Liberia’s Plymouth Rock?: Archaeologies of Freedom-Making, Settler Colonialism, and National Heritage on Providence Island

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Global Archaeologies of the Long Emancipation", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

The 2022 bicentennial of the arrival of Black Americans to West African shores was a moment of reflection for many Liberians. In the wake of civil war, many questioned the celebratory tone of the occasion and challenged settler heritage narratives. At the same time, Providence Island featured prominently in official programming, proclaiming the island’s significance as Liberia’s Plymouth Rock. Since 2019, our Back-to-Africa Heritage and Archaeology project has worked on the island to investigate the site’s function beyond the mythic 1822 encounter, instead offering a more inclusive and complex account of the public heritage space. We specifically focus on pre-settlement deposits and post-1822 assemblages of local and imported goods to demonstrate the tensions surrounding freedom-making and Black Republicanism from past to present. We also offer perspectives on African Diasporic archaeology that move beyond American-centric framings of Blackness and instead prioritize local, community perspectives on the afterlives of slavery.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2023   •
• Global Archaeologies of the Long Emancipation

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow