Larry McKee, The Hermitage
Editor's Note: Larry's paper was presented as part of the plenarysession entitled "Where Are We and Where Do We Need to Go" atthe 1998 Annual Meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology, Atlanta
I've felt the need to write about the future of archaeological researchon African-American life for a long time, and so I welcomed the opportunityto put together this paper. Of course we should all be thinking about thefuture of our research, no matter what the topic we are dealing with - itis always useful to consider the sources of our scholarship, the presentstate of it, and the directions it should take in order to answer the questionsthat remain.
Twenty years ago historical archaeology embraced the study of ethnicity.A number of researchers, including John Otto, Bob Schuyler, Leland Ferguson,Charles Fairbanks, and Jim Deetz, recommended exploration of the idea thatdifferent ethnic groups left "visible" signatures in the archaeologicalrecord. The accepted view became that searching out these signs of culturaldistinction was very much in keeping with one of the basic principles ofthe discipline: that archaeological research on the recent past can revealinformation on people otherwise ignored and even dishonored by the usualwritten sources of history. I feel very lucky to have been exposed to theseexciting ideas as a student back in the 1970s. Of course, my excitementwas mixed with a wide streak of naivete.
The goal of a lot of the field work generated from linking ethnicityand archaeology was to dig up clear material evidence of distinctive culturaltraditions - what a lot of us used to refer to as "ethnic markers."
The ground, however, has proved to be less cooperative than we expected.Even when particularly exotic items were recovered, such as Chinese stonewarestorage vessels on western mining camp sites or cowrie shells at African-Americanhabitation sites in the slave South, the resulting interpretations seemlittle more than a restatements of the obvious. These finds also seem trivialand irrelevant in relation to the broader context of such sites, and theimportant questions that we should be asking. Not only has the excavatedevidence turned out to be something different than most of us expected,the contemporary world - especially in terms of the audience for our work- has turned out to be a very complicated place as well. Those of us studyingthe African-American past have come to see that there is no such thing asscholarship isolated from the world at large. In fact, this research hasundergone what I see as a thorough transformation away from internally-focusedissues of method and theory concerning ethnic visibility toward what MichaelBlakey has defined as "a new archaeology of public engagement."Professor Blakey contends that in carrying out excavations at sites associatedwith African Americans, we are not just gathering new data and adding toour knowledge about the past, we are also engaged in the ongoing socialdiscourse about the relations between European Americans and African Americansin the present. Some seek to avoid such involvement; some of us embraceit willingly and with true enthusiasm; we all need to accept that this iswhere we stand, and where we should be standing.
But I also think in acknowledging this reorientation to public engagement,we also need to keep in mind the very real advances we have made in gatheringand interpreting evidence. Over the past decade the field has reached akind of critical mass in terms of the number of practitioners, the numberof sites that have been, and are being, excavated, and the public visibilityof the results. Many major historical attractions with an African-Americanpresence make use of archaeological research, either directly or indirectly,and the savvy traveler has come to expect to see excavations or the resultsof excavation in visiting these sites. The New York African Burial Groundproject served to turn up the heat in a variety of ways, especially in termsof expanding public consciousness and reminding the nation that slaveryhad a long history throughout the nation, not just within the plantationSouth.
The archaeological study of the African-American experience has fulfilledquite a bit of its early exciting promise, but I would call this fulfillmentfar from complete. The biggest, most frustrating shortcoming is that archaeologicalinterpretations have had little or no impact within traditional scholarshipon the African-American past. At best, there is a little bemused acknowledgementhere and there, often literally in footnotes, of "intriguing finds".Has our work really been that much out on the fringe? Or is this more dueto a difference in who reads, and who cites, what, and in related issuesof academic turf disputes and differences in professional cultures? It isalso obviously a question of how very different our sources - essentiallygarbage and ruins - are from the written record. It is hard to match upeven the most interesting houselot assemblage with the power and eloquenceof something like the writings of Frederick Douglass. The challenge hereis first and foremost to carry through our research to completion, and totake on the task of producing effective translations of what others withoutDouglass' talents or opportunities left behind to inform us about theirlives.
Despite the work that remains to be done, there is no need to sell ouraccomplishments short. What's emerged from the last quarter century of archaeologicalresearch is a view of African-American life under slavery and freedom whichemphasizes active efforts by these people to control their own lives ratherthan to be controlled. This idea of action rather than passivity can beseen in every category in the archaeological record, revealing subtle anddirect transformations of plantation housing, diet, and clothing. Dramaticdiscoveries of traces of African spirituality from New York City to Annapolisto Tennessee to the Gulf Coast of Texas all point to the ways that Africandescendents, both enslaved and free, worked to maintain and draw strengthfrom their cultural traditions. These examples from the material recordare the solid remnants of what must have been a constant set of defensiveand offensive stances set against the pressures on slaves to submit, conform,and accept their legal status. This emphasis on African-American actionrather than passivity is of course the same message that has come out ofthe last several decades of traditional historical scholarship on slaveryand African-American life. It is hard to sort out whether archaeologistswould be coming to these same conclusions without attention to and absorptionof the work of scholars working with non-archaeological sources. I'm notsure this is even a question worth considering - research in one field won'tget very far without constant interdisciplinary communication. I do feelthe archaeological record speaks loudly about the struggles for freedomand autonomy in any and all forms possible under the vicious constraintsof slavery. I also think our evidence provides ways to add nuances to theinterpretation of African-American resistance, for instance in considerationsof how artifacts produced by the dominate culture were appropriated andgiven new meaning by people of African descent.
Archaeologists have come to accept "resistance" as the keysocial mechanism through which African Americans in varied oppressive situationsachieved some level of autonomy and some level of control over many of thedetails of their lives. The idea of resistance, that individuals and groupsin subordinate positions were seldom if ever going to accept what was dishedout to them without struggle, is one of those deceptively simple ideas thatgains considerable explanatory power as one begins to explore its implications.The "official" version of history and the continued rationalefor racist thought and policies is that Africans brought to the New Worldwere savage and childlike, incapable and unworthy of full participationin of European civilization. This kind of justification, of course, maskswhat was really going on in terms of the constant struggle between groupscontending for social power.
The concept of resistance covers a lot of territory, from outright insurrectionto everyday forms of petty rebellion, ranging from direct insolence andsabotage; to "playing dumb" and working at a slow pace; to maintainingtraditions and a cultural identity consciously distinct from that of thosewho surrounded and sought to dominate the African-American population. Resistanceoffers a solid and satisfying framework on which to build explanations forarchaeological evidence in such basic categories as food, architecture andclothing. This framework is usually very visible with in the stories archaeologistsbuild in studying the African- American past - that slaves found ways tocircumvent the agendas of their owners, that much energy was directed toputting something over, in big and small ways, on those supposedly in control,and that this effort served to subvert and bring about changes in the strategiesand "management programs" of those supposedly with all the powerand might to direct the lives of those at the low end of the social spectrum.Seeing African Americans in the past not as passive victims, but as cleveradversaries always ready to explore new means to undermine their captor'splans also provides a somewhat heroic subtext to the situation. For a lotof us, this not only serves as an important interpretive stance, it alsoserves as a buffer easing some of the appalling emotions we encounter instudying the generations of misery associated with the African diaspora.It is a story of evil and degradation as well as perseverance, redemption,and hard-fought success, and the idea of resistance links all of the segmentsof the story together.
What are we going to do with what we have found and found out? Archaeology'scontributions to the new evidence and new interpretations of slave lifewill mean little if it is not put into play within the world at large. Theemerging archaeological goal of public engagement offers the best way tospread the news, and to accomplish the goal of getting the information intothe hands of those who can use it in the present. The push toward publicengagement is in synch with the high level of broad public interest in African-Americanhistory, an interest made manifest as well as encouraged by such popularcultural phenomena as Alex Haley's Roots, Toni Morrison's Nobel Prize, StevenSpeilberg's latest blockbuster, and even Addy, the African-American entryin the phenomenally popular American Girl Dolls line of products. Addy ispresented in her accompanying story books as a member of a family that escapedtogether from slavery to the North. Her basic accessory kit includes a cowrieshell necklace, a silver dime (not pierced) tied up in her kerchief, a smallgourd water bottle, and a banded yellowware bowl.
Why is this interest in the African-American history and culture so evident,and why does it seem to be growing stronger? From a broad point of view,it can be linked to a widespread acceptance over the last three decadesof a thoroughly transformed orientation and understanding of what went onin the American past. The metaphor of the nation as a melting pot, groundedin smooth cultural assimilation, has been rejected. Only over the last generationhas there been reluctant acknowledgement of the key role of social tensionand conflict in our history, as opposed to the false notion of unified consensus.With this comes an equally reluctant acceptance that America will alwaysbe a multi-racial, multi-ethnic society.
To move from the sociological to the more humanistic, I also see theinterest in the African-American past as linked to a growing embracing ofthe African diaspora as one of the Great Stories of the American nation,ranking with the Westward Expansion and Migration, for example. It is anundeniably epic story, driven by elements of human evil, racism, frailty,and all our triumphant qualities as well. What also compels us to focuson this story is that it is not at its end; we are still all immersed init; and its conclusion, tragic or uplifting, has yet to be written.
Archaeology's role in reconstructing the story of the African diasporais in keeping with the discipline of archaeology's well established placein the minds of the public. Our audience sees the function of archaeologyto be the recovery of lost and hidden evidence about the human past, therescue of cultural treasures, and answering, or at least attempting to answer,nagging questions about what really went on in the past. The process hereis simple: the people we are interested in left behind things that we candig up and use in talking about and writing about their lives. Each stepin this process is of course incredibly complex, but it is probably thelast step, a usually unstated one, that should concern us most in consideringnew directions in studying the African-American diaspora. Who is it thatwe are talking to and writing for? Who is our audience? What is the bestway to conduct our exchanges with the public? How much should we followtheir lead in what we research and present, how much should we seek to directpublic interest along new paths, and how can we effectively navigate themiddle ground between these two different approaches?
Considering these questions about how best to conduct public engagementinevitably leads to a discussion of politics. All who are involved in researchon African American topics without fail become embroiled in these discussionsat one level or another. There is tension and even on occasion harsh feelingsin this discussion, but I have come to realize that this edginess can bea good and useful thing to the research as a whole. It makes one considerthe import of every word used, and the implications of every avenue of interpretationthat one chooses to explore. We do have to resist the urge to make the argumentsover politics and scholarly authority the main thing, the primary reasonfor doing the research. The recent issue of Historical Archaeology, editedby Carol McDavid and David Babson, provides some admirable extended discussionsof how to avoid this trap, and how best to balance the present with thepast. The volume's contributors all demonstrate the belief that the researchhas direct applications to the present, and all share a commitment to directengagement with the general public. This recognition and active promotionof the obvious strong links between past and present is certainly one ofthe hallmarks of archaeological research on African-American life, and oneof the reasons that so many of us have been drawn to the topic.
Among archaeologists dedicated to the study of the African-American pastthere remains some strong debate about where data collection and analysisends and where public engagement begins. Research strategies, methodology,interpretations, and presentation are all ultimately of one piece. The questionswe ask are defined, directly and indirectly, by the world at large, andthe world at large is informed and gets its understanding of the past fromresearchers looking to answer these questions. The more open and circulatingthis process is, the better it works. Within the archaeological study ofthe African-American past, the process continues to evolve, with some obviouspoints of contention about scholarly autonomy, who has the right to controlthe research, and whose ethnocentric biases are the most damaging to theresearch's end product.
There is some obvious and heavy irony in arguing about whose voice the descendent community's, or the researchers - should predominate in decisionsabout what to study and what to say about project results. After all, foryears one of the prime allegories used in promoting and justifying archaeologicalwork on African-American sites is that it gives voice to a people in thepast who were always denied a chance to say much for themselves. There havebeen some notably successful projects based on intensive and ongoing communityinvolvement from start to finish. Certainly the New York African BurialGround, one of the most important excavations ever undertaken by historicalarchaeologists, would have probably gone all but unnoticed, one more thickreport gathering dust on the shelf, if the local African-American communityhad not stepped-up and assumed a commanding role in the conduct of the project.There are other projects, also effective and successful, in which archaeologistshave taken a more distanced stance in regard to community engagement. Iwould certainly include my own work in this category.
Let me suggest a metaphor that might be useful in considering these differentstyles of audience-researcher interaction - the process by which a standingtree becomes a fine piece of furniture. Some extremely committed craftsmendo start at the very beginning, selecting specific trees to use in theirwork, but most leave the steps involved in harvesting, transporting, andmilling raw wood into useable lumber to others. Competency and even commitmentto excellence are necessary at every step of the way to achieve the desiredresult: a high quality final product. I want to stress that in my conception,the final product of archaeological research is not a completed site report,or even a well-scripted public slide show or museum display - it is whenthe evidence and the interpretations get into general circulation, and makesome contribution to the public's consciousness and wisdom about the past.In applying this arboreal metaphor to archaeology, is the researcher justthe lumberjack, or does our job continue through the mill and perhaps evento the craftsman's workbench? Different situations, different institutions,and different personalities will define our duties, and define how muchoverlap there is between one set of hands and the next.
Like all metaphors, this trees-to-furniture scheme strips a lot of complexityaway. Hopefully it doesn't trivialize the links between archaeologists andmembers of the public who are interested in using the past in making senseof the present. There is no reason to choose one single route, one and onlyone way for the various kinds of archaeologists to connect with the varioussegments of the general populace who are interested in our work. It is hardto imagine an obviously significant and sensitive site like a cemetery beingexcavated without guidance from the local descendent community right fromthe start; it is also hard to imagine attracting similar interest and supportfor the excavation of less spectacular sites like black tenant farmers'homesteads. The latter case, if done right, has the potential to produceresults as significant and intriguing as the study of a burial ground. Partof the job in studying such a site should be to package these results inways that convey this significance to the general public.
One of the values of the distanced or "autonomous research"approach is that it encourages connections with a variety of public groupingsin a variety of ways. There are lots of different segments of society whohave an interest, casual or fervently engaged, in the process and resultsof archaeological research on sites associated with African-American history.In their recent article on the New York African Burial Ground, Cheryl LaRoche and Michael Blakey include scholars, researchers, cultural resourcemanagers, politicians, religious leaders, community activists, and schoolchildren among the players in that great drama.
On a more general level, those involved in the conversations we seekto foster about African-American life would include the institutions thatemploy us, which might be museums, colleges, and government agencies, ourarchaeological colleagues; colleagues in other disciplines; and finallythe general public in all its myriad groupings and subgroupings - studentsat many different levels, descendent groups, avocationalists, tourists whocome across excavations or museum exhibits in their travels, and casualreaders or viewers who come across a feature in a Sunday supplement or aTV program while channel surfing. We need to cast the widest net possiblein responding to the many different publics interested in our work, andwe need to be ready to respond and encourage their interest to the fullestextent possible. Some of those making use of the products of our researchare going to have a casual approach, perhaps only desiring a little enlightenmentabout the past; for others it will serve to define a vital part of theiridentity and the way they understand their place in the world. We shouldfeel fulfilled in getting our work noticed and used at any level.
Continued and expanded public engagement is the one assured element ofthe future of archaeological research on African-American history. Muchelse about the course we will follow remains to be determined. One thingwe should be working on is to pull together excavated evidence in comparative,integrated formats. Work throughout the western hemisphere over the lastquarter century has produced massive artifact assemblages. Particularlyspectacular finds are reported, through journal and newsletter publication,through meetings presentations, through the popular media, and even throughword of mouth. There have been a few intensive studies of ceramics or faunalremains or reports on the biological evidence from skeletal populations,but these have been too scarce. We need to put more emphasis on bringingtogether research within specific site assemblages and producing more inter-sitework, comparing finds, investigating overall similarities and distinctions,and even looking for, once again, the patterns evident from one evidencebase to the next. It is exciting and significant to find cultural treasures- beads, pierced coins, quartz crystals, charms, and all the rest, but weshould be equally excited about putting these dazzlers into the contextof everyday life, and spreading the word about the resulting broadened perspectiveon the lives of African Americans.
Working toward bringing together archaeological evidence within integrativeframeworks should also help to overcome what Theresa Singleton and MarkBograd have characterized as the "data rich, theory poor" stateof affairs in our research. We don't need a new round of processualism,with searches for overarching explanatory laws of behavior. What we do needfrom theorizing is a redoubled effort at interpretations based on broadperspectives and intersecting sources that bring order and make some senseout of the evidence that we have accumulated.
I don't think we have accumulated all the evidence necessary to answerthe ever-widening set of questions we seek to answer. One obvious need isto expand the types of sites being studied. Imagine for a minute a coordinatedinternational effort, not directed by what a museum's mission statementor operating budget can support, or what site a particular federally-fundedproject is going to destroy. There are many times and places associatedwith the African-American past which have not received much sustained archaeologicalattention - Central America during the Spanish Colonial period; sites occupiedby runaway or maroons on the North American continent; sites in the westernhalf of North America dating to after emancipation, sites occupied by freeblacks during the antebellum years, and northern urban neighborhoods whichdeveloped during the rural to urban migrations of the early twentieth century.Sites associated with plantation slavery have always received a lot of attention,but there are some critical gaps in the coverage of this category as well.The Mississippi Delta region is practically unexplored territory, despiteits central place in the story of the plantation South in the decades justpreceding the Civil War. Smaller holdings, in places like East Tennesseeand the colonial Northeast, would also be fertile ground for recoveringperspectives on slavery away from the social and economic influence of full-scaleplantations.
