Enslavement and the Black Diaspora

DOCUMENT Citation Only Camilla Agostini.

During the illegal slave trade period, thousands of Africans arrived in Brazil. A coastal community in this period, where free, poor and white-mestizo (branco e pardo) group of pottery makers lived side by side with Africans and their descendants, will be the subject of this presentation. From the archaeological perspective, locally made pottery in these contexts is frequently seen by Brazilian researchers as having African influence. They can, however, be observed in another perspective, with...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Karen McIlvoy.

Kingsley Plantation, in Duval County, Florida, is located on a tranquil island that has seen many dynamic eras in its past. Fort George Island’s largest slave owner was Zephaniah Kingsley, the slave trading Africaphile that owned the plantation in the early nineteenth century. Recent excavations of the slave quarters at Kingsley Plantation have revealed the presence of firearms of various types in every domestic context investigated. These weapons were of the most up-to-date technology...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Philippa Puzey-Broomhead.

Shelburne in the late eighteenth century was a community in flux. Created out of the aftermath of the American Revolutionary War, its inhabitants were a disparate group with widely differing racial, class and geographical origins and having little in common other than a connection to the British which made it impossible or undesirable for them to remain in the United States. The process through which these individuals formed themselves into a community was chaotic and often painful, exacerbated...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kenneth Kelly.

Following the ‘abolition’ of the slave trade in 1807/8 by Denmark, Britain, and the United States, the trade in captive Africans underwent substantial realignments as the now largely ‘illegal’ slave trade continued to service the ongoing demands from Brazil, the Spanish Caribbean, and to a lesser extent, the French West Indies and the United States. The focus of the slave trade shifted from the well-known, and highly visible, forts and castles of the Gold and Slave coasts, and entered a new...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kelly Goldberg.

For centuries, European traders have influenced and altered the African landscape, playing a major role in identity formation, group memory, and trade relations. To enhance our understanding of the relationship between European traders and local citizens through occupation of space, experimental metal detection was employed at three sites located along the Rio Pongo in Guinea. Situated in an isolated region of West Africa, these clandestine sites were active throughout the illegal slave trade of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Catherine LaVoy.

In 1963, the sugar plantation Monjope in Pernambuco, Brazil was transformed into a camping club. Canals that had once fed the mill became swimming pools, tours went through the master’s house, and the slave quarters that once held over 100 enslaved laborers became toilets and showers. This transformation is not just the story of changes in the built environment. Gilberto Freyre made the image of the Pernambucan sugar plantation political, proclaiming it the nexus of Brazilian culture and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Martin Elouga.

Il nous semble impératif de définir le champ épistémologique de l’archéologie historique au Cameroun. Des étudiants, ainsi que certains enseignants, mènent de plus en plus des recherches sur des thèmes se rapportant au champ de l’archéologie historique. Mais, c?est l’archéologie historique, telle qu’elle a été définie aux Etats Unis d’Amérique, donc dans un contexte différent de celui du Cameroun. Pourtant, ces étudiants et enseignants ont besoin d?être situés par rapport à l’extension...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Johanna Smith.

In mid-eighteenth-century Virginia, an ambitious Piedmont planter came into his full inheritance. This planter was James Madison, Sr., the father of the fourth president. Madison shrewdly managed his property and social connections to establish himself and his family as powerful members of the elite of Orange County, Virginia. But these decisions, made to maximize his own prestige and profits, were not made in a vacuum; they would profoundly impact the lives of the enslaved Africans and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Barton.

This paper delves into the work at the African American community of Timbuctoo, New Jersey. The community was founded circa 1825 and operated as a terminus along the underground railroad. From 2010-2011 a group of descendants, scholars, volunteers and Temple University archaeologists conducted Phase III excavations of the Davis site located within Timbuctoo. Once the home to William Davis (1836-1914) after its abandonment (circa 1930s) the 12x16 feet foundation was used as a community trash...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer Ogborne. Dessa Lightfoot.

The Department of Archaeology and Landscapes at Thomas Jefferson’s Poplar Forest is currently engaged in an extensive re-analysis of the Wing of Offices archaeological collection. The Wing was a dependency of four rooms designed for cooking and other domestic activities. It was added to Jefferson’s octagonal retreat home in 1813 and removed around 1840. As part of this re-analysis, the faunal remains from the Wing are being revisited and re-evaluated. In this paper, we will build on the...