Engaging the Present by Uncovering the Past: Community Archaeology and the Legacy of Enslavement, Resistance, and Emancipation, St. Croix, US Virgin Islands

Summary

This is an abstract from the "To Move Forward We Must Look Back: The Slave Wrecks Project at 10 Years" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Since 2014, the National Park Service, as a partner in the Slave Wrecks Project, has conducted a community archaeology program as part of multiyear effort combining underwater and terrestrial archaeology with public engagement activities. Christiansted National Historic Site, and the Danish West India and Guinea Company Warehouse complex, St. Croix, US Virgin Islands, is unique in the National Park Service system in that the site was a nexus for the receiving, shipment, and incarceration and torture of Enslaved Africans from 1733 to 1803 for the Danish West Indies. Captured maroons were incarcerated at Fort Christiansvaern, tried in the colonial court, and punished or executed, making the fort a symbol of flight from bondage. Since 2017, the Society for Black Archaeologists joined SWP partners in conducting a community archaeology program at Estate Little Princess, also on St. Croix, which introduces students from local high schools and Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) to the world of archaeology and coral reef restoration. This paper will highlight both of these programs' efforts to identify archaeological resources pertaining to the lives of the enslaved and engage local youth in the world of heritage resource management.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• To Move Forward We Must Look Back: The Slave Wrecks Project at 10 Years   •
• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 33386