The Archaeology Plantation: White Supremacy and the Production of Archaeological Knowledge

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Critical Archaeologies of Whiteness", at the 2024 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

The archaeological archive is a largely untapped resource related to the role that race and White supremacy played in the production of archaeological knowledge and methods. As I suggest in this paper, archaeological methods and thought were deeply, even if unconsciously, influenced by plantation logic. Specifically, race determined who filled roles as laborers and who generated knowledge about the past. With examples from archaeological expeditions in the American South and Egypt, I focus on field notes and correspondence to demonstrate how management techniques and ideologies of racialized bodies seamlessly transitioned from the plantation to the archaeological trench.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2024   •
• Critical Archaeologies of Whiteness

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow