Life Experiences in an African Diaspora Community: Archaeology of Omoa, Honduras

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Gateways to Future Historical Archaeology in Mexico and Central America", at the 2024 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Drawing on field excavations conducted in 2008 and 2009, and extensive research in documentary archives, we present an overview of the lives of people who were residents of the Spanish colonial town of Omoa, which developed adjacent to the Fortaleza de Omoa in the last half of the eighteenth century. Omoa was a majority African descendant community. Thus, we begin with the understanding that the majority of the excavated evidence most probably relates to free persons of partial African descent, first referred to in census documents as pardos and later as mulattos, or to the lives of formerly enslaved people who gained freedom at Omoa and are counted in the census documents as "Free Blacks". We examine the evidence that shows some residents were relatively wealthy, had cosmopolitan social connections, and used the opportunity of the development of this unique town to craft lives outside of normative Spanish colonial restrictions.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2024   •
• Gateways to Future Historical Archaeology in Mexico and Central America

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow