Boundaries, Barriers, and Beliefs: Racism and Communities in African Diaspora Archaeology

DOCUMENT Citation Only MoHagani Magentek Adamu.

What fun is historical archaeology when it seldom reaches outside academia and into the public spheres? This presentation is a tale about a HipHop Archaeologist in Alaska finding her way outside her boundaries of African American Archaeologies and Burial Ground Studies. Burnt out from academic studies and school, Ms. Mahogany Bones and Lady Plup set out on an unofficial archaeological investigation to the Old Knik Townsite Museum. They have no preconceptions or a premise for their research other...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sharon K. Moses.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Teresa Moyer.

Black history at historic plantations concerns more than slavery and freedom; it also tells the story of why blacks in the past are omitted at places with so much of their history to tell. Historic plantations offer rich laboratories in which to examine the ways that racism changes and stays the same through the circumstances that enable black history to be revealed or hidden.  By studying the interpretation--or lack thereof--of black history at places like Mount Clare, we can learn from the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kathryn H Deeley.

Archaeologists have studied many different ways in which African Americans coped with the racist structures of the late 19th and early 20th centuries in America. One way in which this was done was through consumer choice as part of the capitalist market used to create African American consumer aesthetics. With this understanding, archaeologists can study how commodities were used to express internally imposed classes within the African American community. In this paper, the archaeological...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marc Lorenc.

Exploring connections between critical race theory (CRT) and community-based participatory research (CBPR), the methodology outlined in this paper examines how archaeology can be both transformative and empowering through its involvement in civic engagement, critical pedagogy, and social activism. The paper examines various ways in which CRT can broaden our conception of materiality, accountability, inclusion, and collaboration through an analysis of systemic inequality and its varied effects on...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sean E Devlin.

The role educational programs in the post-emancipatory context is an issue that archaeologists tend to categorize as a disciplinary practice in the Foucaultian sense, where instruction, with its material manifestations as archaeological evidence, were a means to impose control over the former slaves in the new labor system. By adapting the ideas of De Certeau, we can complicate our understanding of how practice was used both strategically by those in power and tactically by the former slaves....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Karl M Austin.

The Great Dismal Swamp Landscape Study has focused on the lives of Maroons living in the Great Dismal Swamp during the 17th and 18th centuries. In addition, the Great Dismal Swamp was arguably both a destination and channel for the Underground Railroad.  Cultural transformations that took place at the start of the 19th century and the role of the Great Dismal Swamp in the UGRR demonstrate concepts of agency in different relationalities, including personhood, materiality and fields of action. ...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stefan F. Woehlke.

A comparative study of late antebellum slave quarters with the homes of newly freed African Americans provides insights into the dramatic impact of emancipation on the African American community in Orange County, Virginia. This paper outlines initial observations from past and present excavations at James Madison's Montpelier that focus on the Post-Madison era. It also outlines the approach for additional research, including excavations, oral histories, and the incorporation of ecological models...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Patricia G Markert.

Today’s historical archaeology places significant emphasis on the value and necessity of working with communities to create knowledge, and making that knowledge both useful and accessible to the public.  Oral history has risen as a forefront method for this co-production of knowledge, allowing for voices beyond those of academics to be heard in the telling (and re-telling) of history.  As historical archaeologists, we are just beginning to explore novel ways of incorporating oral history and the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rebecca Schumann.

Founded in 1810, Elam Baptist Church was one of the first Virginian churches that free blacks controlled. The church's architectural layout cited that of local white churches, containing separate entrances for whites, free blacks and enslaved blacks. This paper discusses the ways in which the agency and identity of the local free black community emerged through the historically and spatially specific relationships in which Elam was enmeshed. The boundaries that the free black community created...