Maroon Archaeology beyond the Americas: A View from Kenya

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Archaeologies of Enslavement" session, at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Archaeological research on Maroons—that is, runaway slaves—has been largely confined to the Americas. This paper advocates a more global approach. It specifically uses two runaway slave communities in 19th-century coastal Kenya to rethink prominent interpretive themes in the field, including "Africanisms," Maroons’ connections to indigenous groups, and Maroon group cohesion and identity.  This article’s analysis demonstrates that the comparisons enabled by a more globalized perspective benefit the field.  Instead of eliding historical and cultural context, these comparisons support the development of more localized and historically specific understandings of individual runaway slave communities both in Kenya and throughout the New World.  

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2019   •
• Archaeologies of Enslavement

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Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 480