Developing such a list of future excavation projects may not be a practical,reality-based guide for what we should be pursuing, but it does serve acouple of other purposes. It expands our view on what we are really studying- it is the total experience of the forced African migration to the NewWorld and the subsequent centuries of social transformations, a processand set of events best categorized by the term "African Diaspora".We will all be better and more effective scholars if we occasionally lookup from our small excavation units and think about what we are doing anddiscovering in light of the overall experience of African descendents acrossthe world and throughout the last five centuries. As Charles Orser has suggested,we need to think globally, while digging locally. Slavery is an importantpart of the story, but it was just one step in the journey.
Beyond my musings about the globally-coordinated research effort, I haveno set plan to recommend. I don't trust such overarching strategies, andI'm more at ease and trusting of the idea of the "invisible hand"of scholarly progress, the serendipitous result of a wide variety of individualresearchers working on a wide variety of individual projects.
We also have to trust the enormous potential of public engagement andthe public style of archaeological research. The popular interest in archaeologyis one real advantage we have over traditional history. After all, few wouldgo out of their way to peer over the shoulder of someone sitting at a microfilmreader. Archaeologists need to seize the opportunity offered by the twinpublic interests in archaeology and in the African-American past, and makethe best use of these entry points to get out the word on what we can contributein telling the story.
We need to stay grounded, literally, and focused on the evidence. Thework is the thing - digging has a kind of magic to it, and this is whatkeeps us all coming back for more. This magic is of course related to themost basic goal of archaeology -- finding neat things. There is no needto downplay this core, defining characteristic of our work. Of course wecan't rely on just the spectacular finds, since true success depends onsustained effort. Fulfillment of our own goals, and fulfillment of the public'sexpectations of our work will come from building up the evidence, and comingup with not just interesting things, but interesting things to say aboutwhat we dig up.
Heather Apollonio, Department of Archaeology, University of Cape Town
Editor's Note: While A-A A is dedicated to African-American archaeology,material related to broader comparative and interpretive contexts will alsoappear on a regular basis.
In recent years, urban expansion and development in the Cape Town areahas led to the rediscovery of a considerable number of historic burial grounds(c.f. Cox and Sealy 1997; Hart and Halkett 1996; and Sealy et al 1993).Perhaps the most significant discovery was of a relatively intact burialground at Cobern Street, Cape Town, dating to the mid-18th century.
In 1994, construction work on the margins of the Cape Town City Bowlbegan to reveal human skeletal material. A rescue operation was initiatedby the Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology at the University of CapeTown (UCT), under the direction of Alan Morris. Nine graves were exhumedfrom the exposed foundation trench, two of which were no more than isolatedand disarticulated bones. Consequently, it was decided that systematic excavationwas necessary in the portion of the site to be disturbed during construction.Alan Morris, with Dave Halkett and Tim Hart of the Archaeology ContractsOffice at UCT and a group of volunteers, undertook the exhumations duringDecember 1994 and January 1995.
Excavations revealed an additional 56 intact graves, along with additionaldisarticulated skeletal material. In all, the remains of approximately 121individuals were recovered (Constant and Louw 1997). Undoubtedly, more burialsremain undisturbed beneath nearby standing structures at the site.
There were three styles of interment associated with the Cobern Streetburials. The earliest graves were two Later Stone Age (LSA) cairn burials,each containing two individuals. The bodies were interred in a confinedshaft, one above the other in a vertical flexed position. Within the cairns,flaked stones, grindstones, shells, ochre, pottery, faunal remains, fragmentsof a tortoise carapace bowl, and a cache of shells were recovered. Theseburials dated to approximately 1000 BP, and are unrelated to the later historicperiod burials at the site.
The predominant burial pattern for colonial period remains appears torepresent traditionally Euro-Christian burial practices in which the graveswere oriented on an East to West orientation. At Cobern Street, these werefrequently, but not always, coffin burials in which the body has been interredin a supine position with the arms folded over the pelvis or lying at thesides of the body. Many included shroud pins, and a few of the burials wererich in grave goods.
The third style of interment was "deep lying side burials".Five burials fit into this category, two of which were niche burials. Thebodies were interred lying on their right sides with no coffin or otherburial items, and were oriented perpendicular to the majority of the coffinburials. The niche burials had small alcoves cut into the side of the graveshaft for the head and the feet. These burials are among the deepest atthe site, and some are overlain by coffin burials.
Finally, there were a number of highly disturbed burials consisting mostlyof semi-articulated or disarticulated skeletal material. These bone depositshad little or no contextual material and often appeared to be the resultof older burials being disturbed to make room for more recent interments.It is possible that this phenomenon may be partially attributed to hastyand frequent interments during the smallpox epidemics dating to 1755 and/or1812-13 (Davids 1984) Alternatively, they may represent disturbance of gravesresulting from mid-19th century construction.
Artifacts recovered at Cobern Street have been grouped into five categories;coffin hardware; clothing items; burial items such as shroud pins and fabricassociated with the interment process; personal items such as beads, pipes,knives, a needle case, and a snuff box, all apparently added to accompanythe deceased; and items associated with the LSA cairns.
Several of the graves were unusual, and are worthy of a more detaileddescription. One grave (Burial 3) contained a young man of about 20 yearsof age, who had been interred with an iron shackle around his left leg.Another grave (Burial 20) contained three individuals, a man, woman anda child. Both adults had filed teeth. A 40 year old man (Burial 49), withsharpened incisors, was interred in a coffin with assorted grave goods (pins,tinderbox, striker, flint, and a clay pipe).
