Deepening Archaeology's Engagement with Black Studies

Part of: Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Deepening Archaeology's Engagement with Black Studies" at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Cultural anthropologist Savannah Shange (2019:7, 10) writes that because Black Studies scholars “work largely in the fields of English, history, and film studies, we don’t know much about how their interventions map onto blackness as lived and loved on a daily basis.” This, she argues, creates a space for anthropology to serve as a critical branch of Black Studies, as our work can often account for “the daily practices that facilitate Black” lives in ways that other disciplines cannot. Following Shange’s lead, this session explores the intersection of archaeology and Black Studies in three areas: (1) what archaeological case studies on the materially of everyday lives can contribute to Black Studies; (2) how can archaeologists apply Black Studies theories (such as Black feminist theory or the work of Saidiya Hartman) to our work on the Black diaspora and beyond; and (3) what a deeper engagement with Black Studies would mean for archaeological methods and theories.

Other Keywords
Historic • Historical Archaeology • Theory • Ethnohistory/History • Black Studies • History Of Archaeology • Survey • Slavery • Ceramic Analysis • Household Archaeology

Geographic Keywords
North America (Continent) • United States of America (Country) • Kentucky (State / Territory) • Territorial Collectivity of Saint Pierre (Country) • Canada (Country) • USA (Country) • North America: Northeast and Midatlantic • North America • United Mexican States (Country) • Delaware (State / Territory)

Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-11 of 11)

  • Documents (11)
Documents
  • The Contributions of Archaeology to the Story of the African World (2023)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Flordeliz Bugarin.

    This is an abstract from the "Deepening Archaeology's Engagement with Black Studies" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeology has much to offer Black Studies, and in turn, Black Studies has much to offer the archaeology of Africa and the African diaspora. In concert, these fields of inquiry hold the potential to enhance our understanding of history and culture in the African world and uplift archaeology as a field that is more relevant to...

  • Empowering Social Justice by Developing a Black Feminist Intersectionality Theoretical Perspective to Increase the Inclusiveness of Historical Markers in Detroit and Wayne County (2023)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Suzanne Spencer-Wood.

    This is an abstract from the "Deepening Archaeology's Engagement with Black Studies" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A form of activist archaeology is undertaken by conducting research with a critical Black feminist intersectionality theoretical perspective to promote social justice in representations of America’s heritage on historical markers in Detroit and surrounding Wayne County, Michigan, USA. Contrary to Kimberlé Crenshaw’s Black feminist...

  • Excavating Archives: Locating Enslaved Quarters and Mapping Enslaved People in New Brunswick’s Loyalist Landscape (2023)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Emily Draicchio.

    This is an abstract from the "Deepening Archaeology's Engagement with Black Studies" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the popular imaginary, Canada is considered a land of freedom that is inclusive and without a colonial past. This problematic myth of Canadian exceptionalism is founded on a national history that romanticizes the Underground Railroad, while neglecting Canada’s direct participation in the enslavement of Black and Indigenous...

  • “From Enslavement to Empowerment” and What Comes After: Plantation Futures on a Palimpsestic Landscape (2023)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer Saunders.

    This is an abstract from the "Deepening Archaeology's Engagement with Black Studies" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The idea of the landscape as a palimpsest, where traces of a former version can be read under the present one, came out of Paleolithic archaeology, where thousands of years of human activity must be read through low-density artifact scatters. In 2013’s “Plantation Futures,” Black geographer Katherine McKittrick describes the...

  • The History and Practice of European Prehistory through a Black Feminist Lens (2023)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Kathleen Sterling.

    This is an abstract from the "Deepening Archaeology's Engagement with Black Studies" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Classics is undergoing a very public and painful reckoning with its use by white nationalists. Prehistoric archaeologists working in Europe have largely stayed out of the fray, perhaps due to many practitioners seeing our research subjects as “pre-racial” or our work as otherwise unrelated to these discussions. However, if we look at...

  • Home: Place, Space, Survival, Resistance (2023)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only C. Broughton Anderson.

    This is an abstract from the "Deepening Archaeology's Engagement with Black Studies" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the mid-nineteenth century, Spicy Baxter and siblings were emancipated by their father, George White, a freedman in Madison County, Kentucky. The family moved south, away from their northern Madison County farm to a rugged, isolated, parcel in the south of the county. Here, Spicy and her female siblings lived until the early...

  • Linking Black Studies and Archaeology through an Intersectional Materialism (2023)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Stefan Woehlke.

    This is an abstract from the "Deepening Archaeology's Engagement with Black Studies" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeology is an inherently materialist pursuit linking history to the production of the world in which we live. Black intellectuals have played a critical role in the development of the social theories we use to explain that productive process. This paper will briefly outline some of these historical contributions to social theory...

  • Making Race Women: Intellectual and Material Contributions to Understanding Black Lives in the Early Twentieth Century (2023)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Anna Agbe-Davies.

    This is an abstract from the "Deepening Archaeology's Engagement with Black Studies" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. One powerful reason to integrate Black Studies and archaeology is to align archaeological analysis of sites occupied by Black people with the aims, imperatives, and perspectives that their descendants and other stakeholders might find relevant. This paper follows the lead of researchers like Brittney Cooper who encourage us to see...

  • Public/Private Consumption in the Performance of Respectability and Gentility at 71 Joy Street, Boston, MA (2023)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Danielle Cathcart. Suzanne Spencer-Wood.

    This is an abstract from the "Deepening Archaeology's Engagement with Black Studies" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. 71 Joy Street was home to several free Black families in the mid–late nineteenth century followed by working-class white tenants into the early twentieth century. Evidence of their daily lives and identity performances was discovered in a privy sealed after approximately 75 years of continuous use. The objects speak to the public and...

  • Using Historical African American Scholars’ Writings to Understand the Materiality of Nineteenth-Century African America Communities in Annapolis, Maryland (2023)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Kathryn Deeley.

    This is an abstract from the "Deepening Archaeology's Engagement with Black Studies" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In exploring how archaeologists can apply concepts and practices from Black Studies in our investigations of the materiality of daily life in the past, the easiest theories to see archaeologically may be those promoted by theorists who were contemporary to the people we are studying. The forerunners of Black Studies today, scholars...

  • Whiteness in Relation: Black Studies and the Racializing Assemblages of the Antebellum South (2023)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Greer.

    This is an abstract from the "Deepening Archaeology's Engagement with Black Studies" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. For decades, Black Studies scholars have provided powerful, far-ranging critiques of the concept of race and the processes of racialization. Yet, when applied to archaeological case studies, these concepts are often only used to discuss the lives of Africans and their diasporic descendants. However, as Black Studies scholars point...