African Diaspora (Other Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cyrus Forman.

            The African Burial Ground National Monument is one of the  smallest units of the National Park Service. Established in 2006, this still developing institution has developed an outsized presence in new and social media; in a short time it has become the most followed unit of the National Park Service on twitter, and has found ways to use podcasts and QR codes to expand the interpretive profile of the site.  These efforts have fhelped unite a disparate series of interest groups,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Reeves.

Recent research on early 19th-century slave households at James Madison’s Montpelier in Virginia has focused on comparative household assemblage analysis on a number of levels including the local (between households within a single community), region (households within a market region), and the Atlantic (comparison of households between Jamaica and the Chesapeake).  An important element in this comparative household analysis is scalar analysis.  Scalar analysis is an analytical tool that allows...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mark Kostro. Neil Norman.

In 1760 the London-based philanthropy, the Associates of Dr. Bray, established a charity school for the religious education of free and enslaved African American children in Williamsburg, the eighteenth-century capitol of the Virginia colony.   Known as the Bray School, the school was briefly housed in a rented dwelling adjacent to the campus of the College of William and Mary.  The archaeological investigation of the suspected site of the Bray school in 2012 was a rare opportunity to materially...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Samantha J. Henderson.

In 2008, the archaeology department at James Madison’s Montpelier began a multi-year project that sought to understand the community dynamics between enslaved workers at the plantation in the early 19th century. This study excavated and analyzed four sites: South Yard, Stable Quarter, Field Quarter, and Tobacco Barn Quarter.  Each of these sites represents a different community of enslaved workers, from those who worked in the mansion to field hands.  In this paper, I discuss and compare the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kenneth Kelly.

Saint Domingue was the most important European colony of the Caribbean region, producing vast amounts of wealth through the labor of enslaved Africans and their descendants. It was also the setting of the only large scale slave revolt that succeeded in overturning the slavery system. In spite of this importance to Atlantic studies, African Diaspora studies, and historical archaeology, very little substantive research has been conducted on sites associated with the dwelling places of the enslaved...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kevin Fogle.

The late antebellum period witnessed the rise of an agricultural reform movement aimed at revitalizing the southern plantation system. Soil degradation from intensive cash crop cultivation contributed to the decreasing productivity of once prosperous farmland in many southern communities. Drawing on Enlightenment principles and scientific farming innovations such as crop rotation, fertilization, and soil chemistry, this progressive agricultural discourse attempted to maximize the efficiency of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Todd H. Ahlman.

Signaling theory is becoming a common tool in the interpretation of slave-era households in the United States and Caribbean. As a heuristic tool, signaling theory’s effectiveness lies in its ability to provide insight into the differential consumption and disposal habits of past populations. This paper addresses not only consumer and disposal habits, but also commodity exchange and personal networks to place the material culture of enslaved and freed Africans from the Caribbean island of St....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anna Agbe-Davies.

The "Slave Cabin" at Stagville, excavated in 1979, was a component of the home farm quarter on one of the largest plantations in North Carolina.  The small structure has several qualities that prompted its inclusion in the Digital Archaeological Archive for Comparative Slavery.  As the first site from the state in the database, it will allow researchers to isolate and identify patterns associated with local conditions, including topography, settlement history, and regional economy.  Stagville as...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Whitney Battle-Baptiste.

In the 1970s a group of radical Black Feminists, known as the Combahee River Collective, met and put forth a concept they called the "simultaneity of oppression." In 1989, legal studies scholar, Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term "intersectionality" to describe the interlocking matrix of oppression (meaning race, gender and class) experienced by women of African descent within the U.S. legal system. For African Diaspora archaeology, the framework of intersectionality has become a useful method...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew C. Greer.

Despite decades of archaeological research on enslaved communities, few studies have directly addressed the impact of the forced movement of Black women and men between sites of slavery.  Such relocations could dramatically alter the lives of enslaved individuals by removing them from their existing social networks and inserting them into a new community where such connections would have to be created anew.  While ongoing excavations at Belle Grove Plantation (Fredrick County, Virginia) are...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Justin Dunnavant.