Interpretation of the burial patterns and grave goods is currently underway(Apollonio in prep.) and promises to shed new light on groups poorly representedin the archaeological record of Cape Town. The site appears to contain theremains of individuals who were denied access to the official church burialground of the period. Slaves, free blacks, convicts, soldiers and sailors,may all have found what turned out to be a temporary resting place at CobernStreet. If this proves to be the case, we will have an opportunity to beginunderstand people traditionally overlooked in the history of colonial CapeTown.
I would like to thank Alan Morris for allowing me access to the CobernStreet material, and to both Alan and Martin Hall for their guidance andsupervision of this project. Dave Halkett and Tim Hart of the ArchaeologyContracts Office at the UCT excavated the Cobern Street site, and AntoniaMalan of the Historical Archaeology Research Group at UCT began the archivesearch and artifact analysis. The support and input of all mentioned, andmany others at UCT has been invaluable. Many thanks to all.
Apollonio, H.
in prep. Identifying the Dead: Eighteenth Century Mortuary Practicesat Cobern Street Cape Town. Masters Thesis, Department of Archaeology,University of Cape Town.
Constant, D. A., and G. J. Louw
1997 Age and Sex Distributions for the Cobern Street Collection.Paper delivered at the 27th Annual Congress of the Anatomical Society ofSouthern Africa, Cape Town, South Africa.
Cox, G., and J. Sealy
1997 Investigating Identity and Life Histories: Isotopic Analysis andHistorical Documentation of Slave Skeletons Found on the Cape Town Foreshore,South Africa. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 1(3):207-224.
Davids, A.
1984 The Revolt of the Malays: A Study of the Reactions of the Cape Muslimsto the Smallpox Epidemics of Nineteenth Century Cape Town, in Studiesin the History of Cape Town, Centre of African Studies, UCT.
Hart, T., and D. Halkett,
1996 Archaeological Investigation of Two Cemeteries, Groot ConstantiaEstate, Constantia. Report prepared for Trevor Thorold (Architects)and Groot Constantia. Archaeology Contracts Office, University of Cape Town.
Sealy, J., A. Morris, R. Armstrong, A. Markell, and C. Schrire
1993A Historic Skeleton from the Slave Lodge at Vergelegen, HistoricalArchaeology in the Western Cape: South African Archaeological SocietyGoodwin Series Vol. 7, edited by Martin Hall and Ann Markell.
John P. McCarthy Greenhorne & O'Mara, Inc., Greenbelt, MD
Comments prepared for the panel discussion: Lessons from HistoricPeriod Cemeteries, 1998 Meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology,Atlanta
It almost goes without saying that laying the dead to rest is an importantlife-course event and rite of passage. The archaeological investigationof cemetery sites presents special opportunities to examine socioculturalaspects of death and associated ritual complexes. The broad issue with whichI am concerned in today's brief presentation is the "reading"of sociocultural identities from grave data. My specific point of referencewill be the practice of placing a plate in the coffin with the deceasedprior to burial. Does this practice represent an Africanism? That is, isthis practice a cultural "carry-over" from Africa? Is it partof a Creole Slave culture formed from European and Native American sourcesas well as African influences? And further, can such a practice be usedto infer aspects of a decease's sociocultural identity?
I am going to briefly define what I mean by sociocultural identity, andI will then outline what I know about plates in graves. Finally, I willdiscuss the implications of these data for archaeological interpretation.
Without taking up a lot of time for this aspect of my discussion, socioculturalidentity consists of those shared aspects of group identity which are bothconsciously and unconsciously constructed and performed in the course ofeveryday life. The material effects of class, ethnicity, and religious affiliationhave been among the aspects of identity that historical archaeologists haveconsidered. Some of these identities, following Barth, must be recognizednot only by the individuals who comprise the group, but also by individualsexternal to the group. Various learned values, practices, and signs andsymbols, transmitted from generation to generation, constitute the substanceof these identities. Accordingly, these identities are both social and culturalin nature. We should note that while race too is a socially constructedcategory, it differs from ethnicity and other identities in that it is basedupon inherited physical characteristics rather than on learned culturalsubstance.
I first became interested in the problem of plates in graves followingthe recovery of broken, but otherwise complete, plates from two individualgraves at the 8th Street First African Baptist Church cemetery in Philadelphia,excavated under Mike Parrington's direction in 1984-85. I began to considerthis phenomenon and its sociocultural connections more seriously when noplates were recovered during my own excavation of the earlier 10th StreetFirst African Baptist Church cemetery in 1990. The 8th Street cemetery hadbeen in use from 1823 until the early 1840s, while the 10th Street cemeterywas used from 1810 until 1822.
I want to make clear that what I am talking about is the inclusion ofceramics in the actual grave. This should not be confused with the practiceof decorating the surface of graves with ceramics, glassware, cooking pots,or shiny objects, a practice that has been well documented in parts of thesouth and in the Kongo region of Africa.
A ceramic plate had been placed on the stomach of the deceased insidethe coffin in each of these two burials at the 8th Street cemetery: thefirst was of blue edge-decorated pearlware and the second was of hand-paintedChinese porcelain. The Old World and Native American archaeological literaturesare replete with examples of the inclusion of ceramic vessels and other"grave goods" in burials, apparently for use by the deceased inthe afterlife or as a form of social display of wealth and/or power. Africanethnographic literature also makes some reference to grave offerings, includingceramics. However, reports of ceramics from historic period burials in theNew World are far less common.
