{"title":"A Creole Synthesis: Archaeology of the Culturally Mixed Heritage Silas Tobias Site in Setauket, New York","authors":"Christopher N. Matthews","doi":"10.1080/21619441.2019.1646038","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21619441.2019.1646038","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Research on the Silas Tobias site in Setauket, New York has identified a small nineteenth-century homestead with a well-preserved and stratified archaeological context. Documentation of the site establishes that the site was occupied from at least 1823 until about 1900. Based on documentary evidence, the Tobias family is considered African American, though the mixed Native American and African American heritage of the descendant community is also well-known. Excavations in 2015 exposed both architectural- and midden-associated deposits that shed light on daily life of the Tobias household, which suggests the preservation of Native American cultural practices both in technology and foodways. In essence, the site presents excellent evidence of the mixing of cultural traditions, a process interpreted in this paper as a sign of both political agency of the Tobias family as well as a period of greater tolerance for racial difference associated with the end of slavery in New York.","PeriodicalId":37778,"journal":{"name":"Journal of African Diaspora Archaeology and Heritage","volume":"8 1","pages":"32 - 8"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/21619441.2019.1646038","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46384846","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"An Archaeology of Prosperity and its Meanings in Antebellum Communities of Color","authors":"R. Handsman","doi":"10.1080/21619441.2019.1644827","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21619441.2019.1644827","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The long, ongoing history of communities of color in southern New England is inextricably interwoven with the evolution of an Atlantic economy. This article examines that relationship by focusing on work and opportunity, achievement and prosperity, and community survival in the antebellum period. My entry points are Isaac Rose of the historic Gayhead Indian community, Paul Cuffe, Sr. of Westport, and Frederick Douglass during his sojourn in New Bedford—men of color who became prosperous or lived among those who were, men of color whose accomplishments challenged racial prejudices and helped sustain their communities. Future historic archaeological studies can recover evidences of their practices of prosperity, and deepen our understandings of how those practices shaped and enriched cultures of opposition. Archaeologies of prosperity can provide a critical pathway for documenting what happened as others built and extended their freedoms in an earlier America, freedoms which were then denied them again.","PeriodicalId":37778,"journal":{"name":"Journal of African Diaspora Archaeology and Heritage","volume":"8 1","pages":"33 - 56"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/21619441.2019.1644827","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49382879","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Mapping Memories of Freetown: The Meanings of a Native American House in a Black Neighborhood","authors":"A. Mcgovern, Anjana Mebane‐Cruz","doi":"10.1080/21619441.2019.1650475","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21619441.2019.1650475","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The recent recognition of a twentieth-century Montaukett home in what has been considered a “Black neighborhood” brings into question the historical construction of race categories and boundaries, as well as the construction and production of history, giving us new perspectives on the histories of Long Island. Along with memories and other input from descendants and other community members, the authors use the methodologies of archaeology and cultural anthropology to understand relationships of kin, kind, and power in the Freetown neighborhood. In so doing, they interrogate and deconstruct the colonialist interpretations of the people and the way they lived their day to day lives. In this article, the authors unpack racialized histories as a method for framing their Mapping Memories of Freetown project, and shed light on the discursive relationship between constructed histories and lived experiences.","PeriodicalId":37778,"journal":{"name":"Journal of African Diaspora Archaeology and Heritage","volume":"8 1","pages":"131 - 146"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/21619441.2019.1650475","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44672489","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Prospects and Pitfalls: Comments on Action Research at Sites of Mixed Heritage","authors":"Bradley D. Phillippi, Eiryn Sheades","doi":"10.1080/21619441.2019.1644829","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21619441.2019.1644829","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The variants of community-based research projects in archaeology have increased exponentially in number since the 1980s, and the once-well-defined lines dividing “academic” and “public” archaeology continue to fade. We welcome the protracted and necessary change, but community-based research lacks the rigidity of previous paradigmatic approaches in archaeological research. For good reason. Here we provide a commentary based on our collaborative projects with two communities of mixed-descent on Long Island to emphasize how action research defies well-defined approaches. If anything, our experiences showcase some of the challenges community archaeologies encounter yet are reluctant to acknowledge. We focus on race and heritage, their intersection, and the dynamic experiences they impose and create. We offer very little in the way of solutions to the challenges we present, but hope to illustrate how self-reflection and flexibility are requisites of effective collaborative research, particularly with communities of mixed-ancestry.","PeriodicalId":37778,"journal":{"name":"Journal of African Diaspora Archaeology and Heritage","volume":"8 1","pages":"147 - 162"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/21619441.2019.1644829","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46157982","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Refuge and Support: An Introduction","authors":"Christopher N. Matthews","doi":"10.1080/21619441.2019.1644828","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21619441.2019.1644828","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This thematic collection of articles broadens archaeological understandings of race by moving beyond the identification of evidence of a Black, Native, or hybrid, multiracial identities. Through explorations of the nature of archaeological sites and material culture associated with multiracial spaces, articles in this collection describe the ways material culture was used to express multiple identities. These studies also seek to document the diverse spatial and material practices that helped Black, Native, and multiracial persons negotiate the often conflicting social, political, and economic aspirations. This introduction article provides an overview of these theoretical and methodological challenges, and introduces the articles in this collection.","PeriodicalId":37778,"journal":{"name":"Journal of African Diaspora Archaeology and Heritage","volume":"8 1","pages":"1 - 7"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/21619441.2019.1644828","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43578867","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Engendering