Culture, Community, and a Cruise Ship: Black Feminist Archaeology in a Caribbean Context

Summary

How does African Diaspora archaeology factor into the realities of African descendant communities outside of the United States? How does African Diaspora archaeology engage with the challenges of tourist-based economies? Through the infusion of critical heritage studies and expanding the scope of our work to include post-emanicpation sites, the questions (and answers) we ask have to change. This paper will discuss the early stages of a community-based archaeological project on the island of Eleuthera in the Bahamas and highlight how archaeology has become the driving force in creating a model to address the desire for heritage tourism, documenting community memories, and exploring some form of sustainable economic development in the shadow of cruise tourism. Using community-based approaches and Black Feminist archaeology, this paper will also discuss the realities of how all of these factors come together for the benefit of researchers, stakeholders, and a broader understanding of slavery in the Americas.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2014   •
• Questions that Will Count in the Future: Global Perspectives on Historical Archaeology

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): SYM-7,21