Pub Date : 2021-08-18DOI: 10.1080/21619441.2021.1963034
Faye Sayer
ABSTRACT This paper explores the interpretation and presentation of the transatlantic slave trade in Nigerian museums. It focuses on two contrasting case studies, namely the government-funded Slave History Museum (Calabar) and the privately run Seriki Faremi Williams Abass Slave Museum (Badagry). To investigate the complex and conflicting national and local narrative frameworks by which the slave trade and enslavement are presented to the public, this study focuses on qualitative content analysis of museum displays in addition to visitor observations. Comparative analysis of these museums suggests that this historically complex and emotional heritage cannot be understood in isolation from wider local, national, or global narratives. The paper explores the importance of taking a humanizing and empathetic approach to the presentation of the transatlantic slave trade in museums. I also consider how future practice might include ideas of localization and personalization to decolonize “official” slave trade heritage narratives in Nigeria and beyond.
摘要本文探讨了尼日利亚博物馆对跨大西洋奴隶贸易的解读和展示。它侧重于两个对比鲜明的案例研究,即政府资助的奴隶历史博物馆(卡拉巴尔)和私营的Seriki Faremi Williams Abass奴隶博物馆(Badagry)。为了调查向公众展示奴隶贸易和奴役的复杂和冲突的国家和地方叙事框架,本研究除了关注游客的观察外,还关注博物馆展览的定性内容分析。对这些博物馆的比较分析表明,不能孤立于更广泛的地方、国家或全球叙事来理解这种历史上复杂和情感上的遗产。本文探讨了在博物馆展示跨大西洋奴隶贸易时采取人性化和同理心的方法的重要性。我还考虑了未来的实践如何包括本地化和个性化的想法,以使尼日利亚及其他地区的“官方”奴隶贸易遗产叙事非殖民化。
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Pub Date : 2021-06-10DOI: 10.1080/21619441.2021.1932387
Nedra K. Lee
ABSTRACT Black newspapers are an important yet underused source for historically contextualizing African American sites. The Black press helped shape notions of African American identity and community through philosophies of racial uplift that promoted a vision of Black achievement and citizenship. Although sociologist E. Franklin Frazier criticized the Black press as elitist, I suggest that non-affluent African Americans were also invested in tenets of racial uplift. To demonstrate this, I examine five Black Texas newspapers and oral histories in conjunction with artifacts recovered from the Ransom and Sarah Williams Farmstead, a postbellum site in Travis County, Texas. The evidence suggests that emancipated Blacks, even in seemingly remote rural communities, mobilized around principles of racial uplift through education, consumer behavior, and religious devotion. I use the newspapers to contextualize the archaeological evidence and highlight the overlaps between messages of racial uplift in the Black press and the actions of the Williams family.
摘要黑人报纸是一个重要但未被充分利用的非裔美国人网站的历史背景来源。黑人媒体通过宣扬黑人成就和公民身份的种族提升哲学,帮助塑造了非裔美国人的身份和社区观念。尽管社会学家E.Franklin Frazier批评黑人媒体是精英主义者,但我认为非富裕的非裔美国人也被灌输了种族提升的原则。为了证明这一点,我检查了五份得克萨斯州黑人报纸和口述历史,以及从得克萨斯州特拉维斯县的Ransom和Sarah Williams Farmstead遗址中发现的文物。证据表明,即使在看似偏远的农村社区,获得解放的黑人也通过教育、消费者行为和宗教信仰,围绕种族提升的原则进行动员。我用报纸将考古证据置于背景中,并强调黑人媒体中种族提升的信息与威廉姆斯家族的行为之间的重叠。
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Pub Date : 2021-05-04DOI: 10.1080/21619441.2021.1977489
E. Mcdougall
ABSTRACT This introductory essay explores the rich historiography lying at the intersection of African urban and African slavery studies. How does the study of slaves, former slaves and those of slave descent in urban environments help us understand emancipation in Africa? How have those experiences of historical and contemporary emancipation shaped African cities? Case studies from Gambia, Mauritania, Niger, Tanzania, and Madagascar address these questions. Contributors question long-held assumptions about cities providing autonomy, anonymity, and prosperity to those of slave origin. They suggest that interconnections between the rural and the urban are both material and ideological; moreover, memories and traditions travel the same migration paths as people. Thus, life histories tracing individual trajectories are key to revealing the humanity of urban slavery. As important as recent cultural studies are, however, labor—what people do, why they do it, and who they do it for—remains central to the urban “post-slave” experience.
