Reconnecting liminal spaces of labor in the northeast

Summary

This paper experiments with multi-sited analysis as a means of exploring connections and intersections between various generations of marginalized groups living and working across the colonial and U.S. Northeast from the colonial era through the 19th century. This approach challenges and complicates stereotypes of primordial race and poverty by establishing links between liminal spaces of labor that drew together diverse groups, rather than treating them as isolated and implicitly anomalous. We connect plantation and reservation contexts, an Indian school, and several Christian Indian settlements in order to investigate how ‘lines’ of race, class and gender shaped these plural contexts through time and space. In this spirit, we acknowledge the dynamics and fluidity with which identities were continually forged and broken, pushing back against categories of black, Indian, and white which continue to resonate today.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Labor and Plurality: Excavating the Political Economy of Identity   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2014

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): SYM-58,05