To my knowledge there are only a few published and grey literature reportsof such occurrences. Saucers have been recovered from four post-bellem African-Americangraves in the southern United States (Cabak and Wilson 1998). A white salt-glazedstoneware saucer and a feather-edged creamware plate were reported recoveredfrom two separate eighteenth-century English graves in Jamaica (Fremmer1973). A shallow redware bowl was found in the grave of an enslaved Africanat the Newton Cemetery in Barbados (Handler and Lange 1973:137), and morerecently, an ironstone plate was recovered from the grave of a poorly preservedfemale of indeterminate race at the Quaker Cemetery in Alexandria, Virginia.
The purpose and meaning of these objects is somewhat ambiguous. Femmer(1973), and others, has reported that plates of salt were traditionallyused in parts of Ireland and England to control odor and/or bloating ofthe deceased. When discussing this issue a number of years ago with MikeParrington, he told me the following story, which he claimed to be an oldtraditional joke from rural Britain: A farm laborer was applying for a jobat the manor house. The farm manager says, "So you say you've beenworking at the farm just down the road for nearly the last month. Why didyou leave that job?" The hand replies, "Well, the first week Iwas there the old cow died, and that wasn't bad eating. Then the secondweek, the old pig died, and that wasn't bad eating either. The third week,the old horse died, and that wasn't such good eating. So after that, whenI saw the master taking a plate of salt up to his old, sick mother's room,I knew it was time to leave."
Based on what he was able to learn about this practice, Ray Fremmer (1973),who reported the Jamaican examples, concluded that the inclusion of ceramicvessels in the Jamaican graves might have been due to oversight rather thanthe result of an intentional act. But he also noted that in isolated partsof Jamaica it was traditional to place a dish containing a mixture of coffeeand salt on the stomach of the deceased throughout the wake and burial.The widespread African practice of pouring of "libations" forthe ancestors, while not generally involving a vessel, is another death-relatedpractice that may have resulted in the accidental inclusion of a ceramicvessel in the grave.
It is also possible that these plates were deliberately placed in thegraves for use in the afterlife, or the burial of the plate last used bythe deceased may also have been meant to prevent the deceased spirit fromharming the living. In parts of the South and Africa it was believed thatthe "energy" or "essence" of the dead was embodied inobjects last used by the deceased. Further, if the plates had been deliberatelybroken before being buried, that would lend support to the notion that theirplacement in the grave was to "ground" the energy of the deceased.
Implications
Is a plate in a grave an Africanism? Maybe, or maybe not. It is probablymore accurate to consider this practice part of the creole complex of slaveculture that arose in the New World from a wide variety of sources. We havefew known examples of this practice in the record, and all are from African-Americanburials or other slave culture contexts. If placing plates in graves wastruly a widespread traditional English practice, we should have at leastsome evidence of its occurrence outside the context of slave culture.
Is this practice indicative of African influences or an explicitly African-Americanidentity? Probably, but not necessarily exclusively so. Clearly, the extentto which practices such as the burial of a plate in a grave can be usedto infer sociocultural identity must be tied to the extent to which thepractice is exclusively associated with a particular sociocultural groupin specific temporal and geographic contexts. Base on what we know at thispoint, such can not be said to be the case with respect to plates in graves.As with the interpretation of most archaeological phenomena, we need muchmore comparative data before a definitive finding will be possible so be sure to let me know if you ever find a plate in a grave.
Cabak, Melanie, and Kristin Wilson
1998 Gender Differences among African-American Interments in the AmericanSouth. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for HistoricalArchaeology, Atlanta, GA.
Fremmer, Ray
1973 Dishes in Colonial Graves: Evidence from Jamaica. HistoricalArchaeology 3: 59-60.
Handler, Jerome S., and Frederick W. Lange
1978 Plantation Slavery in Barbados: An Archaeological and HistoricalInvestigation. Harvard University Press, Cambridge.
Journal of Intercultural Studies is an international journal addressinginter- and multi-cultural issues published twice a year by Carfax PublishingCompany, P. O. Box 25, Abington, Oxfordshire, OX14 3UE, UK. Vol. 18, No.1 (April 1997) included an essay by Gill Bottomley, "Identification:ethnicity, gender, and culture."
Multicultural Review is published quarterly by Greenwood Publishing Group,Westport, CT. It addresses ethnic, racial, and religious diversity, particularlyin the classroom context.
Social Identities is a journal for the study of race, nation, and culturepublished three times a year by Carfax Publishing Company, P. O. Box 25,Abington, Oxfordshire, OX14 3UE, UK. Social Identities is an interdisciplinaryand international focal point for theorizing issues at the interface ofsocial identities. Issues of particular concern include the transformationof economies and cultures of postmodern and post colonial contexts.
CRM: Cultural Resources Management, Volume 21, No. 4, was a special issueon Slavery and Resistance, edited by Frank Faragasso and Doug Stover. Publishedby the National Park Service and distributed free of charge, this was thethird annual thematic issue devoted to African-American history. The focusof this issue is slavery and the underground railroad, topics that are currentlyreceiving a lot of attention in the Park Service. While only one of thearticles is concerned with an archaeological property, the townsite of Quindaroin Kansas, there is much of interest here, particularly concerning the publicinterpretation of the African-American past. CRM is available by writingto the NPS' cultural Resources office, 1849 C Street, NW, Suite 350NC, Washington,DC 20240.
Dictionary of Afro-American Slavery, edited by Randall M. Miller andJohn David Smith, 1997 pb 2nd ed (1988 1st hc ed), Praeger, Greenwood PublishingGroup, Westport.
African-American Midwifery in the South: Dialogues of Birth, Race, andMemory, Gertrude Jacinta Fraser, 1998, hc, Harvard University Press, Cambridge.
Black Voices from Reconstruction, 1865-1877, John David Smith, 1997 pb,1996 hc, University Press of Florida, Gainesville.
The Bahamas from Slavery to Servitude, 1783-1933, Howard Johnson, 1997hc, University Press of Florida, Gainesville.
A Historical Guide to World Slavery, edited by Semour Drescher and StanleyEngerman, 1998 hc, Oxford University Press, New York.