{"title":"Introduction: African Cities and Urban Slavery in Historiographical Perspective","authors":"E. Mcdougall","doi":"10.1080/21619441.2021.1977489","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21619441.2021.1977489","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This introductory essay explores the rich historiography lying at the intersection of African urban and African slavery studies. How does the study of slaves, former slaves and those of slave descent in urban environments help us understand emancipation in Africa? How have those experiences of historical and contemporary emancipation shaped African cities? Case studies from Gambia, Mauritania, Niger, Tanzania, and Madagascar address these questions. Contributors question long-held assumptions about cities providing autonomy, anonymity, and prosperity to those of slave origin. They suggest that interconnections between the rural and the urban are both material and ideological; moreover, memories and traditions travel the same migration paths as people. Thus, life histories tracing individual trajectories are key to revealing the humanity of urban slavery. As important as recent cultural studies are, however, labor—what people do, why they do it, and who they do it for—remains central to the urban “post-slave” experience.","PeriodicalId":37778,"journal":{"name":"Journal of African Diaspora Archaeology and Heritage","volume":"10 1","pages":"1 - 45"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46686228","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-04-08DOI: 10.1080/21619441.2021.1908774
Karen E. McIlvoy
ABSTRACT Laundry represented a significant portion of the domestic labor on nineteenth century plantations. However, despite the ubiquity of their task, enslaved African American washerwomen have been neglected in the historical study of plantation labor. By situating archaeological interpretations of enslaved labor within the historical context of laundry, archaeologists can better incorporate this oft-overlooked chore into interpretations of female labor on Southern plantations. Using this technique, this article explores laundering at Poplar Forest, Thomas Jefferson’s retreat home and plantation in central Virginia.
{"title":"“Take Heede When Ye Wash”: Recognizing the Labor of Enslaved Laundresses on Southern Plantations","authors":"Karen E. McIlvoy","doi":"10.1080/21619441.2021.1908774","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21619441.2021.1908774","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Laundry represented a significant portion of the domestic labor on nineteenth century plantations. However, despite the ubiquity of their task, enslaved African American washerwomen have been neglected in the historical study of plantation labor. By situating archaeological interpretations of enslaved labor within the historical context of laundry, archaeologists can better incorporate this oft-overlooked chore into interpretations of female labor on Southern plantations. Using this technique, this article explores laundering at Poplar Forest, Thomas Jefferson’s retreat home and plantation in central Virginia.","PeriodicalId":37778,"journal":{"name":"Journal of African Diaspora Archaeology and Heritage","volume":"11 1","pages":"130 - 155"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-04-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/21619441.2021.1908774","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49337684","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-03-31DOI: 10.1080/21619441.2021.1902706
Kayeleigh Sharp, M. R. McCorvie, M. Wagner
ABSTRACT XRchaeology at Miller Grove is a web-based collection of new media components, including digital storytelling, geographic information systems, virtual tours, three-dimensional objects, and web-based virtual reality presentations. XRchaeology contributes to revisions of traditional narratives about free African Americans and the network of escape routes referred to as the Underground Railroad (UGRR). This project focuses attention on potential African American “conductors” in the UGRR and resituates African Americans as the agents of their own freedom. XRchaeology emphasizes that freedom was achieved across a continuum shaped by social, economic, and legal biases and anti-immigration sentiments. The XRchaeology application is designed for both traditional learners and non-specialist members of the public, as the project facilitates self-directed learning and evidence-based inquiry for all interest levels.
Miller Grove的XRchaeology是一个基于网络的新媒体组件集合,包括数字故事、地理信息系统、虚拟游览、三维物体和基于网络的虚拟现实演示。x考古学有助于修订关于自由的非裔美国人和被称为地下铁路(UGRR)的逃跑路线网络的传统叙述。这个项目将注意力集中在潜在的非裔美国人在UGRR中的“指挥者”,并将非裔美国人作为他们自己自由的代理人。XRchaeology强调,自由是在社会、经济、法律偏见和反移民情绪的影响下实现的。XRchaeology应用程序是为传统学习者和非专业公众设计的,因为该项目促进了所有兴趣水平的自主学习和基于证据的探究。
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Pub Date : 2021-03-31DOI: 10.1080/21619441.2021.1894539
C. Goode
ABSTRACT Under the conditions of corporate slavery in the Great Dismal Swamp, enslaved women transformed the mechanisms of capitalist exchange into resistance. Archaeological evidence from Dismal Town, a late-eighteenth-century corporate plantation, shows that enslaved women consumed ceramics and clothing adornments that signaled social equality. Their participation in mass consumption was an act of resistive consumption that allowed them to imagine and enact a life outside of slavery, despite their being considered as commodities and exploited for productive and reproductive labor under harsh conditions by the Dismal Swamp Company.
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Pub Date : 2021-03-29DOI: 10.1080/21619441.2021.1878794
E. Mcdougall
ABSTRACT This article analyzes the urban growth of Nouakchott, capital of Mauritania, between 1960 and 2016. Growth was shaped both by in-migration driven by recurrent droughts, and by the end and subsequent transformation of slavery. Living in Nouakchott’s poor, unplanned bidonville neighborhoods influenced how slaves and slave descendants saw themselves, especially in relation to former masters. Some joined impoverished but non-servile cultivators and herders working in the informal economy. Others used Islam to claim their former masters’ continuing protection. Still others used the urban environment to negotiate new social roles and relationships. Since the 1990s, bidonville life has also shaped how hundreds of thousands of voters expressed themselves at the ballot box. In 2007, this power extended to electing the President himself. This history illuminates how the intertwined transformations of Nouakchott as an urban living space and slavery as a social institution explain Mauritania’s contemporary “post-slave” identity, tensions, and political volatility.
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Pub Date : 2020-12-16DOI: 10.1080/21619441.2020.1850057
Teresa S. Moyer
ABSTRACT The Mount Clare Museum House in Baltimore, Maryland has potential to offer a new approach to community service in Baltimore inspired by archaeological findings, but one that is different from a traditional historic house model. Facing challenges surrounding relevance and institutional survival, the site as a museum sits at a crossroads. The site managers of Mount Clare, a former plantation, historically erased and muted Black histories. However, those histories now drive the rejuvenation and reinvention of the museum. The move of the archaeological collections to the city’s control opens possibilities for more connected archaeological and community service program with the people who live around and use Carroll Park.
位于马里兰州巴尔的摩市的克莱尔山博物馆(Mount Clare Museum House)受到考古发现的启发,有可能为巴尔的摩市提供一种新的社区服务方式,但它与传统的历史建筑模式不同。面对相关性和机构生存的挑战,该基地作为博物馆坐落在十字路口。克莱尔山(Mount Clare)曾经是一个种植园,这里的管理人员在历史上抹去了黑人的历史,淡化了黑人的历史。然而,这些历史现在推动着博物馆的复兴和改造。将考古收藏转移到城市管理,为与居住和使用卡罗尔公园的人们建立更多联系的考古和社区服务项目提供了可能性。
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Pub Date : 2020-11-15DOI: 10.1080/21619441.2020.1840835
E. Pruitt
ABSTRACT Much of what we know about the Wye House Plantation in Talbot County, Maryland in the nineteenth century comes from the writings of Frederick Douglass, who was enslaved there. His descriptions of the landscape serve as a starting point for thinking about the past experiences of the enslaved people within this place. The terror and violence that the landscape represented in slavery conjures up not only the events of the past, but also the ways that trauma echoes throughout generations. Using Douglass’ autobiographies, archaeology, landscape studies, the works of Toni Morrison, and ideas about the hauntings of place, there are ways to think about this plantation as a landscape of irreparable loss, but also of return and resolution.
{"title":"Pasts Lost: The Wye House Plantation as a Place of Haunting","authors":"E. Pruitt","doi":"10.1080/21619441.2020.1840835","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21619441.2020.1840835","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Much of what we know about the Wye House Plantation in Talbot County, Maryland in the nineteenth century comes from the writings of Frederick Douglass, who was enslaved there. His descriptions of the landscape serve as a starting point for thinking about the past experiences of the enslaved people within this place. The terror and violence that the landscape represented in slavery conjures up not only the events of the past, but also the ways that trauma echoes throughout generations. Using Douglass’ autobiographies, archaeology, landscape studies, the works of Toni Morrison, and ideas about the hauntings of place, there are ways to think about this plantation as a landscape of irreparable loss, but also of return and resolution.","PeriodicalId":37778,"journal":{"name":"Journal of African Diaspora Archaeology and Heritage","volume":"11 1","pages":"74 - 92"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-11-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/21619441.2020.1840835","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43572404","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-11-15DOI: 10.1080/21619441.2020.1840834
H. Bassett
ABSTRACT Studies of plantation surveillance have provided important understandings of the material dimensions of elite power and control over enslaved people. These studies have emphasized inter-visibility of managerial housing and the living/working spaces of enslaved people, as a panoptic strategy to enforce self-discipline. This emphasis on inter-visibility of living and working spaces, however, assumes a static population, rather than a complex, industrial society in motion. Using Space Syntax analysis, cartographic records, historic travelers’ accounts, and landscape documentation, this study addresses surveillance and planter control through a mobilities approach, elevating the status of road networks, while identifying the plantation as a carefully orchestrated landscape of movement. I demonstrate how understanding the manner in which movement is limited or itinerated, and for whom, represents a productive avenue of research at the intersection of inequality, control, and mobility. This approach is developed through a distinct archaeology of infrastructure.
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