Reassessing the Interpretations of Cross Marks in the African Diaspora

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.

Beginning in the 1970s and 1980s, earnest attempts were made within African American archaeology to link material objects recovered from North American contexts to African parent cultures. One common symbol recovered archaeologically on a variety of objects was the X or cross motif, sometimes placed within a circle. Originally recognized on colonoware in Tennessee and South Carolina, initial interpretations suggested that the symbol was derived from cultures of southern Ghana. However, after a series of publications by art historians documenting the Bakongo Culture of West Central Africa in the 1980s, subsequent archaeological interpretations shifted to assign this singular African culture and its underlying belief system as the exclusive source for these symbolic expressions. This paper reviews this previous work, and suggests several alternative African cultural belief systems as the underlying rationale to explain the presence and meaning of the cross, and cross and circle form, within these New World contexts.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

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

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Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow