Bringing Black Chefs into the Lab: A Call for an Interdisciplinary Public Approach to Zooarchaeology

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Plantation Archaeology as Slow Archaeology" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Zooarchaeology has, historically, used approaches based in fast-science to study foodways. It can often fail to provide a comprehensive understanding of the foodways of enslaved peoples, however. This is because faunal analysis is often conducted and interpreted separately from studies of the knowledge and experience of the enslaved people who prepared, served, and consumed the meals associated with these remains. In this paper, we will propose a new approach to historic zooarchaeology in which the knowledge and skills of black chefs and domestic workers are placed on the forefront and treated with the same importance and level of respect that traditional zooarchaeological methods have received. This approach is one that has been called for by the Montpelier Descendant Community. In this paper we will use a recent public program at James Madison’s Montpelier to show how this type of multidisciplinary approach created an immersive sensory educational program for the public.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2020   •
• Plantation Archaeology as Slow Archaeology

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Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 688