Coins on the Eyes of the Deceased: A Theoretical Perspective on a Creolized African-American Mortuary Practice

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.

African cultural practices observed in the Diaspora were once simplistically viewed as evidence of static African representations within the Americas, ignoring the dynamic cultural processes experienced by all parties involved in the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. Interactions among European, African, and indigenous cultures inevitably resulted in the creation of new or innovated traditions. While the Herskovits-inspired models of creolization and syncretism are useful paradigms to understand this process, another interpretative approach is through the theoretical perspective of a palimpsest. Archaeologically, one context where we can apply and observe the palimpsest paradigm is through grave inclusions found in North America with both European and African descendants. The example presented here is the phenomenon of placing coins with the deceased, often over the eyes. Coins signify the performance of a cultural identity for both populations, but the palimpsest approach can illuminate the underlying events experienced by each culture expressed through space and time.

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