African Americans (Other Keyword)
1-14 (14 Records)
This paper discusses archaeological findings within Colonial Williamsburg and explores factors that have influenced ways of knowing about eighteenth-century burial sites of African-descendant individuals and groups in Williamsburg, Virginia. While the emphasis is on the colonial era, some attention is given to the nineteenth century and the more visible commemorations of the dead relating to this period. The aim is to discuss burials and commemorative practices of enslaved and free blacks and...
"‘All this appears to be forgotten now’": Memory, Race, and Commemoration at Red Bank Battlefield (2022)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Beyond Battlefields: Culture and Conflict through the Philadelphia Campaign" , at the 2022 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. In 1831, businessman and leader of Philadelphia’s free Black community, James Forten, wrote to William Lloyd Garrison. Only 54 years had passed since the Battle of Red Bank yet, Forten notes, the memory of Black participation in the battle had already faded. For Forten, this memory burned bright and...
Antioch Colony and the Archaeology of Texas Freedmen Descendants (2018)
In the aftermath of the Civil War, a small group of black families founded Antioch Colony in rural Hays County, TX. This enclave of kin-related households rapidly became a beacon for other emancipated blacks who were drawn to the colony’s church and school. The settlement’s growth and stability hinged upon the success of farming households to work together, stay out of debt, and retain their hard-earned land. Archaeological and oral history research focused on the descendants of these pioneering...
The Archaeology of slavery and plantation life (1985)
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The Cultural Significance of Historic Bone Tools (2023)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Artifacts are More Than Enough: Recentering the Artifact in Historical Archaeology", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Bone tools are commonly found on historic sites, but to date no one has discussed them, identified their makers, nor considered their uses. Without an interpretive framework, bone tools have fallen into a void and become a lost source of information. Recent investigations at a few...
Echoes of Rebellion: Cultural Reverberation of the 1790s St. Domingue Rebellion in the Delaware Valley (2022)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "African American Voices In The Mid-Atlantic: Archaeology Of Elusive Freedom, Enslavement, And Rebellion" , at the 2022 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. The Delaware Valley’s free and enslaved Afro-Caribbean-born/relocated population is a frequently overlooked component of the micro-region’s cultural history. Caribbean-produced colonoware excavated at several sites in Wilmington and at the Garrison Energy site in Dover,...
Epitaphs, paternalism, and post-mortem resistance of African and African Americans in colonial New England (2022)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Paper / Report Submission (General Sessions)" , at the 2022 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Epitaphs, an example of the overlap of text and material culture, have been given little research focus from a linguistic standpoint and archaeology has not fully utilized written text as a branch of material culture, despite the information epitaphs provide about changes in language and social attitudes toward religion, class,...
Evidence of a Lost Cause, Fire, and Great Migration all Bound-Up in Redlines: A Century-and-a-Half of Archaeological Evidence from Chicago’s Bronzeville Neighborhood (2021)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Historical Archaeology of Neighborhoods and Communities (General Sessions)" , at the 2021 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Chicago’s Bronzeville Neighborhood generated and preserved deposits dating to the Civil War when Camp Douglas--a training/POW facility--existed in the area. In part, these deposits document the origins of the Lost Cause narrative, the consequences of the Jim Crow South, and the...
Intersectionality and Plantation Archaeology: Intertwining the Past, Present and Future (2018)
Intersectionality is a useful framework to employ when reconstructing the everyday lives of enslaved individuals during the Antebellum. Often, archaeologists find it difficult to create narratives that connect the material culture of the individuals we excavate with their dynamic experiences, especially impacts of sexual and economic exploitation, human rights and the rule of law. This paper focuses on the overlapping of multiple identities (in this case enslaved and free women and men on the...
Marley, Polly, and Me: Reflections on Archaeology and Social Relations (2015)
Since the 1980s, the archaeological study of African Americans has moved from the periphery to the center of research and interpretive initiatives at Colonial Williamsburg. For over two decades, Marley Brown directed the museum’s archaeological program and worked tirelessly to build teamwork and foster ties among individuals of different racial and ethnic groups. To highlight Brown’s contributions to the field of African American Archaeology, I use interpretations from my study of the...
"May the Dragon never be my guide!" African American Catholicism at the Northampton Slave Quarters and Archaeological Park (2016)
During excavations conducted in the 1990s by The Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission, a number of small religious objects (i.e. medals, rosary, cross) were uncovered at Northampton, a prominent Prince George’s County, Maryland, plantation. These artifacts were discovered within two slave quarters, a wood frame quarter dating to the late 1790s and a brick quarter dating to the second quarter of the 1800s. Both enslaved African Americans and African American tenant farmers lived...
The River Street Digital History Project (2015)
Race relations remains a central issue in American politics, economics, and culture. Interactions between African Americans and Euroamericans has been a focal point of historical archaeology for the last 30 years. The River Street Digital History Project is centered on the River Street Neighborhood in Boise, Idaho, which was the historical home for most of the town’s non-white population. This research asks: what role did race play in the lives of River Street Neighborhood residents; how did the...
Slavery and Freedom on the Periphery: Faunal Analysis of Four Ante- and Post-bellum Maryland Sites (2015)
Vertebrate faunal remains recovered from four Maryland cultural resource management projects provide a unique opportunity to explore the dietary patterns of formerly enslaved and free African Americans in the late-18th to early-20th centuries. Maryland straddled the border between a slave based, plantation economy and a free labor economy, allowing its African American communities more opportunities to gain their freedom and earn a living. Faunal assemblages were analyzed and compared to assess...
With This Bone I Thee Make (2022)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "More than Pots and Pipes: New Netherland and a World Made by Trade" , at the 2022 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Invisible yet famous, a small number of enslaved Africans were brought to Fort Orange in the seventeenth century. Their presence is known yet no objects have been tied to them. This paper explores the possibility that some worked bone objects made from domesticated mammals were crafted by enslaved Africans....