Labor, African Enslavement, and Human-Horse Relations in Chickasaw Territory","authors":"Terrance M. Weik","doi":"10.1080/21619441.2019.1644830","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21619441.2019.1644830","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The archaeological study of the Levi Colbert Prairie site is exploring the convergence of gender, labor, racialization, agriculture, slavery, and human-animal interactions in ways that illuminate identity making, cultural categorization and community building in nineteenth-century Chickasaw territory. A variety of experiences, tasks, and social practices transformed the landscapes and relations of African diasporans, Native Americans, and horses, in what became the State of Mississippi. Artifacts and animals encountered on the frontiers of settler societies need to be rethought with a broader notion of materiality and alternative agencies in mind to better understand captivity, the cultural contexts of work, and the reach of oppression.","PeriodicalId":37778,"journal":{"name":"Journal of African Diaspora Archaeology and Heritage","volume":"8 1","pages":"110 - 130"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/21619441.2019.1644830","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44138276","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Reconnecting Tswana Archaeological Sites with their Descendants: The Challenge of Developing Southern Africa’s Cultural Heritage for Everyone","authors":"F. Morton","doi":"10.1080/21619441.2018.1537101","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21619441.2018.1537101","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Archaeologists in southern Africa who wish to provide public access to visible sites face the challenge of widespread farm privatization and the associated displacement of African communities. Most of today’s six million Tswana speakers cannot access the private farms where many stonewall settlements built by their ancestors are located. Recent research in southern Botswana identified a site on communal land in close proximity to people who can identify it as part of their heritage. In 2017, preparations got underway to develop the large stonewall capital of Makolontwane as a cultural heritage tourism destination. Makolontwane was built by the Tswana-speaking (Ba)Ngwaketse in the eighteenth century as part of their raiding state. Efforts to preserve and restore Makolontwane are grounded in a desire to make such history accessible to all visitors, including Tswana speakers who have been routinely alienated from their own archaeological heritage.","PeriodicalId":37778,"journal":{"name":"Journal of African Diaspora Archaeology and Heritage","volume":"7 1","pages":"226 - 242"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/21619441.2018.1537101","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48988432","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Turtle Feasts and the Commensal Politics of Food: Teasing Out the Flavors of African-American Foodways in New England","authors":"D. Landon","doi":"10.1080/21619441.2018.1626051","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21619441.2018.1626051","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article focuses on four sites in Massachusetts: the eighteenth-century Isaac Royall House in Medford; the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth-century Boston-Higginbotham House on Nantucket; the early nineteenth-century Joy Street tenement house in Boston; and the early nineteenth-century African Meeting House in Boston. These are domestic contexts, with the exception of the African Meeting House, which also includes remains from community and catered events. The Royall House site was home to enslaved Africans and African Americans, but free blacks occupied the other three sites. Analysis of these sites suggests that in New England other factors besides African heritage influenced the types of meat and plants people consumed, including urban or rural locations, economic status of individuals, and home-raising of animals. Minor and idiosyncratic items in assemblages help identify features of African-American foodways in New England. Close contextual analysis of such items highlights their cultural importance and role in the region’s commensal politics.","PeriodicalId":37778,"journal":{"name":"Journal of African Diaspora Archaeology and Heritage","volume":"7 1","pages":"243 - 264"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/21619441.2018.1626051","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45018114","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Owning Slavery: An Interview with Katrina Browne","authors":"Rachel Ama Asaa Engmann","doi":"10.1080/21619441.2018.1527977","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21619441.2018.1527977","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The transatlantic slave trade and heritage lie at the center of Katrina Browne’s work as a filmmaker, writer and activist. Her film, Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North (2008), which was received to critical acclaim, depicts the story of her family’s attempt to come to terms with their role in the history and legacies of the transatlantic slave trade and slavery. Since the film, she co-founded the Tracing Center on Histories and Legacies of Slavery, a non-profit organization, and has worked as a public speaker, facilitator and trainer at universities, colleges, schools, museums, historic sites, religious congregations, workplaces and professional conferences, nationally and internationally on “racial equity and healing.” In this interview, Katrina discusses the film, her work since then surrounding the history and legacies of the transatlantic slave trade and slavery, as well as the current controversies in relationship to their role in heritage.","PeriodicalId":37778,"journal":{"name":"Journal of African Diaspora Archaeology and Heritage","volume":"7 1","pages":"207 - 225"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/21619441.2018.1527977","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43655172","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Moravian Cemeteries on Barbados: Sites of Historical, Social, and Political Change","authors":"Helen C. Blouet","doi":"10.1080/21619441.2019.1628420","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21619441.2019.1628420","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In the nineteenth century, African Moravians used Moravian church cemeteries on Barbados, and their use of such spaces was mediated by their situations in contexts of race, class, and religion. Mortuary practices from slavery to freedom represented social constraints as well as social freedom for individuals and communities. The extent to which we can explore through burials the history and development of mortuary practices in Moravian cemeteries is complicated by each cemetery’s preservation and modification projects. Church cemeteries exist in varying degrees of stability, use, and disrepair. They may have been destroyed, as in the case of Bunker’s Hill, or they may have been differentially preserved and modified as reflected in the Sharon, Mt. Tabor, Calvary, and Clifton Hill cemeteries. Through church cemetery care and analysis, it is possible to enhance awareness of historical complexity in African Moravian life and death on Barbados.","PeriodicalId":37778,"journal":{"name":"Journal of African Diaspora Archaeology and Heritage","volume":"7 1","pages":"265 - 286"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/21619441.2019.1628420","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48392238","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}