African American Archaeology (Other Keyword)
1-16 (16 Records)
This is a paper/report submission presented at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. On July 31, 1940, African American World War I veteran Pearl Royal Hendrickson shot and killed a Federal Marshall sent to evict him from his home in the foothills overlooking Boise, Idaho. This action precipitated a standoff between Hendrickson and dozens of law enforcement officers from across Idaho. Archaeological surveys conducted in 2018 and 2019 to relocate the site of the...
Beyond the Mansion: How the Archaeology Program at a Plantation Museum Changed so Many Lives (2018)
Between 1988 and 2009, the Hermitage Archaeology Program trained students of archaeology, anthropology, history, and education. Summer after summer, as the excavation units were laid, the wheelbarrows lined up, the shovels and trowels counted and distributed, we were always excited about what was to come. I learned about who I was as an archaeologist, as a scholar of slavery and the African Diaspora, and a Black Feminist Archaeologist. This short reflection paper is to share some thoughts and...
Creating Space for a Place: The River Street Public Archaeology Project (2016)
Community-based public archaeology projects seek to reclaim aspects of the past while addressing the needs and concerns of local communities. Sometimes this work places archaeologists in a position where we are forced to tack between the desire to conduct original research and the need to simultaneously navigate complex economic, social, and political constructs. All of this takes place in spaces, geographic, systemic, and paradigmatic, that both constrain and enable archaeological research. The...
Defined by Place?: Setting the Homes of the Enslaved Community at Montpelier into a Regional Context (2015)
The plantation landscape of Montpelier is one that was rigorously defined by the Madison family. Set within the mansion’s formal grounds and a model farm were the homes of the enslaved laborers who built and ran this plantation. Four years of excavations at half dozen homes of the enslaved community have revealed much in regard to how both the plantation owners and the enslaved community designed and laid out their homes within this constrained setting. These include homes for enslaved...
Documenting U.S. State and Territorial Approaches to Black Heritage, Diversity, and Inclusion in Preservation Practices 2022 (2022)
The Black Heritage Resources Task Force believes that State Historic Preservation Offices (SHPOs) can play an integral role in the preservation of African-American archaeology by providing guidance for the documentation of Black historic sites and consulting with Black stakeholders. This report provides reviews SHPO office planning documents and National Register for Historic Places nominations to understand the current practices regarding Black heritage resources. It also presents the results...
Establishing Community: Post-Civil War Placemaking in Rural Tennessee (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Working on the 19th-Century" session, at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. In the 1860s, African Americans sought to create separate physical spaces and cultural institutions of their own, specifically churches, cemeteries, and schools. Tennessee State Historian Dr. Carroll Van West has hypothesized that the nexus of these institutions, as well as fraternal lodges and businesses, was the basis for early African American community...
Identifying the South Yard: Interrogating Landscapes of Home and Work Yards Enslaved African Americans at Montpelier (2018)
Landscape analysis of slave plantations typically approaches the plantation scale, analyzing the distribution of the built environment across the plantation itself. This paper will focus on the analysis of the domestic slave quarter of James Madison's Montpelier, and how the yards, structures, and features were organized and used by the Madisons and enslaved community. Over the course of multiple field seasons , archaeologists have conducted extensive field excavations uncovering three...
Imagining Conformity: Consumption and Sameness in the Postwar African American Suburbs (2015)
In the wake of World War II many Americans settled in suburbs that have been persistently derided for their apparent social, material, and class homogeneity. This paper examines the African American experience of post-World War II suburbanization and the attractions of suburban life for African America. The paper examines an Indianapolis, Indiana subdivision that placed consumption at the heart of postwar citizenship. Rather than frame such suburban materiality simply as resistance to anti-Black...
Imagining the Black Landscape: The Materiality of Gentrification and African American Heritage (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Urban Erasures and Contested Memorial Assemblages" session, at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Most American cities like Indianapolis, Indiana have historically African American neighborhoods that are today distinguished by vacant spaces and ruination reflecting state demolition programs, displacement, and ill-conceived modernist construction. While much of the historical landscape has been razed, planners routinely invoke and...
Recommendations for Raising the Visibility of Black Heritage Resources and Engaging with Black Stakeholders: Results from a Survey of State and Territorial Historic Preservation Offices and State Archaeologists (2022)
White Paper that summarizes the work, findings, and recommendations of the Black Heritage Resources Task Force. The task force compile and analyze data on a range of SHPO practices, including the identification and management of Black cultural resources, their implementation of diversity initiatives, and their role in consulting with Black stakeholders. The task force then provides recommendations to SHPOs on ways to strengthen and improve their objectives, practices, and endeavors related to...
Recovering Family History: Archaeological Investigations at the James Holliday House in Annapolis, Maryland (2013)
For the descendants of the people studied by archaeologists, archaeology can be deeply personal, as it reveals forgotten details of a family’s past. In the case of the James Holliday House in Annapolis, Maryland, the same African American family has occupied the James Holliday House since 1850. In 2009, the great-great-granddaughter of James Holliday asked Archaeology in Annapolis to help fill in the blanks about her family’s history, simply because there was very little information from family...
Revisiting Parting Ways Forty Years Later: Some Research Challenges and Successes (2015)
Nearly 30,000 18th- and 19th-century artifacts were recovered during the excavation of the small African American community of Parting Ways in Plymouth, Massachusetts by James Deetz beginning in 1975. The artifacts are currently housed at the Massachusetts Historical Commission in Boston. Original interpretations attributed all the artifacts to the late 18th- and 19th-century African American occupation of the site, but subsequent research indicated that Parting Ways was occupied in the middle...
Searching for Proud Shoes: The Pauli Murray Project and the Place of Historical Archaeology within a Social Justice Organization (2017)
The authors organized an excavation on the site of the Pauli Murray Family Home in 2016. Murray was a fierce advocate for equal rights, especially on behalf of African Americans and women. In her autobiographies she traces her refusal to follow the scripts available to "Negro" "women" in the early 20th century to her upbringing among extended family in Durham, North Carolina. The session abstract urges contributors to consider how historical archaeology can inform contemporary strategies for...
Slavery to Freedom on the Web: A Community Engagement Experiment for Online Exhibits (2013)
Historic St. Mary's City is a living history and archaeology park dedicated primarily to the recreation and preservation of the 17th century landscape of Maryland's first capital city. However, the landscape has undergone significant change since the city's abandonment in 1700, including a significant period as a slave and tenant plantation. Because this period of the past no longer exists on the landscape, HSMC has pursued funding to build an online digital exhibit to tell the story of the...
Uncovering and Interpreting Plantation Life through Long-Term Collaborative Efforts at Thomas Jefferson’s Poplar Forest (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. Over the past three decades, archaeologists have engaged in a sustained research program to explore the history and archaeology of Poplar Forest plantation. This includes several long-term archaeological research projects which, over time, have provided new opportunities to partner with the local African American community. These...
Uncovering Nashville’s African-American Heritage: The Bass Street Community Archaeology Project (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Since 2017, the Bass Street Community Archaeology Project has been conducting excavations at the site of one of the earliest African American neighborhoods in post-Civil War Nashville. The Bass Street Community was located on the north side of Saint Cloud Hill, the site of Fort Negley, a Civil War era fort constructed by the Union forces in Nashville....