Food as Freedom: Examining Afro-Indigenous Foodways at the Late-Eighteenth to Early-Nineteenth Century Seneca Boston-Florence Higginbotham House, Nantucket, Massachusetts

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

In the face of white settler-colonialism and objection to the forces of anti-Black racism in the eighteenth century, Nantucket’s New Guinea community formed as a racially diverse group of Africans, African Americans, Native Americans, and Pacific Islanders. Central to this community was formerly enslaved Seneca Boston and his Afro-Indigenous family. Archaeology conducted at the Seneca Boston-Florence Higginbotham House (built 1774) is helping to reveal how the Boston family strategically negotiated racial and ethnic identities to persist. This paper combines zooarchaeological data with documentary archaeology to present a comprehensive foodways analysis of the first generation of Bostons. By understanding the social implications of food for the Boston family, this analysis reveals the ideologies and economies that influenced how the Boston family procured, prepared, and consumed their food. While food is not an inherent indicator of racial or ethnic identity, this paper views food as an expression of cultural values. By examining food in a mixed-race household, this paper allows a greater understanding of food’s role in identity negotiation in free, Afro-Indigenous contexts in New England and offers insight into racial autonomy and cultural persistence in Diasporic communities.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 40176.0