The Historical Encyclopedia of World Slavery, 2 Volumes, edited by JuniusP. Rodriguez, 1997 hc, ABC-CLIO.
African Americans in Pennsylvania: Shifting Historical Perspectives,edited by Joe W. Trotter, Jr. and Eric Ledell Smith, 1997 hc & pb, PennsylvaniaHistorical and Museum Commission, Harrisburg, and Penn State Press, UniversityPark.
The History of the African-American People: The History, Traditions,and Culture of African Americans, edited by James Oliver Horton and LoisE. Horton, 1997, Wayne State University Press, Detroit.
Exchanging Our County Marks: The Transformation of African Identitiesin the Colonial and Antebellum South, Michael A. Gomez, 1998 hc & pb,University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill.
Mastered by the Clock: Time, Slavery, and Freedom in the American South,Mark M. Smith, 1997 hc & pb, University of North Carolina Press, ChapelHill.
Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in the Eighteenth-Century Chesapeakeand Lowcounty, Philip D. Morgan, 1998 hc & pb, University of North CarolinaPress, Chapel Hill.
The Worldbook African-American Journey: presents a well-produced overviewhistory of Africans in America at: www.worldbook.com/features/blackhistory/index.
The National Park Service's quarterly journal, CRM: Cultural ResourcesManagement, is available in an electronic version at www.cr.nps.gov/crm.
SiteScene is a biweekly review of new websites and other electronic resourcesin American Studies. Reviews will be posted every two weeks to the mainpage of the Crossroads American Studies Web at: www. george-town.edu/crossroads/asw.
Ontario Black History Exhibit on the Web: Visit the McCurdy collection- a virtual exhibit of photographs and text that gives an insight to thelives of some of Ontario's early black settlers. Presented by the Archivesof Ontario, in co-operation with the Ontario Black History Society. Youcan find this exhibit on the Archives of Ontario's website at: www.gov.on.ca/mczcr/archives/mccurdy/mccurdy1.
An Anthology of WPA Slave Narratives and other research resources areavailable at the University of Virginia's site: xroads.virgnia.edu/~HYPER/hypertex.
American Quarterly: the index for this journal from 1975-95 and fulltext of more recent issues is available at: jhupress.jhu.edu/journals/aq.
Seneca Village: The New York Historical Society tells the history ofthis African-American village in what is now New York's Central Park at:projects.ilt.columbia. edu/seneca/start.
Michael A. Morrison, 1997. Slavery and the American West: The Eclipseof Manifest Destiny and the Coming of the Civil War. Chapel Hill: Universityof North Carolina Press. xii + 396 pp. Notes, bibliography, index. $49.95(cloth).
In the author's words, this book "examines the relationship betweenthe territorial issue and the origins of the American Civil War." Combining"political, diplomatic, and intellectual history, it explores the origin,force, and effect of expansion and western settlement on national politicsin the 1840s and 1850s" (p. 4). Morrison argues that this period shouldbe viewed in its own terms rather than simply as part of an inevitable progressiontoward civil war.
Morrison tries to present both public and private discourses of antebellumAmericans as they evaluated slavery, popular sovereignty, the Kansas-NebraskaAct, and the constituent elements of republicanism. In each chapter Morrisonbriefly sketches a major aspect of western expansion during the antebellumyears and provides the justifications offered by policy advocates and thecounter arguments of opponents. Throughout, individuals, rather than facelessideologies, are placed in the foreground of the narrative.
The volume offers a sophisticated analysis of the process by which Americanstransformed the ideology of republicanism from one that accommodated theneeds of two national political parties in the Jackson years to regionallydivergent understandings of the place and justification of slavery. In time,these divisions were carried to the point of war, with each region convincedthat the other was infringing the principles of liberty and equality proclaimedat the beginning of the republic.
Frederick M. Binder and David M. Reimers, 1995. All the Nations underHeaven: An Ethnic and Racial History of New York City. New York: ColumbiaUniversity Press. xii + 353 pp. Notes, selected bibliography, index. $29.50(cloth), $16.50 (paper).
Binder and Reimers present a narrative and analytical history of ethnicand racial relations in New York from its Dutch colonial founding in 1624through the present. The focus is on how immigrant newcomers to the cityadjusted and accommodated to the city's ever-changing environment.
The authors find the great immigrations of the 19th century the mostsignificant. Massive Irish, German, Italian, and East European immigrationresulted in distinct neighborhoods in Manhattan, such as the Irish SixthWard. Concentration of numbers brought political, economic, and social opportunities.
After W.W. II, Puerto Ricans, European refugees, and African-Americansfound generally favorable economic circumstances. However, more recently,the newest immigrants from the third world have encountered economic crisesand racial and ethnic conflict.
While the social, political, and economic aspects of New York's ethnicgroups are clearly presented, the treatment of the cultural experiencesand contributions of these groups is much weaker. For readers of A-A A thevolume's comprehensive survey of previous scholarship on ethnic groups inNew York will be particularly useful.
Patience Essah, 1996. A House Divided: Slavery and Emancipation inDelaware, 1638-1865. Charlottesville and London: University Press ofVirginia. xi + 217 pp. Tables, notes, index. $29.50 (cloth).
Delaware, being a small state, has often been overlooked by researchersdealing with broad national trends and processes. Until recently, this hasbeen the case with respect to the history of slavery and emancipation aswell. Essah's volume corrects this, providing a thorough analysis of thepatterns of bondage, freedom, agriculture, religion, and politics that comprisedrace relations in the state for more than 200 years.
Delaware was an oddity in a number of ways. It did not join the waveof legislative emancipation that swept through the states to its north inthe late 18th century. There were also never enough slaves in the stateto have possibly ended the institution violently, nor enough slaveholdersto warrant Delaware joining the Confederacy. However, many of the elementspresent in other slave states, from Enlightenment ideology to Draconianslave codes, co-existed in Delaware, thus resulting in a case study in politicalinterest and economic necessity.
