Roots, Resilience, and Resistance: Evaluating Evidence of African American Herbal Medicine

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "New Avenues in the Study of Plant Remains from Historical Sites" , at the 2022 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

This paper will explore pursuits of well-being, resistance, and resilience by looking at ethnohistorical and macrobotanical evidence for African American herbal medicine from the American South. Ethnographic and oral history records highlight the historical importance of herbal medicine to African American well-being. As enslaved Africans were brought to North America, they transported environmental and medicinal knowledge alongside familiar plants. As African people, beliefs, and practices encountered Indigenous and European people, plants, and practices, a distinct variety of ethnomedicine emerged. Herbal medicine allowed African Americans to both covertly and directly confront oppression. This paper investigates not only how archaeology and archaeobotany can contribute to a more thorough understanding of African American ethnomedicine but how anthropological archaeologists should contextualize their findings for the public.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• New Avenues in the Study of Plant Remains from Historical Sites   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2022

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology