Searching for West African cultural meanings in the archaeological record (original) (raw)
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The Archaeology of African-American Slavery and Material Culture
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. I N the late i98os, archaeologists digging in a structure of a former slave quarter at Jordan Plantation near Houston, Texas, uncovered a group of artifacts that had been left in one corner of the building after its occupants had been abruptly evicted and kept from returning to collect their belongings.1 Unremarkable as single objects, the seashells, beads, doll parts, chalk, bird skulls, bottles, and bases of cast iron cooking pots gain significance when analyzed contextually as related items from a slave quarter. Ethnographic and historical evidence shows that these artifacts, virtually identical to those used by modern-day Yoruba diviners for healing and other rituals, were components in a West African-style conjurer's kit. 2 Increased interest in exploring cultural diversity and empowering African Americans has led to extensive research in African-American history, material culture, folklore, and religion. Archaeological research on post-European contact sites in North America dates only from the I93os; African-American archaeology is even more recent. The first excavation of an African-American slave quarter took place in i968, and it was not until the late I970s, as the concerns of anthropology and social history converged, that broad-ranging issues began to be addressed by archaeologists.3 These issues, largely guided by the research interests of historians, involved the context of everyday plantation life, social relationships between planters and slaves, processes of culture change resulting from contact between European Americans and African Americans, and the presence of West African cultural markers within the archaeological record.4 It is evident that an interdiscipli-Ms.
West African Archaeology and the Atlantic Slave Trade
Archaeological data from West Africa has thus far provided only limited insight into the impact of the Atlantic slave trade on indigenous societies. While European forts, trade posts and barracoons serve as pervasive reminders of the European presence, excavations at these collection points affords little insight into the ethnic and cultural origin of slave populations. Nevertheless, archaeological data has the potential of contributing a great deal of information on the impact of the slave trade as it affords a time depth not accessible through the documentary record or oral traditions. While the archaeological record has not been fully explored in many areas, archaeological data on the post-European contact period tends to support the view that Atlantic slave trade marked an important break in the history of Africa. Change in settlement patterns, the appearance of defensive sites, depopulation, and various changes in the material inventory may provide archaeological indications of changes in African societies resulting from the advent of the slave trade. Archaeological data from Sierra Leone and Ghana are used to illustrate the varying impact of the slave trade in different areas.
COLOlIl'À^ rAtQLOG.IES Worldviews, Mind-Sets, and Trajectories in West African Archaeology
In Africa, archaeological research is without any doubt an offshoot of European colonization. Native African communities have developed différent ways to access and revive the past. Can thèse différent approaches be synthesized to generate a broader and richer understanding of past Africans' lives? This is precisely one of the cote éléments of the challenge of postcolonial perspectives on African archaeology. The development of archaeological research was the resuit of conflicts , tensions, and negotiations within the colonial technostructure. At the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, there was no cohérent and well-articulated archaeological curriculum anywhere. Archaeological research was conducted by daring and bright minds. Without standard methodology and précise goals, "prehistoric" archaeology was fueled by major controversies. The development of a more secular view of human history, the theory of natural sélection, the resilience o...
The Society for Historical Archaeology (SHA) has launched a new publication series, entitled "Perspectives from Historical Archaeology," which will provide subject and regional readers on a variety of topics of interest to archaeologists and scholars in related fields. Each volume includes an introduction by the compiler that reviews historical archaeology’s work on the topic. "Perspectives" volumes will be available in both perfect bound and pdf formats, and sales proceeds benefit the Society’s educational and research missions. The first of the new "Perspectives" is entitled African Diaspora Archaeology, compiled by Chris Fennell. This publication includes an introduction that reviews the field and 23 articles selected from the Historical Archaeology Journal. Including studies from Africa, the Caribbean, South America, and both the northern and southern U.S., this volume provides a fascinating look at African culture, sites, and artifacts and traces the transition of African peoples from the Old World to the New. A table of contents and abstracts is set out below. You can obtain volumes from the "Perspectives" Series online at: http://stores.lulu.com/shabookstore
Visible People, Invisible Slavery: Plantation Archaeology in East Africa
This chapter examines the archaeology of clove plantations dating to the nineteenth century on the islands of Zanzibar. Clove plantations were largely run by Omani Arabs, with many thousands of enslaved workers from mainland Africa forming the labor force. These plantations present an interesting case study for the comparative archaeology of slavery, one in which slaves were increasingly valued for their labor used to produce commodities for export to global markets and, yet, were still part of slave systems in which value might also derive from their ability to bolster kin and client groups. This chapter also considers the manner in which international efforts to commemorate the African slave trade, principally via UNESCO's Slave Route Project, are shifting the memorialization and memory of these plantations, and of slavery, on the islands of Zanzibar. I argue that a comparative archaeology of slavery may positively influence such heritage projects, facilitating a more complex engagement with the history of slavery for descendant communities in the present.