South Alabama Population Dynamics and Archaeology: Considerations of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Paper / Report Submission (General Sessions)", at the 2025 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Mobile, Alabama, City of the Six Flags; not signifying an amusement park, but rather the variety of European/European descendants who claimed the western shore of the Mobile River already occupied by diverse Indigenous Nations, and to which additional genetic and ethnic diversity came from enslaved Africans brought to its port. In 2015, the Mobile City Council, due to the relation of flags, diversity, equity, and inclusion, removed all six flags from the city seal. Here, we provide estimates of precontact demography, reconstruct contact period demography from available data, present U.S. census data from 1820 to 1950, and consider demographic projections into the future. These data provide new insights into Mobile’s ethnic diversity through time. The emerging patterns and trends provide insight into who lived in Mobile through time, and changes that led to Mobile’s present in terms of neighborhood composition, socio-political relations, and ideology.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Paper / Report Submission (General Sessions)   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2025

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow