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Critical Race Theory and the Archaeology of the African Diaspora
Abstract
The critical race theory movement, an outgrowth of critical legal studies, offers historical archaeologists a paradigm for a more sophisticated, politically engaged treatment of the issue of race. Unfortunately, an uncritical social constructionist analysis can result in the trivialization or appropriation of the concerns of minority scholars, activists, and communities, a position critical race theorists characterize as "vulgar anti-essentialism." Several examples of this process within historical archaeology are discussed. Historical archaeologists, particularly those studying the African Diaspora, need to develop community-based alliances that address common goals and enhance the relevance of their work. One potential mutually beneficial alliance would be with activists and scholars in the environmental justice movement.
... Preliminary skeletal assessments made on the bones in 1993 concluded that over 85% of the remains were male and, while race was only identifiable in 35% of individuals, around 78% of identifiable remains were black. With these data in mind, the unfinished project should also be understood within a critical race theory framework as part of a pattern of white supremacist, institutionalized displacement, and devaluation of black burial grounds that touches every black burial site in the city, whether municipal or private, regardless of the luminaries buried there (e.g., Barrett 2014;Chapman 2016;Davis 2000;Epperson 2004;Griego 2015;Harrison 2017;Hong 2013;King 2019;Koste 2012;Leib 2002;Smith 2020aSmith , 2020b. ...
... Even more critically, the penitentiary cemetery also stands as one of many examples of state-coordinated dehumanization of black communities, whose neighborhoods, resting places, historic resources, and archival histories have been systematically erased or devalued by local, state, and national organizations as a matter of course for most of American history. The long dormancy of the project also points to long-standing critiques of the archeological community as largely Euro-American, resistant to asking permission of descendant communities, and as responsible for various examples of archeological erasure (Epperson 2004;LaRoche and Blakey 1997). ...
... Archeology is seen as essential for racial justice and healing in the city because the undeniable aspects of its evidence will provide more insights into black history, will help to level the playing field, and promote healing by creating a larger record of black history. All this is believed despite the fact that archeology is a much whiter discipline even than history; despite archeology's long history of suppressing and misinterpreting nonwhite narratives (Blakey 2001;Epperson 2004;Gosden 2006;Patterson 1999); and despite an extensive list of archeological failures within Richmond, of which the penitentiary site is just one. Due to the work of Edwards, Blakey, and others to raise awareness about the possibilities of history and archeology for these types of goals, archeology is currently seen in the city with somewhat more optimism than some elements of its history warrants. ...
This article describes an archeological ethnographic study of the history and social context of the Virginia State Penitentiary, where burials excavated in the 1990s still remain in limbo: unpublished, unmemorialized, and unmourned. The penitentiary (1804–1991) was a feared site of solitary confinement, carceral labor, and capital punishment. Fieldwork conducted in advance of the penitentiary’s demolition recorded solitary confinement cells within the eighteenth‐century foundations, but also discovered a substantial burial ground within the prison walls. The collection includes the remains of over 200 people, many of whom were black prisoners who died between 1878 and 1884. Unfortunately, archeological analysis and publication were never completed. This article presents a new public engagement process to identify fresh possibilities for the sites and the individuals represented in this collection. Based on over thirty semistructured interviews conducted in 2015 and data from over 230 respondents to the 2018 Richmond Penitentiary Survey, we discuss how the penitentiary remains resonate or fails to resonate with Richmond residents, even as the city’s broader history of archeological neglect is becoming better understood. We discuss how archival research and emerging models for archeological restorative justice may provide new avenues for addressing this urban archeological erasure in a major Southern metropolis.
... While the number of Black archaeologists in steadily growing, the predominantly White profession continues to uphold and support the values, attitudes, and worldviews of cis-gendered White men that privilege Whiteness above all others Nassaney and LaRoche 2011). In many ways, we, as a discipline, still practice our "grandfather's archaeology," focusing on individual sites and artifacts as if they do not have a connection to descendant communities and ignoring the knowledge and power these communities have over their sites (Atalay 2012;Blakey 1997;Epperson 2004;LaRoche and Blakey 1997;Potter Jr. 1994;Tilley 1989; and many authors in this volume). The lack of diversity in the discipline has created what White (2020) describes as an unwelcome space not conducive to cultural diversity (see Lee et al. [2023] this volume, Chapter 2). ...
... Taking out the obvious misogynoir, Battle-Baptiste's statements were not radical. African American archaeologists have been saying the same thing for the last thirty years-that there needs to be a radical reconfiguring of the discipline (Agbe-Davies 1998, 2002Agbe-Davies and Martin 2013;Battle-Baptiste 2011;Carey 2019;Deetz and Jones 2006;Dunnavant et al. 2020;Epperson 2004;Flewellen 2017;Franklin 1997aFranklin , 1997bFranklin and McKee 2004;LaRoche and Blakey 1997;Mack and Blakey 2004;Singleton 1997;Weik 2012;White and Draycott 2020). It is more than a call to simply be self-reflexive (Franklin 2001). ...
It has been over 25 years since Maria Franklin (1997b) asked, “Why are there so few black American archaeologists?” While low numbers can still be attributed to Black Americans choosing to pursue more lucrative careers, we must also understand that barriers instituted and perpetuated by racism also play a major factor. Through highlighting the experiences of archaeologists from John Wesley Gilbert (1863–1923) to contemporary professionals, the legacy of racism and discriminatory treatment of Black archaeologists assists in answering Franklin's question. Though numbers have increased since the creation of the Society of Black Archaeologists in 2011, the retention of Black graduate students and professionals in the field is still a challenge. Revisiting this question in the time of Black Lives Matter in Archaeology may provide some clarity.
... Culturally, economically, politically, and socially, slavery was the defining characteristic of South Carolinian society, despite that less than 25% of white Southerners enslaved other people (Soltow 1975). However, even for white southerners who did not hold captives, their identities, ideologies, and livelihood depended upon slavery (Epperson 2004). Poor white farmers were complicit in the system of slavery through their production of goods and crops that were bought by larger plantation owners; similarly, local general store owners, craftsmen, and nearly every white person in small rural communities were economically tied to the plantations that surrounded them (Forret 2006). ...
In 1870, former captive Ervin James (1815–72) purchased 105 ac (42 ha) from two white landowners to establish his family farm. By 1891, his sons had bought an additional 140 ac (57 ha) where they grew crops, raised livestock, and hunted wildlife in the swamp. At the community’s peak in the 1920s, over 250 people called Jamestown home, and the community included a cemetery, a Methodist church, and a school. In the 1940s, the community started to decline, as residents increasingly had to seek employment farther away. Archaeological and historical evidence, including oral histories, underscore the complexity of everyday life at Jamestown. While residents were economically marginalized, they still owned and worked their own land, something that was–and still is—denied to many African Americans. This article focuses on the confluence of historical struggle, perseverance, and protection manifest in the landscapes of Jamestown.
... A existência de traços culturais não significa afirmar uma imutabilidade da cultura, também não consiste em dizer que existem aspectos identificativos generalizantes que podem definir uma pessoa de forma unívoca em relação aos seus diferentes aspectos identitários. Contrariamente, a pluridiversidade dos traços culturais dos sujeitos permite outros enfoques para lidar com identidades de maneira significativa e adjetivá-las enquanto instrumentos de diferenças étnicas para as demandas políticas e sociais dos povos negros e quilombolas (Epperson, 2004;Follmann;Pinheiro, 2013). ...
Este artigo aborda uma correlação entre aspectos da teoria arqueologia brasileira sobre a crítica arqueologia recente a teoria racial e as propostas institucionalizadas racialmente da arqueologia da escravidão enquanto campo de pesquisa de privilégios e reprodutor de discursos discriminatórios contra negros e quilombolas. O texto trata da questão da arqueologia da diáspora africana, que se coloca como campo da arqueologia que tem por objetivo valorizar a pessoa quilombola enquanto detentora de notórios saberes e não simplesmente enquanto objeto temática a ser investigado em uma pesquisa. Em se tratando de arqueologia realizada por quilombolas torna-se salutar conversações a respeito das experiências nas comunidades e sua conjunção com as vivências acadêmicas
... Ein weiteres Beispiel ist die Bürgerrechtsbewegung in den USA, der die Entstehung der postkolonialen Archäologie und der Archäologie der Afrikanischen Diaspora zugerechnet wird. Vor allem Schwarze Aktivist*innen haben beim Entstehen dieser Forschungsinteressen eine zentrale Rolle gespielt (Epperson 2004;Singelton 2016). Ohne ihre Kämpfe wären wir heute an einem anderen Punkt, was wiederum zeigt, dass es nötig ist, aktiv für Veränderungen zu kämpfen. ...
Marieluise Hahn, Anna Koch und Raphaelle Müller. 2023. Archäologie ist nie unpolitisch – Ideen zu herrschaftsfreien Archäologien. Forum Kritische Archäologie 12, Themenheft: Archäologie als Empowerment: Für
wen und wie? Kommentare zu einem wissenschaftlichem Aktivismus: 25–29.
... En arqueología histórica, un deseo a largo plazo de centrarse en lo inarticulado (Ascher, 1974) ha creado un fuerte sentido de justicia social a través de varias posiciones teóricas y áreas de interés, incluyendo la arqueología crítica (por ejemplo, Leone et al., 1987;Matthews et al., 2002), la arqueología de la diáspora africana (por ejemplo, Epperson, 2004) y la arqueología "reivindicacionista" (Mullins, 2008a(Mullins, , 2008bMullins & Jones, 2011). Esta última ha promovido explícitamente la idea de desmantelar "categorías implícitamente raciales" para "iluminar un trasfondo blanco tácito y reformular... la experiencia al confrontar el severo lado oculto de la desigualdad racial" (Mullins, 2008a, p. 105). ...
This paper examines the role of material culture in replicating everyday racism in Katherine, Northern Territory, Australia. We argue that inclusivity is determined by inclusive design supported by inclusive behaviours and that archaeologists can inform the creation of a more equitable world by identifying how material culture acts to exclude certain groups and replicate inequalities that might otherwise go unnoticed. This paper is part of the social justice movement in archaeology that analyses material remains in both the past and the present to reveal relationships between racism, racial discrimination, and racial inequality.
... Irrespective of the divergent views on the diaspora concept, it has been noted that the concept may be viewed, as a paradigm shift, for supplementing minority and race relations discourse in Critical Race Theory (CRT) studies (Epperson, 2004). In other words, transnationalism, connectivity and mobility have enriched diasporic language and heightened political discourses between the host country and country of origin. ...
... Applications of critical race theory, specifically, to archaeology have also intersected with critical archaeologies of capitalism, gender, and other systems of power (Battle-Baptiste 2011 ;Franklin 2001;LaRoche and Blakey 1997;Morris 2014). Since at least the 1990s, there has been a call within archaeology to turn the lens of critical theory on ourselves and the production of historical narratives (Epperson 2004;Franklin 1997;McDavid 2007;Shanks and Tilley 1996). This kind of reflexivity is a tool for modeling within archaeological practice the social change we wish to generate through it. ...
The Hill Community Project in Easton, Maryland, between 2012 and 2019 employed archaeologists from the University of Maryland to build social and political capital for local advocates in a campaign against gentrification in one of the United States’ oldest free African American neighborhoods. Emerging research on The Hill contributed to achieving a publicly funded program for equitable investment that combined historic preservation, community revitalization, and affordable housing. Interviews with local leaders and a review of newspaper reporting reflect the most productive and most challenging aspects of this partnership between scholarship and activism.
... Irrespective of the divergent views on the diaspora concept, it has been noted that the concept may be viewed, as a paradigm shift, for supplementing minority and race relations discourse in Critical Race Theory (CRT) studies (Epperson, 2004). In other words, transnationalism, connectivity and mobility have enriched diasporic language and heightened political discourses between the host country and country of origin. ...
... In order to understand Jamestown as a white public heritage space, it is necessary to understand what I mean by whiteness and how it is perpetuated and maintained in this context. Racial whiteness refers to a constructed identity with material consequences for health, wealth, and other lived experiences that was first invented in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (Blakey 1999;Epperson 2004;Goodman et al. 2020;Orser 2007;Smedley and Smedley 2012;Trouillot 2015). Like other identity constructs, whiteness has changed over time (Painter 2010) even as nonwhite identities have consistently served as a boundary allowing for the creation of binaries which promote the perceived backwardness of nonwhite peoples (Fanon 1963). ...
This article explores the complex dynamics involved in making African Diaspora histories and cultures visible at Historic Jamestowne, a setting traditionally viewed as white public heritage space. In response to the 400th anniversary of the forcible arrival of Africans in Virginia, archaeologists and heritage professionals at Jamestown are engaging the local African American descendant community in collective knowledge production centered around Angela, one of the first African women that lived at Jamestown in the 1620s. This article explores the production of dominant histories, alternative interpretations of the (colonial) past, and relationships between heritage sites and local descendant communities.
... Research programs have also expanded to address the diversity of Black experiences not only across space but time, as more of us explore life after emancipation and the "materiality of freedom" (Barnes 2011; see also Davidson 2008;Lee 2020;Leone et al. 2005;Warner 2015;Wilkie 2019). African diaspora archaeology also incorporates critical race and Black feminist theories (Agbe-Davies 2014;Battle-Baptiste 2011Epperson 2004;Fennell and White 2017;Franklin 2001;González-Tennant 2018;Lee and Scott 2019;McDavid 2007;Morris 2017;Mullins 1999;Orser 2001b;Wilkie 2003), vindicationist scholarship (e.g., Bell 2008Brandon 2008;LaRoche and Blakey 1997;Mullins 2008), and a commitment to partnering with Black communities within the context of research (Joseph 2016:14;McDavid 2010;Reeves 2004). Previous works by Black scholars from other disciplinary backgrounds have been foundational to these trends in African diaspora archaeology. ...
Building a new anti-racist archaeology will require an unprecedented level of structural changes in the practices, demographics, and power relations of archaeology. This article considers why this iteration of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) Movement is proving to be unique in terms of its potential to transform the field. We discuss how anti-racist archaeologists arrived at this juncture prepared to meet the challenges now before us, and how members of the Society of Black Archaeologists are collaborating with others to enact change. We acknowledge the significant social justice efforts of others and suggest how archaeologists can get involved to keep this critical momentum going.
... Historical archaeology offers important models for incorporating intersectionality into studies of antiquity. Many researchers have explicitly drawn on Black feminist thought, Critical Race Theory, and intersectionality to examine intersecting social identities and diverse lived experiences while retaining emphasis on structural analyses of oppression (e.g., Franklin 2001;Epperson 2004;Sterling 2015). Similarly, Indigenous archaeology continues to demonstrate the importance of creating spaces for subjugated epistemologies to produce counterhegemonic knowledge about past peoples (e.g., Atalay 2006). ...
... The ongoing wave of post-processualism within the field of archaeology, primarily feminist archeological studies (Claassen, 1992;Conkey & Spector, 1984;Gero & Conkey, 1991) and studies on race, racism and racial politics (Epperson, 1999(Epperson, , 2004Franklin & Paynter, 2010;Mullins, 1999Mullins, , 2001Mullins, , 2012Orser, 1998Orser, , 2004, attempts to address formations of epistemic violence within the archaeological record. The archival and archaeological records are often spoken of as intrinsically different, produced, and studied through different methodologies. ...
The year 2017 marked the centennial transfer of the Virgin Islands from Denmark to the United States. In light of this commemoration, topics related to representations of the past, and the preservation of heritage in the present -- entangled with the residuum of Danish colonialism and the lasting impact of U.S. neo-imperial rule -- are at the forefront of public dialogue on both sides of the Atlantic. Archaeological and archival research adds historical depth to these conversations, providing new insights into the lived experiences of Afro-Crucians from enslavement through post-emancipation. However, these two sources of primary historical data (i.e., material culture and documentary evidence) are not without their limitations. This article draws on Black feminist and post-colonial theoretical frameworks to interrogate the historicity of archaeological and archival records. Preliminary archaeological and archival work ongoing at the Estate Little Princess, an 18th-century former Danish sugar plantation on the island of St. Croix, provides the backdrop through which the potentiality of archaeological and documentary data are explored. Research questions centered on exploring sartorial practices of self-making engaged by Afro-Crucians from slavery through freedom are used to illuminate spaces of tension as well as productive encounters between the archaeological and archival records.
... Archaeology, as the anthropological study of the material consequences of human action in the past, has a potential beyond filling in the gaps left by documentary sources. It can challenge historical orthodoxies and examine the mechanisms by which social relations in the past were produced, maintained, and transformed (e.g., Epperson 2004;Franklin 1997b;Gero et al. 1983;Voss 2000). Archaeology can also illuminate the lives of the invisible people of the past, such as those who were poor, illiterate, or socially, politically, or geo- graphically remote from the literate and empowered social centers (e.g., Gero and Conkey 1991;McGuire and Paynter 1991;Singleton 1999;Tarlow 1998: 263). ...
As the landscape of coastal South Carolina changes due to development and tourism, important heritage and archaeology sites, including family cemeteries, fishing grounds, stores, churches, schools, and houses, face destruction. Archaeologists conducting research on Lowcountry sites in the state have generally considered their work to be on slave society in general, rather than on African or African-American peoples creating a cultural identity, a Gullah identity. We propose that archaeologists recognize the connection between the Gullah people and the sites researchers investigate. We provide a case study and primary sources to illustrate the impacts of inequality, race, and racism in the ways sites are valued, deemed significant, and interpreted. This study seeks to complicate previous historical narratives about the South Carolina Lowcountry.
A existência dos remanescentes de quilombo é atravessada por questões de raça e racismo, e vulnerabilidades sociais, culturais, históricas e, com isso, posso trazer minha história pessoal enquanto quilombola, na qual perceberão muito dos discursos registrados durante minhas pesquisas de campo em quilombos pela América. Considero que o papel social de qualquer ciência e organização deveria ser a promoção de reflexões que visem proporcionar mudanças sociais, políticas econômicas e comportamentais, e não é diferente com a arqueologia. Estamos longe de uma arqueologia afro centrada, porém muito mais perto do que antes. Acredito que a arqueologia pública traz nas suas premissas esse “recado”, também chamada por Engmann 2019 e Moraes 2021 de autoarqueologia; conceito que, quando aplicado, auxilia na compreensão dos processos de pesquisas arqueológica e sobretudo no reconhecimento e exercício do papel social da arqueologia. Assim, nesse artigo trago reflexões construídas a partir de minhas existências enquanto preta quilombola, enquanto pesquisadora arqueóloga, me fazendo valer dessa perspectiva perpassando pelas lutas e estratégias que vivencio na academia e fora dela. Tendo como base epistemológicas pesquisadores que se ocupam em compreender o papel social das ciências humanas, dentre elas a arqueologia, a exemplo de Moraes, Munanga Abdias, Lelia Gonzales, Milton Santos e tantos outros.
This chapter aims at illuminating the long history of African American women’s participation in the field of archaeology. Starting with the predominantly African American women excavation crews formed under the Works Progress Administration in the 1930s, this chapter will chronologically traverse the past 90 years of archaeological work conducted by African American women. Highlighting the onset of African American Women’s access to formalized training from the 1970s to the present, this text will discuss the theoretical frameworks that tend to underpin their research. This work posits that the rise of Black Feminist Thought in social sciences in the 1990s and within archaeology in the early 2000s has led to the unprecedented number of Black women now entering the field and conducting methodologically, analytically, and theoretically robust work that expands the discipline. This chapter will conclude with a discussion on the continued work African American women based in the U.S. are conducting, from studies on the lived experiences of enslaved African Diasporic women from the eighteenth-century plantocracies of the Americas to studies examining the interactions between Neandertals and anatomically modern humans in Pleistocene Europe.KeywordsBlack women archaeologistsBlack feminismRaceGender
Beginning in earnest in the 1990s, archaeologists have used the material record as an alternative window into the experiences and practices of Black and Indigenous peoples in North America from the sixteenth century onward. This now robust body of scholarship on settler colonialism has been shaped by postcolonial theories of power and broad-based calls to diversify Western history. While archaeologists have long recognized the political, cultural, biological, and economic entanglements produced by settler colonialism, the lives of Indigenous peoples have largely been studied in isolation from peoples of African descent. In addition to reinforcing static ethnic divisions, until recently, most archaeological studies of settler colonialism have focused on early periods of interethnic interaction, ending abruptly in the nineteenth century. These intellectual silos gloss over the intimate relationships that formed between diverse communities and hinder a deeper understanding of settler colonialism's continued impact on archaeological praxis.
In the midst of ardent calls for decolonizing and building a more anti-racist archaeology, whiteness has gone largely unacknowledged in the history of disciplinary thought and practice. As a point of departure, this article asks: why are there so many White archaeologists? In addressing this question, I suggest that the development of early archaeological method and thought was deeply affected by White supremacy. In presenting the two case studies of Montroville Dickson and Flinders Petrie, I suggest that a radical new history of archaeology is needed if we are to build a more equitable, anti-racist field in the future. Central to this process to recognizing the role that whiteness has played and continues to play in archaeological practice and pedagogy.
This article provides a critical review of archaeological research that addresses race and racism in Chinese American communities. Future directions for Chinese diaspora archaeologies include employing an Asian American studies praxis that centers community-engaged research, using diasporic frameworks, and applying emic language to naming material culture and identities. Other innovative archaeological scholarship on the racialization of Chinese Americans reframes Chinese American communities as part of larger multiethnic neighborhoods, highlights gender and sexuality, and traces the transpacific connections of Chinese transmigrants. The interventions outlined provide archaeologists who are engaged in the study of the Chinese American past with the pathways needed to begin practicing antiracist Chinese diaspora archaeologies.
Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Anthropology Volume 51 is October 2022. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.
A focus on institutions frames this examination of the archaeology of African America. While initially emphasizing the institution of slavery and theories of Black difference, the field today has a much wider scope. Researchers engaged in this work critically examine past and present-day institutions. As such, this review also considers the place of African American archaeology in engaged scholarship, critical theory, and self-reflexive practice. As in past reviews, the emphasis is on the United States, with occasional references to important work in the rest of the African diaspora. African American archaeology is shown to be inextricably interwoven with scholarly work in North American archaeology, African American studies, heritage studies, and social theory.
Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Anthropology Volume 51 is October 2022. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.
Children and childhood have emerged as important topics for understanding the history of African slavery in the Americas. In historical archaeology, analyses of subadult skeletal remains have provided valuable information about the biological and social conditions of captivity, yet children are infrequently the primary subjects of study in African diaspora bioarchaeology. Recent bioarchaeological research at Hacienda La Quebrada, a late colonial sugar plantation in central Peru, brings new data to bear on these subjects. Excavations at the cemetery for the plantation's enslaved African and Afro-descendant population recovered 158 subadults ranging from newborns to 20 years old, who represented 64% of the burial sample. Paleodemographic data and skeletal indicators of stress indicate that enslaved children were disproportionately affected by the conditions of life at Hacienda La Quebrada, particularly because of insufficient diets and susceptibility to infection and disease. Although these results are specific to the context of plantation slavery in Peru's coastal sugar economy, they contribute new information about the history of African slavery in Peru and about the study of childhood in conditions of captivity and colonialism in the Spanish Americas more broadly.
To understand the implications of the forensic anthropological practice of “ancestry” estimation, we explore terminology that has been employed in forensic anthropological research. The goal is to evaluate how such terms can often circulate within social contexts as a result, which may center forensic anthropologists as constituting “race” itself through analysis and categorization. This research evaluates terminology used in anthropological articles of the Journal of Forensic Sciences between 1972 and 2020 (n = 314). Terminology was placed into two categories: classifiers and descriptors. Classifiers were standardized into one of five options: “race,” “ancestry,” “population,” “ethnic,” or “other.” Descriptors included terms used to describe individuals within these classificatory systems. We also compared these terms to those in the NamUs database and the U.S. census. Our results found that the terms “ancestry” and “race” are often conflated and “ancestry” largely supplanted “race” in the 1990s without a similar change in research approach. The NamUs and census terminology are not the same as that used in forensic anthropological research; illustrating a disconnect in the terms used to identify the missing, unidentified, and in social contexts with those used in anthropological research. We provide histories of all of these terms and conclude with suggestions for how to use terminology in the future. It is important for forensic anthropologists to be cognizant of the terms they use in medicolegal contexts, publications, and in public and/or professional spaces. The continued use of misrepresentative and improper language further marginalizes groups and perpetuates oppression rooted in systemic racism.
For centuries, archaeologists have excavated the soils of Britain to uncover finds from the early medieval past. These finds have been used to reconstruct the alleged communities, migration patterns, and expressions of identity of coherent groups who can be regarded as ethnic 'Anglo-Saxons'. Even in the modern day, when social constructionism has been largely accepted by scholars, this paradigm still persists.
This book challenges the ethnic paradigm. As the first historiographical study of approaches to ethnic identity in modern 'Anglo-Saxon' archaeology, it reveals these approaches to be incompatible with current scholarly understandings of ethnicity. Drawing upon post-structuralist approaches to self and community, it highlights the empirical difficulties the archaeology of ethnicity in early medieval Britain faces, and proposes steps toward an alternative understanding of the role played by the communities of lowland Britain – both migrants from across the North Sea and those already present – in transforming the Roman world.
Marronage was an extreme form of anti-slavery resistance in the Americas, however, we should not isolate Maroons from others fighting to maintain autonomy in the colonial Americas. This paper undertakes a comparative analysis of three Florida sites – Bulow Plantation, an urban plantation in St. Augustine, and the Maroon settlement of Pilaklikaha – through the dual frameworks of resistance and ethnogenesis, with the purpose of placing Maroons within a regional context. Ultimately, the archaeological materials examined highlight the common experiences shared by Maroons and their enslaved peers, and emphasize the significant role played by opportunity in shaping African diasporic cultural transformations in the nineteenth century.
This forum builds on the discussion stimulated during an online salon in which the authors participated on June 25, 2020, entitled “Archaeology in the Time of Black Lives Matter,” and which was cosponsored by the Society of Black Archaeologists (SBA), the North American Theoretical Archaeology Group (TAG), and the Columbia Center for Archaeology. The online salon reflected on the social unrest that gripped the United States in the spring of 2020, gauged the history and conditions leading up to it, and considered its rippling throughout the disciplines of archaeology and heritage preservation. Within the forum, the authors go beyond reporting the generative conversation that took place in June by presenting a road map for an antiracist archaeology in which antiblackness is dismantled.
Au cours des étés 2016 et 2017, l'Université McGill a monté un projet d'archéologie publique au site du musée Maison Nivard-de Saint-Dizier, à Verdun, un arrondissement du Sud-Ouest de Montréal. Les vest iges archéologiques éparpillés autour du musée et dans le parc Georges-O'Reilly représentent le plus grand site préhist orique sur l'île de Montréal. De plus, le site comprend aussi un élément hist orique important. Situé dans un parc public, ce site de fouille était ouvert aux citoyens et un programme de sensibilisation du public a été intégré aux act ivités de recherche. Cet article est une réfl exion sur ces act ivités par la chargée du projet. Ses expériences vécues sont examinées à la lumière de certaines const ruct ions théoriques tirées de la littérature académique sur l'archéologie publique. • In the summers of 2016 and 2017, McGill University undertook a public archaeology project at the site of the Maison Nivard-de Saint-Dizier museum in the borough of Verdun, in the SouthWest of Montreal. Th e archaeological material dist ributed around the museum and Georges-O'Reilly park forms the largest prehist oric site on the island of Montreal. In addition, many artifact s and st ruct ures dating to the hist orical period have been identifi ed. Th is excavation site was situated in a public park, and was open to visitors. A public outreach program was off ered to clarify the research process. In this article, authored by the project leader, the execution of this outreach program is considered in light of certain theoretical concepts from the academic literature on public archaeology. ntreprendre un projet d'archéologie pu-blique présente de nombreuses récompenses tait entreprendre un projet de sensibilisation du public. J'examine ici comment certains fact eurs contraignants ont aff ect é le projet. Je tenterai de situer ces défi s dans le contexte de persp ect ives plus générales sur l'archéologie publique, com-munautaire et citoyenne. Avec le recul, j'évaluerai les solutions déjà abordées, les apprentissages que j'ai vécus en tant que chargée de projet et la possi-bilité d'une archéologie plus résolument publique à l'avenir. Cet article ne const itue pas une entreprise d'autopromotion, mais plutôt une exploration ré-fl exive des pratiques qui façonnent l'archéologie, tout en considérant les object ifs de l'archéologie publique et communautaire. C'est pourquoi je traiterai de nos réussites dans nos communications avec le public, mais aussi des épreuves rencontrées au cours du projet. Cependant, il est important de souligner le caract ère innovateur de ce projet de sensibilisation archéologique de la part de la Ville. En fait, le soutien de la Ville de Montréal nous a permis de développer nos idées par rapport à la E pour l'archéologue. Outre les raisons pragmatiques et éthiques 1 d'adopter une archéologie plus ou-verte, l'engagement du public apporte son lot de satisfact ions. Si le programme est interact if et immersif, l'expérience est fruct ueuse pour les ar-chéologues et les participants parmi le public. Cependant, l'archéologue qui veut entre prendre un projet d'archéologie publique vit aussi des défi s précis et des apprentissages. Plusieurs des normes inst itutionnelles et habituelles qui st ruct urent l'archéologie ont pour eff et d'exclure act ivement les non-archéologues intéressés par la pratique. Cet article est une réfl exion sur mes expé-riences comme personne en charge du projet d'archéologie publique entrepris par l'Université McGill sur le terrain du musée et site archéologique de la Maison Nivard-De Saint-Dizier (ci-après « Maison Nivard ») à Verdun, sur l'île de Montréal, pendant les étés 2016 et 2017. 2 Ce projet résulte d'une initiative de la Ville de Montréal, qui souhai
This article emerged as the human species collectively have been experiencing the worst global pandemic in a century. With a long view of the ecological, economic, social, and political factors that promote the emergence and spread of infectious disease , archaeologists are well positioned to examine the antecedents of the present crisis. In this article, we bring together a variety of perspectives on the issues surrounding the emergence, spread, and effects of disease in both the Americas and Afro-Eurasian contexts. Recognizing that human populations most severely impacted by COVID-19 are typically descendants of marginalized groups, we investigate pre-and postcontact disease vectors among Indigenous and Black communities in North America, outlining the systemic impacts of diseases and the conditions that exacerbate their spread. We look at how material culture both reflects and changes as a result of social transformations brought about by disease, the insights that paleopathology provides about the ancient human condition, and the impacts of ancient globalization on the spread of disease worldwide. By understanding the differential effects of past epidemics on diverse communities and contributing to more equitable sociopolitical agendas, archaeology can play a key role in helping to pursue a more just future. Este articulo surgió a medidas que atravesamos la peor pandemia mundial de un siglo. Con visión a largo plazo de factores ecológicos, económicos, sociales y políticos que promueven el aparecimiento y propagación de enfermedades infecciosas, los
There are few studies of post-emancipation-period African American agrarian landowners because their numbers were small in contrast to those African Americans who remained landless. Archaeologists’ emphasis on sharecroppers has overlooked the socioeconomic diversity within the African American community and minimized the importance of land ownership to the assertion of black freedom. Using the ceramics recovered from the Ransom and Sarah Williams farmstead, an historical African American site in central Texas, I show that land ownership enhanced the lives of freed African Americans by enabling them to become self-sufficient. This self-sufficiency was an important strategy that ensured their racial and economic autonomy within a precarious agricultural economy. However, their position was liminal because racism precluded them from using their landholdings in any way beyond the achievement of self-sufficiency. Therefore, land ownership was not economically emancipatory because African Americans were not able to build wealth.
Upon numerous historic plantation sites across the Southeastern United States, archaeological investigations have discovered evidence of guns within slave quarter contexts. Along with the presence of wild faunal remains, the archaeological assemblage appears to suggest that slaves were allowed guns to supplement their diets by hunting. Laws did allow for slaves to possess guns with permission from their owners, suggesting a benevolent slave owner. However, the possession of weapons by an enslaved population seems counterintuitive and when many archaeologists and historians make mention of gun possession by slaves, they broadly paint an image of numerous slaves being given access to guns. Without better specification of what slaves were given access to guns, the brutality and control exerted by slave owners is downplayed in favor of slave agency and the paternalism utilized to justify slavery. Giltner and Proctor have conducted studies on the role of a slave huntsman present on plantations and it being exemplary of paternalistic ideology. But the neglect of this role by archaeologists has missed an opportunity to explore several other aspects of slave life on the plantation, and I intend to demonstrate how the acknowledgment of the slave huntsman and his activities can provide information beyond gun possession by a slave, or slaves, on the plantation. Wrapped in the gun are ideologies associated with freedom and resistance. Free white men were given access to guns without restriction, and in turn, gun possession symbolized the democratic values and privileges associated with white manhood. Today, gun possession by white males is exponentially higher than African American men and women combined. In spite of this, the fear of an armed African American has disproportionately led to the shooting of countless unarmed African Americans. This dissertation will demonstrate how the utilization of critical race theory within the archaeology of gun possession by African Americans is capable of enhancing our understanding of the deep interconnectivity between race and guns in America.
This article begins with the history of historical archaeology as an American discipline spreading to the rest of the globe. It then considers that the discipline will develop more and more in peripheral areas, and that an Anglo-Saxon emphasis in capitalism and globalization will be challenged by cultural, even nationalist, subjects and perspectives, as these differences will play a growing role in 21st-century politics and academia. A Latin American approach is then proposed, stressing local issues and cultural specificities and such innovative concepts as transculturation and mixed societies. The archaeology of slavery and rebellion is emphasized. A comparative approach is a fertile strategy with which to explore the different ways Latin America material culture may be used to study exploitation and resistance in a process linked to identity building in different countries. The article then concludes by predicting that, from its origin as a "WASP" discipline, historical archaeology may really become the study of material culture relevant to people worldwide.
In this article, I discuss a semiotic approach to thinking archaeologically about the processes of racialization in the African diaspora. Within this, I employ the concept of “homeplace” as an archaeological, ideological, and memorial site. I situate my archaeological narrative in persistence rather than resistance, highlighting how narratives of persistence allow for and empower social agency in the past not solely situated in or responsive to systems of oppression.
Prior to the civil rights movement, most cities in the United States had at least one racially segregated neighborhood—a place where the Others lived. This was typically a geographic location designated by the White community as the area in which non-Whites could reside. In Boise, Idaho, African Americans and other non-Whites lived in the River Street neighborhood, a multiethnic and multiracial enclave that provided shelter from discrimination. While African Americans comprised only a portion of the neighborhood’s population, it was stigmatized as a Black neighborhood and was segregated from the rest of the town. Oral-history interviews and archival research conducted as part of the River Street Digital History Project revealed the way the neighborhood was remembered by both Black and White residents. As a segregated place on the landscape, the River Street neighborhood provides an opportunity to examine the role structural racial hierarchies played in the creation of Whiteness for Boise’s European American community.
In 1723, Virginia’s slave code created a racial order that placed free African Americans, along with Native Americans, in the “other free” category. As freeborn individuals they were entitled to rights not afforded to enslaved individuals; yet, as “other free,” they were subject to restrictions not placed on European Americans. As a reaction to these restrictions, free African Americans drew on relationships and circumstances to create means for resisting their oppression. Virginia’s 1782 manumission laws opened freedom to those who were not born into it. As an unintended result, enslavers were confronted with an increasingly visible free African American population, which they believed threatened the institution of slavery. Additional laws and emerging public opinion significantly altered the ways in which free African Americans were racialized. In response to these changes, free African Americans formed new relationships and creatively used space and landscape to challenge their place in society.
The chapter will show how slave brandings were part of the Cuban slave system from the eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries. Our aim is to use written sources to define the typology of iron branding and to underscore how iron brands were a technology used within and for the Cuban slave system. Our focus is to emphasize how iron branding, described in the bureaucratic documents of the Spanish Crown, was a technology for the control of slaves and vectors of the slave masters’ agency and of the Cuban colonial administration.
This article begins with the history of historical archaeology as an American discipline spreading to the rest of the globe. It then considers that the discipline will develop more and more on peripheral areas, and that an Anglo-Saxon emphasis on capitalism and globalization will be challenged by cultural, even nationalist, subjects and perspectives, as these differences will play a growing role in 21st-century politics and academia. A Latin American approach is then proposed, stressing local issues and cultural specificities and such innovative concepts as transculturation and mixed societies. The archaeology of slavery and rebellion is emphasized. A comparative approach is a fertile strategy with which to explore the different ways Latin America material culture may be used to study exploitation and resistance in a process linked to identity building in different countries. The article then concludes by predicting that, from its origin as a “WASP” discipline, historical archaeology may really become the study of material culture relevant to people worldwide.
Archaeological investigations at Hacienda Tabi have allowed us a glimpse into the lives of workers on the hacienda by making explicit connections between the social and cultural history of the area and the archaeological record. Using a total history approach, I first documented the rise of the hacienda system in Yucatán – beginning with its pre-Hispanic and Spanish Colonial antecedents – in order to identify aspects of continuity and change within local social and economic organization that resulted from the incorporation of households within an evolving capitalist system. I then related specific archaeological materials with aspects of social organization on the hacienda, such as social stratification, household organization, and occupational status by making explicit the links between the built environment, material culture, and individual and household behavior at Hacienda Tabi.
This article presents considerations inspired by Mark P. Leone’s keynote address at the African Diaspora Archaeology Network Forum convened at the 2012 Society for Historical Archaeology annual meeting in Baltimore, Maryland. Leone’s reflections raised poignant historical and conceptual questions, with relevance for the historical archaeology of African experience and critical scholarship on African diasporas. In a more disciplinary reading, the symposium offered a fascinating look at Leone’s intellectual method and theoretical project, with relevance for the history of archaeological thought.
The Moravian community of Salem, North Carolina, was founded in 1766, and the town--the hub of nearly 100,000 piedmont acres purchased thirteen years before and named "Wachovia"--quickly became the focal point for the church's colonial presence in the South. While the brethren preached the unity of all humans under God, a careful analysis of the birth and growth of their Salem settlement reveals that the group gradually embraced the institutions of slavery and racial segregation in opposition to their religious beliefs. Although Salem's still-active community includes one of the oldest African American congregations in the nation, the evidence contained in God's Fields reveals that during much of the twentieth century, the church's segregationist past was intentionally concealed. Leland Ferguson's work reconstructing this "secret history" through years of archaeological fieldwork was part of a historical preservation program that helped convince the Moravian Church in North America to formally apologize in 2006 for its participation in slavery and clear a way for racial reconciliation.
Cornel West has said that the role of the intellectual is to try to turn easy answers into critical questions and then put those questions to people with power. To whom do public archaeologists address these questions? I am currently involved in an ongoing experiment to use typically nonarchaeologi-cal venues to engage with multiple publics about "history matters." This includes participation in historical societies, commissions, and committees which may have stated aims to discuss, celebrate, and preserve history, but which frequently (sometimes unconsciously) perpetuate and reproduce traditional race/class inequities and power imbalances. My archaeological focus on inner-city African American neighborhoods in Houston, Texas, means that both my research and this larger project take place in settings where insensitive gentrification is impeding grassroots efforts to maintain and reclaim control of historical landscapes and narratives. This article will examine and critique this work, owning mistakes made and (usually small) victories achieved.
Over more than a century, African diasporan scholars have defined identity in complex forms that aspire to resist racial essentialism yet stake consequential political claims to collective roots. Historical archaeology has painted a rich picture of the material details of African American life that also refutes black essentialism; however, archaeologists have crafted many utterly fluid African diasporan identities that sometimes fail to examine the global connections, antiracist citizen rights, and concrete cultural heritage long examined by diasporan scholars. An empirically and politically rigorous African diasporan archaeology would be significantly extended by diasporan scholarship's vindicationist and reflective antiracist perspectives. Such an archaeology could disrupt essentialist categories and outline'concrete foundations for diasporan identity without lapsing into either particularism or hyperconstructivism.
Colonial race relations in the Virgin Islands developed as a graded color/class system that invested the category of whiteness with power and blackness with slavery. Between the two ends of the socioracial spectrum a population of freepersons of color emerged. Examination of two landscapes, one rural and the other urban, demonstrates how socially defined racial groups used landscapes to create, maintain, and transform racial identities. Focus on a Moravian estate landscape in each setting reveals a strong commitment to the ideology of white superiority espoused by the colonial authorities and landowning elite. After freepersons of color were granted full citizenship (1830) and the abolition of slavery (1848), socially defined racial groups in rural and urban settings used distinctly different spatial and social strategies to make claims about their racial identities in an environment of continued white privilege.
This article explores some diverse examples as a way of furthering the understanding of the complexities of descendant community engagement and offering some suggestions as to methodology. Several sites are investigated with a variety of levels of community engagement and all have particular historical trajectories that have often helped determine the timbre and extent of this interaction. The example sites that this article draws on include the Freedman's Cemetery and Juliette Street Projects in Dallas, Texas, the Van Winkle's Mill project in the rural Arkansas Ozark Mountains, and the site of the Rosewood Massacre in northern Florida. Each of these sites has very different community dynamics. The article demonstrates how complicated, contradictory, multifaceted, and polyvocal these things called descendant communities can be.
Could archaeologists benefit contemporary cultures and be a factor in solving world problems? Can archaeologists help individuals? Can archaeologists change the world? These questions form the root of "archaeology activism" or "activist archaeology": using archaeology to advocate for and affect change in contemporary communities. Archaeologists currently change the world through the products of their archaeological research that contribute to our collective historical and cultural knowledge. Their work helps to shape and reshape our perceptions of the past and our understanding of written history. Archaeologists affect contemporary communities through the consequences of their work as they become embroiled in controversies over negotiating the past and the present with native peoples. Beyond the obvious economic contributions to local communities caused by heritage tourism established on the research of archaeologists at cultural sites, archaeologists have begun to use the process of their work as a means to benefit the public and even advocate for communities. In this volume, Stottman and his colleagues examine the various ways in which archaeologists can and do use their research to forge a partnership with the past and guide the ongoing dialogue between the archaeological record and the various contemporary stakeholders. They draw inspiration and guidance from applied anthropology, social history, public history, heritage studies, museum studies, historic preservation, philosophy, and education to develop an activist approach to archaeology-theoretically, methodologically, and ethically. © 2010 by The University of Alabama Press. All rights reserved.
Public archeology encompasses all archeology supported with tax dollars, thus including a range of archeological professions from the federal archeological system to cultural resource management as well as academic archeology that uses federal research grants. Such support should provide public return on investment. But given the diverse ways in which archeology is practiced, there are many constraining frameworks and similarly diverse views on what this means and how it can or should be accomplished or improved. This chapter considers relevance from the perspective of the US federal archeological system, particularly the National Park Service, and sets both an historical background of discussions on the meaning and purpose of archeology and lays out recommendations for an altered vision of both the field and the archeologists who practice it. A common theme through these recommendations is the need for enhanced connections: between those who do archeology in different settings, between the fields of anthropology and archeology and related social sciences, humanities, and natural sciences such as ecology and its role in conservation, and between the voices and perspectives of archeologists and the many publics who engage with it. © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012. All rights reserved.
Public archaeology means something far broader than archaeology that is completed to comply with legal and regulatory requirements or paid for by public funds. Professional archaeologists practise at least three main categories of public archaeology: cultural resource management or cultural heritage management under public law; outreach and education with the intention of preventing looting and vandalism of archaeological places and to combat the illicit international trade in antiquities; and archaeology that aims to help communities or individuals in some way or to solve societal problems. Archaeology plays a large part in the growing worldwide heritage movement, which recognizes a broadening array of tangible places, including landscapes and very recent archaeological sites, as well as diverse stakeholders. Archaeology raises consciousness and awareness, and encourages different ways of seeing the world, thinking about it, and acting in it. The study of it has the potential to explain the contingency of all human endeavour.
Archaeological sites involving African American history and life often remain un-interpreted or are poorly interpreted because it can be difficult for Americans to confront a deeply painful history of enslavement, racism, segregation, exploitation of labour, disenfranchisement, and displacement. In this article, I discuss specific case studies of archaeological sites representative of great injustices in American history and efforts to present these events, and the people who lived through them, through public interpretation.
Archaeology has undergone a transition over the past two decades with the emergence of feminist discourses, and the mapping of women onto archaeological pasts. Yet Black feminist theorizing remains largely external to archaeological theory and practice, even though African-descended peoples constitute a considerable portion of the groups currently researched in the US and the Caribbean. It is a wonder that this is so, given the impressive body of literature that Black feminists have produced over the years regarding a range of topics relating to African-American experiences. I believe that Black feminist scholarship provides potential models for framing questions of difference and inequality, and for critiquing the sociopolitics of archaeology, particularly where raced and gendered representations of the past are concerned.
The author examines the formation of British identity, looking at the interaction of ‘the British’ with the Celtic fringe, the Dominions, the Commonwealth, Anglophone America, Europe and peoples described in immigration law as ‘aliens’. He argues that the core identity is constructed in the course of interactions (sometimes hostile) with these externalized identities. The frontiers between identities are often ‘fuzzy’, allowing a degree of penetration by outsiders. The concept of ‘fuzziness’ is elaborated. The shape and edges of British identity are shown to be historically changing, often vague and to a degree, malleable. It is suggested that the move away from the Dominions and Commonwealth to Europe has contributed to a crisis of national identity.
