Religious Communities, Religious Landscapes

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christina Hodge.

Materialities of gentility drew captured and enslaved Africans and African-Americans into the production of white male privilege one of its most iconic incubators, colonial Harvard College. During the long 18th century, the Cambridge, Massachusetts, institution was an intercultural, interracial, intergenerational space of becoming. Archaeological finds and documentary archives clarify how gentility was moralized in this religiously orthodox community, emerging as a tool of racialization and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jordan E Davis.

Migrant-erected shrine sites encountered throughout the Sonoran Desert draw attention to the significance of religious place-making in transient spaces, of dwelling while crossing. As migrant material cultures continue to be degraded as "trash," shrine sites made by migrants are likely to become central to the memory of undocumented migration across the US/Mexico Border. Claiming these sites as "monuments" of undocumented migration, however, may threaten to sanitize what is a violent social...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alexander Baer.

Recent work in the district of Kaupō, Maui, has demonstrated the presence of a highly intensified dryland agricultural system interspersed with extensive residential sites and bounded by a range of ceremonial structures that include some of the largest temples in the Hawaiian Islands. In this talk, I discuss the ritual sites of Kaupō and how their Pre-Contact placement on the landscape (before the first arrival of Europeans) demonstrates a unique expression of elite power. While the initial...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Benjamin C. Pykles.

From 1889 to 1917 Pacific Islander (mostly Hawaiian) converts to Mormonism lived, worked, and worshipped at Iosepa – a remote desert settlement in Utah’s Skull Valley. An examination of the settlement’s design and layout, together with an analysis of petroglyphs at the site, reveal ways this religious community actively negotiated traditional Hawaiian cultural practices and newly adopted Mormon beliefs in shaping and maintaining their unique religious identities – a process that continues among...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Helen C. Blouet.

Historical archaeologies of the African diaspora in the Caribbean have recently expanded on analyses of relationships between religion, mortuary practices, burial sites, and varied environmental, social, economic, and cultural contexts. In addition, studies currently investigate the politics of death and burial, including who controlled mortuary spaces, at what times, by which means, and for what purposes. Finally, research collaborations analyze community formation and activity through the lens...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Fennell.

The cultural landscapes of African-American communities in the nineteenth century were often anchored with a church, cemetery, and school. Sectarian and secular dynamics interacted in shaping the terrains of those social networks. This presentation explores such developments in the impacts of religious beliefs, practices, and congregations on the strategic locations and configurations of churches and cemeteries before and after the Civil War, with a focus on the Midwest region. For example, the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Audrey J Horning.

The early seventeenth-century Plantation of Ulster, in which the English Crown sought to plant loyal British colonists in the north of Ireland, is commonly understood as overtly religious in intent and action, and is viewed as the foundation for today’s dichotomous divide between Protestant and Catholic communities in Northern Ireland. However, archaeological and documentary evidence complicates this straightforward narrative by demonstrating considerable cultural exchange and the emergence of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Chenoweth.

Considering its size and the historical interest it has sparked, remarkably few physical or documentary traces of the Religious Society of Friends ("Quakers") in Barbados survive.  This paper combines data from a 2016 reconnaissance of Quaker-related sites on the island with a GIS analysis of these landmarks, high resolution satellite imagery, and a 1675 map of the island in order to consider the relationship of the Quaker community to the Barbadian landscape, both social and physical. The...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John P McCarthy.

Several non-Western/non-Christian burial practices that made unusual use of ordinary material objects were seen at two cemeteries associated with the First African Baptist Church, Philadelphia.   These practices appear to have been influenced by beliefs about the afterlife and the spirit world developed from African and possibly other sources, and I have argued previously that the maintenance and possible reintroduction of these practices into the city’s African-American community are indicative...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Douglas Armstrong.

An overview of religious practice and resistance reflected in the material record of Trents Cave, Barbados.  The cave site is located at the bottom of a gully located between the enslaved laborer settlement and the planter’s residence at Trents Plantation.  The findings suggest recurrent use of the site by persons of African descent (circa 1750s through the 1850s) for ritual, or specialized purposes, associated with iron and steel.  The distinctive pattern of deposition of key artifacts...