From Personal Amulets to Shared Rituals

Summary

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

Since the inception of the field of Historical Archaeology, much has been made of the small finds interpreted as residues of African spiritual belief and ritual practice. Beads, X-marked fragments, and pierced coins, first the subject of the “search for Africanisms” which characterized American plantation archaeology, have since been examined as evidence of continuity and change in ritual practices, been used to trace specific links between diasporic communities and varied African cultures and religions, and have been highlighted for the idiosyncratic and highly interpretable nature of their creation and use. In this paper, I consider how we might extrapolate understandings of group dynamics, particularly the formation and functioning of community, from these objects. I examine small finds from several North Florida sites and consider how these objects might be used to study the communities in which they were produced, utilized, and discarded. I seek to use materials typically associated with individuals to think about communal ritual practices and the shared maintenance of spiritual communities.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

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

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 41676.0