Personal Adornment and Identity Politics at Fort Mose

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Paper / Report Submission (General Sessions)", at the 2024 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Fort Mose was the first legally sanctioned free black community in what later became the United States. Consequently, it was an experiment in freedom shaped by Spanish colonialism and African responses to it. Inhabitants of Fort Mose, including men, women, and children, lived their lives on a frontier and faced multiple challenges and obstacles to maintaining their freedom. This essay explores the materiality of identity politics of Fort Mose residents through an analysis of personal adornment objects and personal items recovered at the site. These objects simultaneously reveal insights and questions about the identity politics of the free black militia and their families that lived at Fort Mose from 1752-1763.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2024   •
• Paper / Report Submission (General Sessions)

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow