Blood At the Roots: Black Heritage Trees as Silent Witnesses to the Past

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Landscapes of Care: Exploring Heart-centered Practice in Historical Archaeology", at the 2025 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Heritage Trees also named spirit, righteous, survivor, or sacred trees, have overcome impossible odds to bear witness to historical events, serving as guardians of culture that exist outside of the boundaries of human life. While heritage trees exist around the world using their bark, their roots, and their placement in the landscape to tell stories, the trees that have stood in witness to collective Black freedom events and instances of Anti-Black violence hold a constellation of Black history in their roots. The Black Heritage Tree Project (BHT) is a land-based storytelling initiative using narratives of Black freedom and survivance connected to heritage trees that have witnessed countless events in Black history but rarely get the chance to tell their stories. Exploring these trees and the stories told around them provide a powerful tool to combat and heal historical trauma in the past while developing landscapes of care in the present.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2025   •
• Landscapes of Care: Exploring Heart-centered Practice in Historical Archaeology

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow