The Quandary Of Diaspora: Folk Culture And African And Scottish Interactions At The Kingsley Plantation (1814-1839), Fort George Island, Florida

Summary

Recognizing ethnic identities through materiality has long been a goal of American historical archaeology, in particular within the African Diaspora.  The ability to identify and interpret archaeologically the material residues of these past social behaviors has most successfully relied upon exclusive contexts of interaction and access; African customs may be "recognized" in slave cabins, while European customs and beliefs may manifest materially within predominately or exclusively Euroamerican contexts.  But what of multi-generational social interactions, creolization at all levels of social life, and shared spatial contexts, where myriad cultures interacted to ultimately form the archaeological record?  What changes in African belief seen materially may be due to diasporic processes – multi-ethnic African households, improvisation, or creolization of many different African and European cultural traditions?  Such complexities will be explored through the archaeological dataset derived from eight years of excavations at the Kingsley Plantation, Fort George Island, Florida.        

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2015   •
• Historical Archaeologies of Diaspora: Moving Between Boundaries and Beyond Peripheries

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Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

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PaperId(s): 298