The Estate Little Princess Archaeological Field School (ELIPS) expands the practice of community-engaged archaeology to focus on sustainability and capacity building. Thus, we are concerned with not only including communities in the design, implementation, and dissemination of the research but specifically in training local youth in archaeological practice. The goal of this project has been to produce more Crucian archaeologists, develop student interest in STEM fields, and create cultural...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lissa J. Herzing.

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Archaeological Studies of Material Culture (General Sessions)" , at the 2021 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. In the early 19th-century, ideologies of womanhood and domesticity were beginning to solidify in the mainstream media, in both black and white communities in New England, prescribing the roles of women. However, the ways women interpreted these ideologies in their daily lives likely differed and was complicated by...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kathryn O. Fay.

The Louisa McWorter home site provides a rare opportunity to explore social dynamics and community relations within the 19th century integrated town of New Philadelphia, Illinois. Louisa, an African-American woman freed from slavery as a child, married one of the sons of town founders Frank and Lucy McWorter. Widowed early in her marriage, Louisa became legal head of household and owner of multiple lots in New Philadelphia as well as several hundred acres of farmland. My historical and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Meagan Ratini.

Mount Gilead AME Church in southeastern Pennsylvania formed the heart of a rural African American community throughout much of the 19th century. Oral history associates it with the Underground Railroad, but with little specificity. Since most of the church's congregation has dispersed over the past century, its extant cemetery is the main location where much of the church's history can be reconstructed. This study uses spatial, demographic, and GPR data from the cemetery as well as archival...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Claire Norton.

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Paper / Report Submission (General Sessions)", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Excavations with The Milot Archaeological Project (MAP) have yielded significant information on the development of the Palace of Sans-Souci in northern Haiti. Strides have been made in understanding site chronology, the material culture within the palace, and regional/long-distant economic networks. However, little is known about...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Benjamin J. Heckman. Katherine (2,1) Seeber.

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Paper / Report Submission (General Sessions)" , at the 2022 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Archaeological research at Historic Mitchelville Freedom Park (HMFP) in Hilton Head Island, S.C., (the first free Black town in the South) has been conducted using collaborative community-based research with the local descendent community. Over the course of the summer 2019 field work at HMFP, the research team surveyed visitors...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jarre Hamilton.

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. This paper moves away from the typical idea of “war” as a physical armed conflict or confrontation, but rather any physical manner or manifestation of modern-day conflict. I propose that the playing out of a racialized environmental-based conflict between the all-black town of Allensworth,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brendan J. M. Weaver.

The Haciendas of Nasca Archaeological Project, focusing on slavery on colonial Jesuit wine estates of the Peruvian south coast, was initiated to broaden our understandings of the African diaspora in Peru, which historically existed at the edge of the Afro-Atlantic World, and is presently at the periphery of historical and archaeological scholarship. This paper explores the production and use of botijas – so-called Iberian Olive Jars – in the making of wine and brandy at two Jesuit estates and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Annelise E. Morris.

Historical archaeologists have long examined changing structures of labor in the context of modern global capitalism. This paper will focus on rural sites in the Midwest, challenging normative notions of labor structures. I will examine how, in the face of changing labor economies, Black men on the frontier deployed specific types of skilled labor to create social networks, familial bonds, and to subvert economic inequalities. I will examine shifts from agrarian economies to wage economies,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicole Cannarozzi.

This is an abstract from the "To Move Forward We Must Look Back: The Slave Wrecks Project at 10 Years" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Christiansted National Historic Site, located in the town of Christiansted on St Croix, US Virgin Islands, was a Danish military compound that served as a major trading hub dealing in the trade of enslaved Africans. As such, the compound was home to both Danish soldiers and the enslaved Africans on whom they...