Allensworth: An Archaeological Exploration of Health Management

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "California: Post-1850s Consumption and Use Patterns in Negotiated Spaces" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

The spirit of revolution and survivance has become a core tenet in the fabric of American history, exponentially so within the African American community. After the dissolution of the Reconstruction Era, African Americans were faced with the legislative and social constraints of the Jim Crow Era, which acted as the catalyst for the Black-utopian settlement of Allensworth. The town of Allensworth, located in in Tulare County in California’s Central Valley, was founded by Col. Allen Allensworth in 1908, becoming California’s first self-governed and economically independent African American town. My research focuses on addressing how this community negotiated healthcare choices while living on the social and physical periphery. By examining the communities medicine bottle assemblage we can illuminate how a marginalized group navigated the daily, individual and collective, need for healthcare and have a better understanding of the human experience in revolutionary towns, such as Allensworth.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2020   •
• California: Post-1850s Consumption and Use Patterns in Negotiated Spaces

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Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 675