Historically, anthropology has occupied a central place in the construction and reconstruction of race as both an intellectual device and a social reality. Critiques of the biological concept of race have led many anthropologists to adopt a “no-race” posture and an approach to intergroup difference highlighting ethnicity-based principles of classification and organization. Often, however, the singular focus on ethnicity has left unaddressed the persistence of racism and its invidious impact on local communities, nation-states, and the global system. Within the past decade, anthropologists have revitalized their interest in the complex and often covert structures and dynamics of racial inequality. Recent studies shed light on race’s heightened volatility on contemporary sociocultural landscapes, the racialization of ethno-nationalist conflicts, anthropology’s multiple traditions of antiracism, and intranational as well as international variations in racial constructions, including the conventionally neglec...
Historical archaeologists should be leaders in examining the archaeological dimensions of race and racism in the United States. With few exceptions, though, this has not been the case, as most archaeologists have conflated race and ethnicity. American historical archaeologists have a great opportunity to provide new insights to the anthropological investigation of race and racism if they choose to take this course of action,
Stuart Hall’s work on culture, politics, race, and media is familiar to readers throughout the world. Equally important was his decades-long commitment to visual art. As the first collection to bring together Hall’s work on the visual, this volume assembles two dozen of Hall’s essays, lectures, reviews, catalog texts, and conversations on art, film, and photography. Providing rare insights into Hall’s engagement with the “radically different” intellectual and aesthetic space of the visual imaginary, these works articulate the importance of the visual as a site of contestation at the same time as it is a space in which Black artists and filmmakers reframe questions about diaspora, identity, and globalization. Selected Writings on Visual Arts and Culture demonstrates the breadth and range of Hall’s thinking on art, film, photography, archives, and museums. In so doing, it enables us to arrive at radical and innovative ways of understanding the world.
In challenging orthodoxy, questioning the premises of liberalism, and debating sacred wisdoms, Critical Race Theory scholars writing over the past few years have indelibly changed the way America looks at race. This book contains treatment of all the topics covered in the first edition, along with provocative and probing questions for discussion and detailed suggestions for additional reading. In addition, this anthology collects writings about various aspect of social theory -- crime, critical race practice, intergroup tensions and alliances, gay/lesbian issues, and transcending the black-white binary paradigm of race. In each of these areas, groundbreaking scholarship by the movement's founding figures as well as the brightest new stars provides immediate entre to current trends and developments in critical civil rights thought.
Exploring the social, and specifically legal origins, of white racial identity, Ian Haney-Lopez here examines cases in America's past that have been instrumental in forming contemporary conceptions of race, law, and whiteness. In 1790, Congress limited naturalization to white persons. This racial prerequisite for citizenship remained in force for over a century and a half, enduring until 1952. In a series of important cases, including two heard by the United States Supreme Court, judges around the country decided and defined who was white enough to become American. White by Law traces the reasoning employed by the courts intheir efforts to justify the whiteness of some and the non-whiteness of others. Haney-Lopez reveals the criteria that were used, often arbitrarily, to determine whiteness, and thus citizenship: skin color, facial features, national origin, language, culture, ancestry, scientific opinion, and, most importantly, popular opinion. Having defined the social and legal origins of whiteness, the book turns its attention to white identity today and concludes by calling upon whites to acknowledge and renounce their privileged racial identity. Lopez notes that race is a highly contingent social construction that manifests itself in specific times, places, and situations and is informed by other markers of identity. Being White is not a monolithic or homogenous experience; it is changeable, partial, inconstant, and social. Whether one is White, and indeed what is means to be White, can change based on when and where one is and what one is doing.
Archaeological data from the Levi Jordan plantation in Brazoria County, Texas, indicate that the African Americans who lived on this plantation participated in many activities, several of African origin, that functioned to insure this community?s survival in an increasingly oppressive outside world. Ethnographic data indicate that many descendants of the plantation?s residents, African American and European American, still live in the Brazoria area, and that these descendants continue to negotiate issues of power and control. Any public interpretation of this archaeology will necessarily deal with diverse understandings of race and history in present-day Brazoria County. This paper will describe the political and organizational strategies being employed by a team of descendants, archaeologists, and other community members to plan and implement public interpretations that are ?inclusive? of the various histories and archaeologies of the plantation?s ancestors: pre- and post-emancipation African Americans as well as planters.
In 1994, the Washington Post decried the appointment of a white archaeologist to excavate an African-American site in Charlottesville, Virginia. Considerable discussion resulted: in the media, in the Smithsonian?s African American Archaeology Newsletter, and at conferences. Charlottesville held a similar debate between the public and the academy. What story was to be told? Who would tell the story? Would it get told at all? Both debates are embedded in historic and modern relationships of race and class. By the nature of our work, many historical archaeologists are forced to enter these debates or walk away from them. These issues, then become fundamental to involving and exciting the public about what we do. This paper explores the nature of the Charlottesville debate, suggesting that archaeology can be a meaningful form of activism, provided that it yields to the needs of the public it hopes to engage.
How have research agendas on race and ethnic relations changed over the past two decades and what new developments have emerged? Theories of Race and Ethnicity provides a comprehensive and cutting-edge collection of theoretically grounded and empirically informed essays. It covers a range of key issues in race and ethnicity studies, such as genetics and race, post-race debates, racial eliminativism and the legacy of Barack Obama, and mixed race identities. The contributions are by leading writers on a range of perspectives employed in studying ethnicity and race, including critical race feminism, critical rationalism, psychoanalysis, performativity, whiteness studies and sexuality. Written in an authoritative yet accessible style, this volume is suitable for researchers and advanced students, offering scholars a survey of the state of the art in the literature, and students an overview of the field.
This paper explores ways to foster better connections between the public and the process and products of archaeological research. We advocate the development of a public style of archaeology, emphasizing the importance of all segments of the audience for our work; the need to carry on conversations, rather than present lectures; and the need to broaden the use of archaeological evidence in museums and other public interpretations of the past. In exploring these ideas we provide examples from our experience at the Hermitage, the antebellum plantation home of Andrew Jackson. We pay particular attention to the challenges of using this public style in studying and interpreting the history of enslaved African Americans at the site.
The Commons, the area surrounding and including the present-day location of City Hall in lower Manhattan, has been an intensely contested landscape since the seventeenth century. The non-elite inhabitants of New Amsterdam, and later New York City, claimed this unappropriated land as a Commons in the traditional medieval sense, as an area where subsistence activities such as cattle grazing and firewood collection could be conducted (Thompson 1993). By the end of the seventeenth century, a portion of the Commons was being utilized as an African burial ground and ritual space. By the second quarter of the eighteenth century, the colonial government was attempting (with limited success) to restrict and regulate activities on the Commons, including burials. Reactions to recent excavations within the African Burial Ground and subsequent controversies regarding the project research design demonstrate that the contestation continues unabated. This project provides an ideal opportunity to address several aspects of the archaeology of capitalism, including the social construction of racial categories, the formulation of hegemonic and counter-hegemonic historical consciousness, the essentialist/social constructionist debate, and the role of descendent communities and their allies in archaeological, historical, and bioanthropological research (for general background on the project see Cook 1993; Coughlin 1994; Dunlap 1993; Harrigton 1993; Harris et al. 1993; Howard University and John Milner Associates 1993; Jorde 1993, and Howson and Harris 1992).
This article originally presented as the Bronislaw Malinowski Award lecture at the 1996 SfAA annual meeting in Baltimore, MD-attempts to describe relations between anthropologists and natives of North America. Tensions and directions of research upon these indigenous peoples are outlined. This is a strictly individual appraisal with suggested research possibilities.
