Leland Ferguson’s Uncommon Ground, In Small things Forgotten, And Cultural Resistance

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "A Tribute to the Legacy of Leland Ferguson: A Journey From Uncommon Ground to God's Fields", at the 2024 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

One of Leland Ferguson’s goals when writing Uncommon Ground was to present his archaeological findings on colonoware and of the South Carolina Lowcountry to a general audience in a similar vein as that of James Deetz’s In Small things Forgotten. Unlike Deetz, his study centered on the worldviews and actions of enslaved people. In the end, Uncommon Ground delivered so much more. His framing of the study around creolization and cultural resistance have withstood the course of time. I have been particularly drawn to his application of cultural resistance in African Diaspora Archaeology in my own work. In this paper, I recount my conservations with Leland regarding Uncommon Ground as well as the archaeological study of slavery and plantations more generally.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2024   •
• A Tribute to the Legacy of Leland Ferguson: A Journey From Uncommon Ground to God's Fields

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow