Combatting Gullah Erasure in the Ground and Out of it: Archaeology’s Place in Hilton Head Island

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "First Steps on a Long Corridor: The Gullah Geechee and the Formation of a Southern African American Landscape" , at the 2022 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

In 2019 a total of 2,684,328 vacationers came to Hilton Head Island, SC. The 70sq mile island rose to supremacy in the vacation industry in the 1970’s where it’s remained for more than fifty years. But before it was #15 on the “Worlds Best Vacation Islands” list (just below Pemba, Zanzibar, and above Luacala Island, Fiji) it was a Gullah island. Hilton Head’s first plantation operation began in 1712 when west Africans were brought, via Barbados to break the land, erase Native landscapes, and cultivate profit for re-locating Barbadian planters. The descendants of these workers are Gullah. As heritage tourism begins to rival golf as an attraction, Gullah culture has become a hotly contested commodity. This paper will discuss how public archaeology at Historic Mitchelville has been used as a tool to combat Gullah erasure and help redefine parameters of “Gullah archaeology sites” and the methods used to find them.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• First Steps on a Long Corridor: The Gullah Geechee and the Formation of a Southern African American Landscape   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2022

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology