‘Black Yankees’ and the African Diaspora: Contemporary Perspectives on the Archaeology of African Americans in New England

African Americans have been present in New England as both free and enslaved individuals since the seventeenth century. Although archaeological research on African Americans in New England began in the 1940s, the main focus of the field remains on the experiences of African Americans in the Mid Atlantic and the South and, outside the U.S., in the Caribbean. Papers within this session reevaluate questions that count in African Diaspora archaeology as they relate to the unique context of the New England African-American community during the period of enslavement and after the abolition of slavery. Specifically, papers explore the complicated issues surrounding freedom and race in New England’issues of racialization, power relations, community formation, efforts at moral uplift, and the struggle for social acceptance and citizenship.