Racial demographics and their effects on policy are presented in detail.Gradual emancipation is presented as a means by which slaveholders wereable to eliminate excess bonded labor, while at the same time they madeuse of indentured ("half-free") workers.
The free Black community, that came to outnumber those enslaved, receivesconsiderable attention. Abolitionism is also considered, as are African-Americanattempts to build institutions separate from white control.
Overall, this is a valuable work on a slave society experiencing economicand social change. Delaware, as a border state, presents a microcosm ofthe processes present in adjoining states, both north and south.
William McKee Evans, 1995. Ballots and Fence Rails: Reconstructionon the Lower Cape Fear. Foreword by Charles Joyner. Athens and London:University of Georgia Press. xx + 314 pp. Illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography,index. $19.95 (paper).
This reprint makes Evans' classic local history of Reconstruction inNorth Carolina, first published in 1965, available to a new generation ofresearchers and reminds us of the issues revisionist scholars faced in the1960s. The new edition includes a brief Foreword by Charles Joyner who reflectson the changes in historical scholarship which have generally came to passover the past few decades. Joyner also notes the importance of Evans havingexamined wide-ranging issues through the study of a "small place."
Evans illuminates the historiographic context of his study in his finalchapter. He challenges many of the then prevailing notions about Reconstruction,such as it was marked by "Negro domination" and Northern "carpetbaggers"consistently brought malicious misgovernment to the region. He does not,however, argue that Reconstruction was without its problems. It left inplace a political system that placed steadfast limitations on the possibilitiesfor change. The persistence of "serious cultural and economic inequalities"and the lack of a "politically reliable mechanism of force", inparticular, sustained the return of reactionary regimes in the region (pp.257-58).
While certain aspects of Evan's use of language and racial attitudeshave not bore the test of time well, his detailed knowledge of this particularplace's history, and his lively narrative reflecting the complexity of humannature and 19th-century race relations make this study a classic.
Joe William Trotter, Jr. and Eric Ledell Smith, Editors, 1997. AfricanAmericans in Pennsylvania: Shifting Historical Perspectives. UniversityPark: The Pennsylvania State University Press and the Pennsylvania Historicaland Museum Commission. xv + 519 pp. Illustrations, maps, notes, index. $45.00(cloth), $19.95 (paper).
This anthology volume brings together an outstanding collection of researchpapers that together present a detailed picture of the African-Americanexperience in the commonwealth from the 17th century founding of Pennsylvaniathrough the postindustrial era of the late 20th century. While the scholarlycommunity has had access to these materials in the journals and specializedmonographs in which most originally appeared, their assembly here is notonly constitutes a convenience for researchers, but also presents theseessays in a form accessible to an educated general audience that includescommunity leaders and policy makers.
The volume opens with an introductory review of the historical literatureon African Americans in Pennsylvania by the senior editor. This is a comprehensiveassessment of the major themes that historians have addressed, not justan overview of the papers presented in this volume, and accordingly it isa valuable resource in itself.
The 19 other contributions are divided into four sections: The CommercialEconomy (1684-1840), The Industrializing Era (1840-1870), The IndustrialEra (1870-1945), and The Transformation of the Black Community (1945-1985).Part 1 documents the transformation of enslaved Africans into free AfricanAmericans. Part 2 considers the impacts of early industrialization, urbanizationand emancipation. Part 3 examines de facto segregation, immigration, theDepression and the World Wars to emphasize new forms of race relations.Finally, Part 4 considers the effects of the civil rights movement, deindustrialization,and the spread of urban poverty. Overall, the essays address the interplayof race, class, and gender issues, predominately in the major metropolitancenters of Philad3e,phia and Pittsburgh.
"Bloomsbury and Mitsawoket: Rediscovering an Indian Past",was presented at the Cheswold Fire House, Cheswold, Delaware, Saturday,May 9, 1998. This was a public report of research sponsored by the DelawareDepartment of Transportation, presented by Heite Consulting of Camden, Delaware.Exhibits included artifacts from the site, maps, diagrams, and charts.
Researching Slavery and Heritage in the Sea Islands: May 20-28, Charleston,South Carolina. This workshop, organized by the Sea Islands Institute, isfor advanced graduate students, independent scholars, and college teachersinterested in researching African-American heritage. Emphasis is on criticalanalysis as well as exploring opportunities for project collaboration. Attendeesshould expect to participate in all workshop activities. The workshop costof $375 includes materials, site visits, seminars, welcome and departurereceptions. Applications are due April 20. For further information, contactDr. Clive Muir, at (803)536-1997 or muir@mailexcite.com.
Editor/Publisher:John P. McCarthy, Greenhorne & O'Mara, Inc.,9001 Edmonston Road, Greenbelt, MD 20770 (301)-220-1876
Northeast:James Garmon, Public Archaeology Laboratory, Inc., 210Lonsdale Avenue, Pawtucket, RI 02860 (401)-728-8780
Mid-Atlantic:Barbara Heath, The Corporation for Jefferson's PopularForest, P. O. Box 419, Forest, VA 24551
Southeast:Joe W. Joseph, New South Associates, Inc. 4889 LewisRoad, Stone Mountain, GA 30083 (770)-498-4155
Caribbean:Paul Farnsworth, Dept. of Geography and Anthropology,Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA 70803
Midwest: Matthew Emerson, Anthropology Department, Southern IllinoisUniversity, Edwardsville, IL 62026 (618)-692-5689
Mid-South/So. Plains: Leslie "Skip" Stewart-Abernathy,Arkansas Archaeological Survey, P. O. Box 8706 AKU, Russellville, AK 72801(501)-968-0381
West:Laurie Wilkie, Anthropology Department, University of California,Berkeley, CA 94720