Constructing the Community: A Multi-Scalar Analysis of Runaway Slave Identity in 19th-Century Kenya
Author(s): Lydia Wilson Marshall
Year: 2018
Summary
Like Maroons elsewhere in the world, runaway slaves in Kenya were thrown together by circumstance and carried diverse social experiences and cultural practices with them into freedom. Given this heterogeneity, archaeologists have grown increasingly interested in the mechanisms by which Maroons created communities of broader cultural coherence. This paper explores the creation of two communities by self-emancipated people in 19th-century Kenya, Koromio and Makoroboi. Here, I use an expanding analytical framework to investigate residents’ identity and interaction at multiple scales: the individual household, the village, and the region. The resulting analysis allows us to conceptualize identity not as a single stable thing but, rather, as something more akin to a network—a web with some strands reaching outward to the community and others confined and distinct to each household.
Cite this Record
Constructing the Community: A Multi-Scalar Analysis of Runaway Slave Identity in 19th-Century Kenya. Lydia Wilson Marshall. Presented at Society for Historical Archaeology, New Orleans, Louisiana. 2018 ( tDAR id: 441555)
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Keywords
General
Identity
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Maroons
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Slavery
Geographic Keywords
North America
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United States of America
Temporal Keywords
19th Century
Spatial Coverage
min long: -129.199; min lat: 24.495 ; max long: -66.973; max lat: 49.359 ;
Individual & Institutional Roles
Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology
Record Identifiers
PaperId(s): 168