The Archaeology of African-American Slavery and Material Culture

Abstract

I N the late i98os, archaeologists digging in a structure of a former slave quarter at Jordan Plantation near Houston, Texas, uncovered a group of artifacts that had been left in one corner of the building after its occupants had been abruptly evicted and kept from returning to collect their belongings.1 Unremarkable as single objects, the seashells, beads, doll parts, chalk, bird skulls, bottles, and bases of cast iron cooking pots gain significance when analyzed contextually as related items from a slave quarter. Ethnographic and historical evidence shows that these artifacts, virtually identical to those used by modern-day Yoruba diviners for healing and other rituals, were components in a West African-style conjurer's kit.2 Increased interest in exploring cultural diversity and empowering African Americans has led to extensive research in African-American history, material culture, folklore, and religion. Archaeological research on post-European contact sites in North America dates only from the I93os; African-American archaeology is even more recent. The first excavation of an AfricanAmerican slave quarter took place in i968, and it was not until the late I970s, as the concerns of anthropology and social history converged, that broad-ranging issues began to be addressed by archaeologists.3 These issues, largely guided by the research interests of historians, involved the context of everyday plantation life, social relationships between planters and slaves, processes of culture change resulting from contact between European Americans and African Americans, and the presence of West African cultural markers within the archaeological record.4 It is evident that an interdiscipli