More Than Square Nails and Abandoned Fields: Toward an Archaeology of Black Agrarianism in Central Texas

Summary

This is an abstract from the "What’s Going on in Texas? Current Topics in Texas Archaeology" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The centrality of agrarianism to African American experience cannot be overstated. Although profoundly shaped by the legacies of racial chattel slavery and sharecropping, the story of Black agrarianism is not reducible to narratives of forced labor, exploitation, and ecological alienation. Ideologies of racial uplift and rural reform; aspirations of landownership and economic security; and land-based dreams of food sovereignty and collective liberation have all been articulated and made manifest by Black farmers. In Central Texas, archaeologists working alongside African American descendant communities have deepened and greatly expanded our understanding of the material, social, and ecological worlds of Black farmers, especially during the Reconstruction and Jim Crow eras. Still, the archaeological study of Black agrarianism faces several challenges–from the generational loss and erasure of Black rural landscapes to persistent assumptions within the discipline that late-19th and early-20th century farmsteads lack significance, integrity, and research value. In this paper, I explore past and more recent archaeological approaches to Black agrarianism by focusing on three post-emancipation farmsteads in Central Texas. I will also outline a developing research agenda which aims to place archaeology in closer dialogue with African American agricultural history and traditions of Black environmental thought.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• What’s Going on in Texas? Current Topics in Texas Archaeology

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 52116