorded over 160 culverts...
After the Ice Age in the Ozarks (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Fluted point techno-complexes of the Ozarks include Clovis, Gainey, Folsom, and Dalton. Folsom point-making people are comparatively less well represented in the interior Ozarks possibly because of the lack of grasslands and bison. In this presentation, we explain the origins and evolution of Clovis technology and the exploitation of lithic resources from...
After the Railroad: An examination of Chinese in Sandpoint, Idaho (2017)
Like other western American railroad towns, Sandpoint, Idaho, saw an influx of thousands of Chinese workers during railroad construction in the twilight of the 1800s. Most workers moved on as construction of the railroad continued down the line. Examination of a Chinese laundry excavation provides an interesting snapshot of the lives those workers who stayed and made Sandpoint their home. This business was also a residence and the collection provides an opportunity to study both the private and...
Afterlives of Slavery on the Post-Emancipation Caribbean Plantation (2017)
This paper offers some opening remarks that introduce the conceptual framework informing this session. A rich body of archaeological literature has investigated plantation slavery in the Caribbean region, but far less attention has been paid to the post-emancipation landscape and the significant transformations that affected the lives of laborers. We seek to address how a focus on the post-emancipation Caribbean plantation landscape can provide unique insights into how notions of freedom were...
Agave Bloom Stalk Ovens in the Southern Chihuahuan Desert (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Hot Rocks in Hot Places: Investigating the 10,000-Year Record of Plant Baking across the US-Mexico Borderlands" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Fire cracked rock (FCR) and hearth features represent one of the most commonly observed cooking features encountered by archaeologists. This research presents an ethno-archaeological context in which FCR utilization and discard is observed, providing a Middle Range theoretical...
Agave Roasting Pits of the Mescalero Apache (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Hot Rocks in Hot Places: Investigating the 10,000-Year Record of Plant Baking across the US-Mexico Borderlands" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. One of the main staple foods of the Mescalero Apache was Mescal or Agave. The heart of the plant is cooked in an earth oven for four days. The plant is then eaten straight out of the oven or dried for storage and supply. Today the roasting of Mescal is still done every year in...