African diaspora archaeology

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The African diaspora is the worldwide collection of communities descended from people from Africa, including Africans that were forcibly transported throughout the world by the Atlantic slave trade, the Trans-Saharan slave trade, or the Indian Ocean slave trade and their descendants. The archaeology of these communities has worldwide scope, but the majority of research comes from Africa and the Americas, with very little from Europe and Asia. [1] [2]

Contents

Terminology

African diaspora archaeology developed out of the studies of Africans and their descendants in research confined to specific locations. The term African diaspora was not used in archaeology until the 1990s, prior to its use, localized terminology such as Afro-Caribbean and African-American was used, and in some cases, “African diaspora” was adopted as a term intended to unify research beyond borders and oceans. [1]

Themes and research topics

Maritime archaeology

This archaeological subfield pertains to studying human interaction with the sea, not limited to sites found under water. Maritime archaeology is relevant to the study of the African Diaspora through the maritime aspect of the three slave trades of special interest in the process of enslavement, as well as in African and Diasporic spiritual associations with the sea, maritime-related labor, and the sea as an avenue to freedom. [3]

Plantation slavery

Archaeology on plantations is a major focus in the United States and can cover various aspects of the lives and experiences of the enslaved, including but not limited to the formation of identities, the relationship between master and enslaved, religious practice, and gender. [1]

Resistance

Many sites and research are focused around the idea of resistance; within this category are sites associated with Fugitivity, meaning the self-emancipated enslaved, also known as runaway slaves or Maroons. Also of interest are long-term Maroon settlements, also called Quilombos or Palenques. [1] [4]

Transculturation

Coined by Cuban polymath Fernando Ortiz, transculturation is “the multigenerational, multidirectional transition from one cultural condition to another.” transculturation has become a major theme of interest in Latin America but has not found as wide adoption in the United States or Europe. [5] [6]

Brazil

Brazil is credited with the earliest known example of African Diaspora archaeology, conducted in the 1930s. Burials attributed to fugitive slaves were excavated in caves located in Serra Negra. [1]

Palmares

In an example of archaeology of a maroon settlement, Pedro Funari and Charles Orser conducted archaeology at Palmares in the early 1990s with the goals of using archaeology to gain a better understanding of racism, resistance to racism, and to empower “subordinate groups." Orser and Funari have found material evidence of traits that come from European, Indigenous, and African cultures, which others have claimed as an example of ethnogenesis and the formation of a new cultural identity at Palmares. Interpretation of the archaeological assemblage at Palmares has added to the information in the historic record as well as challenged interpretations of the archaeological records that have interpreted the inhabitants of Palmares as “lazy” and "Barbarians." Funari's interpretation claims that the archaeology at Palmares shows a people capable of maintaining their cultural autonomy, yet at the same time, this maroon community was interacting with European colonists and exchanging goods. [7]

Valongo Wharf

In 2011, the Valongo Wharf, the largest port for the arrival of enslaved Africans in Brazil, the country where the majority of enslaved Africans were transported in the Atlantic slave trade, was excavated in Rio de Janeiro. Excavations were conducted with the specific goals of challenging racism, aversion to discussing topics of slavery, and discussing the legacy of slavery in contemporary society. Found at the site were artifacts and symbols associated with African religious traditions, such as cowries and anthropomorphic stones. The archaeologists, in collaboration with the descendant communities and Afro-Brazilian religious leaders, acquiesced to their right to interpret these findings. The site became a place of ancestor remembrance for some in the Afro-Brazilian community, and collaboration increased to include Afro-Brazilian social activists. The site, however, was largely ignored by the Afro-Brazilian population as well as the population as a whole. According to Valongo Wharf Archaeologist Tania Andrade and others, this is in part due to the desire of many Afro-Brazilian descendants to distance themselves from the difficult past of slavery as well as associated stigmas and the discomfort of white Brazilians in bringing to the forefront Black experiences of subjugation and cruelty at the hands of Europeans. The site has since gained a greater presence in Brazil with the publication of literature and through activism. The site has also gained a global presence through its inscription on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2017, recognizing the Valongo wharf as a site of world heritage of universal value. [8]  

Cuba

The study of the African diaspora through archaeology began in Cuba with the study of slavery and fugitive slaves, starting heavily in the 1960s in parallel with that of the United States Archaeology of Plantations, although archaeology has been conducted earlier. Archaeologist Eladio Elso conducted research at cimarrones (impermanent fugitive slave encampments) in 1946 in Pinar del Río. Interest in Afro-Cuban archaeology increased after the Cuban Revolution, when Cuba was officially proclaimed a socialist nation. Cuban history and archaeology were deemed to be of national importance, alongside themes of resistance and struggle. [9] [1] [5]

Cimarrones

Since 1983, archaeologist Gabino La Rosa Corzo has worked on the archaeology of slavery under themes of resistance, daily life, subsistence, and transculturation at sites in Cuba. through research at 30 cimarrones, all of which are rock shelters or caves, in the Havana-Matanza upland region of Cuba. La Rosa Corzo has found artifacts and remnants of objects used in the lives of fugitive slaves that are claimed to show cultural continuity from African traditions as well as cultural transformation and dependencies on plantations or stores. Found among the sites were items such as pottery, machetes, knives, hoes, and pipes. La Rosa Corzo found evidence that fugitive slaves created pottery using techniques that were likely of African origin, distinct from Indigenous and European techniques found in Cuba. The archaeologist also found in food remains that fugitives hunted and used natural resources as well as resources from haciendas (plantations), adding to and contrasting archival records that only describe theft from haciendas. Among the assemblages found were clay cones called "hormas,” which were used in the processing of cane sugar. La Rosa Corzo claims that sugar consumption became a habit induced by life on sugar plantations.  Decorations are also found on smoking pipes called “cachimbas” that have decorations or symbols that resemble those found in African traditions, where many of the enslaved in Cuba originated. The archaeologist also challenged historical documents that claimed the diet of those enslaved on plantations was the same as that of fugitives and that fugitive diets lacked African elements. These points have been challenged by archaeological evidence of the consumption of more varied and fresher foods at fugitive sites than at plantation sites and the retention of soup-based traditions from Africa. [1] [5] [10]

Peru

The Haciendas of Nasca archaeological project, or PAHN, established in 2009, is the first Peruvian archaeological project focused on slavery and the African Diaspora. The project engages in Afro-Peruvian and African Diaspora archaeology that focuses on engagement with the Peruvian public while collaborating with descendant communities, similar to the methods used at the African Burial Ground in New York. PAHN attempts to use archaeology to address contemporary issues such as the legacy of slavery and racism. [11]

The United States

African Diaspora Archaeology in the Americas first emerged as a specialty and has received the most attention in the United States coming from the research of African American Historical Archaeology. The history of racism, the glorification of “great men," and the exclusion of women in archaeology made it so that African American archaeology did not become a serious area of interest in archaeology until the 1960s, during the civil rights movement, with excavations prodded by civil rights activists with goals of preserving and protecting locations of historic importance to Africans as well as the Beautification Project of First Lady Lady Bird Johnson which inspired a movement for the protection of historic buildings. Sites previously not of archeological significance were studied, and those deemed to be important but excluded the enslaved were reexamined, such as at Monticello. [12] [1]

Kingsley Plantation

An early excavation in African American archaeology was the Kingsley Plantation Enslaved Quarters in 1969. Sanctioned by the Florida State Park in the hope of using information from the excavation in a recreation of enslaved quarters. The archaeologist charged with excavating, Charles Fairbanks, saw the opportunity to uncover information unrecorded to history on the creations of enslaved Africans and “Africanisms'' (expressions of African culture carried and persisting in the Americas) that Fairbanks hoped would provide an archaeological link between Africa and Florida. [1] [13] [14]

Colono Ware

Leland Ferguson, through the 1970s and 1980s, conducted plantation archaeology in South Carolina, Virginia, and Florida and connected low-fired pottery called Colono Ware to enslaved Africans. Ferguson claimed that artifacts maintained features of African culture and symbolism. Archaeologists before Ferguson had only attributed this type of pottery to Indigenous Americans, never connecting this type of pottery, which exhibits features of Indigenous, European, and African design, to enslaved Africans. [12]

African Burial Grounds

The African Burial Grounds project in New York has addressed issues of racism, white hegemony within the field of archaeology, and the role of descendant communities in interpretation and participation. A research team under the direction of anthropologist and archaeologist Michael Blakey beginning in 1992 began using a descendant community collaboration approach after outcry from the New York Black citizens against the work of archaeologists previously engaged in archaeology at the site. The first team acting under the Historic Preservation Act and conducting archaeology on the burial grounds due to the construction of a government building, according to Blakey, failed to heed the concerns of the community. According to Blakey, this team failed to consider community issues with research questions and focused on the then-common practice of using race as a biological feature rather than a social construct. The original team also lacked insight from African American perspectives and knowledge of African history. The second team, under Blakey, with permission from the descendant community, transported 419 human remains to the Cobb biological laboratory at Howard University for analysis, denying the use of race as a biological feature. Archaeology at the African burial grounds was conducted with insight from collaboration between disciplines and knowledge of African history. Archaeology at the African Burial Grounds is credited with bringing awareness to the history of slavery in New York when it created the idea of the descendant community and collaboration between archaeologists and the descendant community, with the interests of the descendant community prioritized as an ethical human right. The remains of those from the burial grounds have since been reinterred, and today a monument has been dedicated. [15] [16] [17]

Related Research Articles

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hoodoo (spirituality)</span> Spiritual practices, traditions and beliefs

Hoodoo is an autonomous ethnoreligion that, in a broader context, functions as a set of spiritual observances, traditions, and beliefs—including magical and other ritual practices—developed by enslaved African Americans in the Southern United States from various traditional African spiritualities and elements of indigenous American botanical knowledge. Practitioners of Hoodoo are called rootworkers, conjure doctors, conjure men or conjure women, and root doctors. Regional synonyms for Hoodoo include rootwork and conjure. As a autonomous spiritual system it has often been syncretized with beliefs from Islam brought over by enslaved West African Muslims, and Spiritualism. Scholars define Hoodoo as a folk religion.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Colonial Brazil</span> 1500–1815 Portuguese possession in South America

Colonial Brazil comprises the period from 1500, with the arrival of the Portuguese, until 1815, when Brazil was elevated to a kingdom in union with Portugal. During the 300 years of Brazilian colonial history, the main economic activities of the territory were based first on brazilwood extraction, which gave the territory its name; sugar production ; and finally on gold and diamond mining. Slaves, especially those brought from Africa, provided most of the workforce of the Brazilian export economy after a brief initial period of Indigenous slavery to cut brazilwood.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Quilombo</span> Type of Brazilian settlement inhabited by escaped slaves and their descendants

A quilombo ; from the Kimbundu word kilombo, lit. 'war camp') is a Brazilian hinterland settlement founded by people of African origin, and others sometimes called Carabali. Most of the inhabitants of quilombos, called quilombolas, were maroons, a term for escaped slaves.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Zumbi</span> Afro-Brazilian freed slave; king of Quilombo dos Palmares (r. 1680–95)

Zumbi, also known as Zumbi dos Palmares, was a Brazilian quilombola leader and one of the pioneers of resistance to slavery of Africans by the Portuguese in colonial Brazil. He was also the last of the kings of the Quilombo dos Palmares, a settlement of Afro-Brazilian people who liberated themselves from enslavement in the present-day state of Alagoas, Brazil. He is revered in Afro-Brazilian culture as a symbol of African freedom.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Maroons</span> African refugees who escaped from slavery

Maroons are descendants of Africans in the Americas and Islands of the Indian Ocean who escaped from slavery, through flight or manumission, and formed their own settlements. They often mixed with Indigenous peoples, eventually evolving into separate creole cultures such as the Garifuna and the Mascogos.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Palmares (quilombo)</span> Community of escaped slaves in Brazil (1605 to 1694)

Palmares, or Quilombo dos Palmares, was a quilombo, a community of escaped slaves and others, in colonial Brazil that developed from 1605 until its suppression in 1694. It was located in the captaincy of Pernambuco, in what is today the Brazilian state of Alagoas. The quilombo was located in what is now the municipality of União dos Palmares.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">African Burial Ground National Monument</span> Memorial in Manhattan, New York

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Quilombola</span> Resident of a quilombo settlement

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For a history of Afro-Caribbean people in the UK, see British African Caribbean community.

Barbara J. Heath is a professor in the Department of Anthropology at The University of Tennessee, Knoxville who specializes in historical archaeology of eastern North America and the Caribbean. Her research and teaching focus on the archaeology of the African diaspora, colonialism, historic landscapes, material culture, public archaeology and interpretation, and Thomas Jefferson.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Slavery in Cuba</span>

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Valongo Wharf</span> Former wharf in Rio de Janeiro

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Newton Slave Burial Ground is an industrial heritage site and informal cemetery in Barbados. It was used by people enslaved at the adjacent Newton Plantation. The site has been owned by the Barbados Museum & Historical Society since 1993. It has been subject to excavations since the 1970s, which have produced information regarding slave lifeways including resistance, health, and culture.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Singleton, Theresa (2010). "African Diaspora in Archaeology". In Olaniyan, Tejumola; Sweet, James (eds.). The African Diaspora and The Disciplines. Bloomington, Ind : Indiana University Press. pp. 119–134. ISBN   9780253354648.
  2. ↑ Fennell, Christopher (2020). "African Diaspora Archaeology". In Smith, Claire (ed.). Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology (2nd ed.). Springer Cham. pp. 58–59. ISBN   978-3-030-30018-0.
  3. ↑ McGhee, Fred (2007). "Maritime Archaeology and the African Diaspora". In Ogundiran, Akinwumi; Falola, Toyin (eds.). Archaeology of Atlantic Africa and the African diaspora. Blacks in diaspora. Indianapolis: Indiana university press. pp. 384–393. ISBN   978-0-253-34919-4.
  4. ↑ Funari, Pedro Paulo A.; Orser, Charles E. (2015). "Archaeology, Slavery, and Marronage: A Complex Relationship". In Funari, Pedro Paulo A.; Orser, Charles E. (eds.). Current perspectives on the archaeology of African slavery in Latin America. Springer briefs in archaeology. New York: Springer. pp. 1–4. ISBN   978-1-4939-1264-3.
  5. 1 2 3 La Rosa Corzo, Gabino (2010). "The Archaeology of Escaped Slaves". In Kepecs, Susan M.; Curet, L. Antonio; La Rosa Corzo, Gabino (eds.). Beyond the blockade: new currents in Cuban archaeology. Caribbean archaeology and ethnohistory. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press. pp. 126–141. ISBN   978-0-8173-8492-0.
  6. ↑ Funari, Pedro; Ferreira, Lúcio (2016). "Historical Archaeology Outlook: A Latin American Perspective". Historical Archaeology. 50 (3): 100–107. doi:10.1007/BF03377336. ISSN   0440-9213 – via Springer Complete Journals.
  7. ↑ Funari, Pedro (2007). "The Archaeological Study of the African Diaspora in Brazil". In Ogundiran, Akinwumi; Falola, Toyin (eds.). Archaeology of Atlantic Africa and the African diaspora. Blacks in diaspora. Indianapolis: Indiana university press. pp. 355–371. ISBN   978-0-253-34919-4.
  8. ↑ Lima, Tania Andrade (2020-10-01). "Valongo: An Uncomfortable Legacy". Current Anthropology. 61 (S22): S317–S327. doi:10.1086/709820. ISSN   0011-3204.
  9. ↑ Jane Berman, Mary; Febles, Jorge; Gnivecki, Perry (2005). "The Organization of Cuban Archaeology". In Curet, L. Antonio; Dawdy, Shannon Lee; La Rosa Corzo, Gabino (eds.). Dialogues in Cuban Archaeology. Society for American archaeology. Tuscaloosa: The university of Alabama press. p. 48. ISBN   978-0-8173-1464-4.
  10. ↑ La Rosa Corzo, Gabino (2005). "Subsistence of Cimarrones: An Archaeological Study". In Curet, L. Antonio; Dawdy, Shannon; La Rosa Corzo, Gabino (eds.). Dialogues in Cuban archaeology. Tuscaloosa, Ala: Univ. of Alabama Press. pp. 163–180. ISBN   978-0-8173-1464-4.
  11. ↑ Weaver, Brendan J. M.; Fhon Bazán, Miguel A.; Santana Quispe, Lady (2022). "Heritage and the Archaeology of Afro-Peru: Community Engagement in the Valleys of Nasca". Historical Archaeology. 56 (1): 131–152. doi:10.1007/s41636-021-00309-0. ISSN   0440-9213. PMC   8906358 . PMID   35287280.
  12. 1 2 Ferguson, Leland (1992). Uncommon ground: archaeology and early African America, 1650 - 1800. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press. pp. xxxv–xxxix. ISBN   978-1-56098-058-2.
  13. ↑ Agbe-Davies, Anna (2007). "Practicing African American Archaeology in The Atlantic World". In Ogundiran, Akinwumi; Falola, Toyin (eds.). Archaeology of Atlantic Africa and the African diaspora. Blacks in diaspora. Indianapolis: Indiana university press. pp. 413–425. ISBN   978-0-253-34919-4.
  14. ↑ Orser Jr., Charles (2023). Living ceramics, storied ground : a history of African American archaeology. Gainesville : University Press of Florida. pp. 5–20. ISBN   9780813069791.
  15. ↑ Leone, Mark P.; LaRoche, Cheryl Janifer; Babiarz, Jennifer J. (2005-10-01). "THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF BLACK AMERICANS IN RECENT TIMES". Annual Review of Anthropology. 34 (1): 575–598. doi:10.1146/annurev.anthro.34.081804.120417. ISSN   0084-6570.
  16. ↑ Blakey, Michael L. (2020-10-01). "Archaeology under the Blinding Light of Race". Current Anthropology. 61 (S22): S183–S197. doi: 10.1086/710357 . ISSN   0011-3204.
  17. ↑ Blakey, Michael L. (2010). "African Burial Ground Project: paradigm for cooperation?". Museum International. 62 (1–2): 61–68. doi:10.1111/j.1468-0033.2010.01716.x. ISSN   1350-0775.
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