The New York African Burial Ground Project embodies the problems, concerns, and goals of contemporary African-American and urban archaeology. The project at once has informed and has been informed by ever-watchful African Americans and New York public. It is a public that understands that the hypothetical and theoretical constructs that guide research are not value-free and are often, in fact, politically charged. An ongoing dialogue between the concerned community, the federal steering committee, the federal government, and the archaeological community has proved difficult but ultimately productive. The project has an Office of Public Education and Interpretation which informs the public through a newsletter, educators' conferences, and laboratory tours. The public, largely students, attends laboratory tours which often provide initial exposure to archaeology and physical anthropology. Much of this public involvement, however, was driven by angry public reaction to the excavation of a site of both historical prominence and spiritual significance.
Over the last two decades, women have organized against the almost routine violence that shapes their lives. Drawing from the strength of shared experience, women have recognized that the political demands of millions speak more powerfully than the pleas of a few isolated voices. This politicization in turn has transformed the way we understand violence against women. For example, battering and rape, once seen as private (family matters) and aberrational (errant sexual aggression), are now largely recognized as part of a broad-scale system of domination that affects women as a class. This process of recognizing as social and systemic what was formerly perceived as isolated and individual has also characterized the identity politics of people of color and gays and lesbians, among others. For all these groups, identity-based politics has been a source of strength, community, and intellectual development. The embrace of identity politics, however, has been in tension with dominant conceptions of social justice. Race, gender, and other identity categories are most often treated in mainstream liberal discourse as vestiges of bias or domination-that is, as intrinsically negative frameworks in which social power works to exclude or marginalize those who are different. According to this understanding, our liberatory objective should be to empty such categories of any social significance. Yet implicit in certain strands of feminist and racial liberation movements, for example, is the view that the social power in delineating difference need not be the power of domination; it can instead be the source of political empowerment and social reconstruction. The problem with identity politics is not that it fails to transcend difference, as some critics charge, but rather the opposite- that it frequently conflates or ignores intra group differences. In the context of violence against women, this elision of difference is problematic, fundamentally because the violence that many women experience is often shaped by other dimensions of their identities, such as race and class. Moreover, ignoring differences within groups frequently contributes to tension among groups, another problem of identity politics that frustrates efforts to politicize violence against women. Feminist efforts to politicize experiences of women and antiracist efforts to politicize experiences of people of color' have frequently proceeded as though the issues and experiences they each detail occur on mutually exclusive terrains. Al-though racism and sexism readily intersect in the lives of real people, they seldom do in feminist and antiracist practices. And so, when the practices expound identity as "woman" or "person of color" as an either/or proposition, they relegate the identity of women of color to a location that resists telling. My objective here is to advance the telling of that location by exploring the race and gender dimensions of violence against women of color. Contemporary feminist and antiracist discourses have failed to consider the intersections of racism and patriarchy. Focusing on two dimensions of male violence against women-battering and rape-I consider how the experiences of women of color are frequently the product of intersecting patterns of racism and sexism, and how these experiences tend not to be represented within the discourse of either feminism or antiracism... Language: en
Anthropology, despite its historic role in both creating and dismantling the American racial worldview, seems barely visible in contemporary scholarly and public discussions of "race." The authors argue that race should once again be central to anthropological inquiry, that cultural and physical anthropologists must jointly develop and publicly disseminate a unified, uniquely anthropological perspective. They suggest ways to proceed and identify internal barriers that must be overcome before the anthropological voice can be heard.
In 1987, a small number of historical archaeologists issued a call for archaeologists to embrace the teachings of critical theory so that their research could be used to challenge societal structures of inequality. Although community partnering, an outgrowth of critical theory has become increasingly important to archaeological practice, a true archaeological "praxis" has yet to be achieved. Possible reasons for this include a decontextualization of critical theory from its historical origin, the subsequent reification of capitalism in critical research, and the obscuring of agency in critical interpretations because of an emphasis on top-down or macroscale models of society. We suggest that true praxis can be achieved in historical archaeology through a reconceptualization of the relationship between individuals and society and through a structuring of archaeological research that seeks to create a discursive relationship between past and present peoples and between researchers and community partners. We present a critically informed archaeological case study from Louisiana to demonstrate how such a dialogue can lead to emanicipatory knowledge.
A Black family enters a coffee shop in a small Texas town. A white man places a card on their table. The card reads, “You have just been paid a visit by the Ku Klux Klan.” The family stands and leaves. © 1993 by Mari J. Matsuda, Charles R Lawrence III, Richard Delgado, and Kimberlè Williams Crenshaw.
Recently, legal scholars have begun to explore the meaning and significance of geographic space in law within the United States and internationally, a project highlighted in a 1996 Stanford Law Review symposium. Much of this discussion draws implicitly and explicitly on critical legal theory in approaching geographic themes -- suggesting the beginning of what the author calls "Critical Space Theory." This article uses Critical Space Theory to address the legal significance of geography in relation to two environmental issues in the United States and the European Union: (1) transborder waste transportation and (2) judicial standing. Each issue raises questions of separation of powers and citizen influence in government within the context of environmental protection. The author briefly describes his notion of Critical Space Theory, then applies it to the two environmental issues above in the contexts of the U.S. and the E.U. The author finds surprising contradictions in American and European policy regarding the role of local participation, and argues for a more consistent approach that values more strongly the views of people who are geographically close to environmental problems.
Acid-base equilibria/disequilibria were evaluated in vivo in post-branchial arterial blood and pre-branchial venous blood of freshwater rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss). This was accomplished using arterial and venous extracorporeal circuits in conjunction with a stopped-flow apparatus. After the abrupt stoppage of circulating post-branchial blood within the stopped-flow apparatus, pH increased slowly ([Delta]pH = +0.032 0.004 pH units; n = 15), thus confirming the existence of an acid-base disequilibrium state in the arterial blood of rainbow trout. The slow downstream pH changes were unaffected by prior treatment of fish with the carbonic anhydrase inhibitor benzolamide (1.2 mg kg-1; [Delta]pH = +0.032 0.01 pH units; n = 5) but were eliminated after intra-vascular injection of 10 mg kg-1 bovine carbonic anhydrase ([Delta]pH = -0.011 0.003 pH units; n = 8). These results demonstrate that the acid-base disequilibrium in the arterial blood reflects a total absence of extracellular carbonic anhydrase activity. Similar stopped-flow experiments revealed the existence of a reduced, yet significant, acid-base disequilibrium in the venous blood circulating within the caudal vein ([Delta]pH = +0.004 0.003 pH units; n = 15). Selective inhibition of extracellular carbonic anhydrase using benzolamide did not significantly influence the magnitude of the venous pH disequilibrium ([Delta]pH = +0.007 0.007 pH units; n = 8) whereas intra-vascular injection of carbonic anhydrase eliminated the pH disequilibrium. These results demonstrate that extracellular carbonic anhydrase, although reported to be present within the skeletal muscle of rainbow trout, does not accelerate post-capillary pH changes in the venous circulation.
Historical archaeology, with its interest in material culture and its use of the broader perspectives of anthropology and anthropological archaeology, has contributed to a distinctive understanding of the North American experience. Historical archaeologists have, to varying degrees, investigated the material traces of class, race, gender, and state formation. These studies provide an understanding of the origin of many of the social practices that undergird modern culture, a necessary, though neglected, case in a unified anthropological archaeology's goal of writing innovative world histories.
Thesis (Ph. D.)--Temple University, 1991. Includes bibliographical references (p. 356-391). Photocopy.
The Politics of “Race” and Cultural Identity at the African Burial Ground
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