Descendant Communities Research Articles

Bioarchaeological Approaches to African Diasporas in the Twenty-First Century: Intercontinental and Global Legacies of Displacement

ABSTRACT Bioarchaeological research offers a window into health and life experiences in the past, including the biocultural dimensions of social identities and structural inequalities experienced by enslaved and free Afro-descendants across the African diaspora. Given the long history of descendant communities and advocates contesting the authority of institutions to curate human remains in perpetuity, critical dialogues over the past several decades have stimulated new directions in the discipline of African diaspora bioarchaeology alongside increased engagement with Black scholarship and community and client-based collaborations. We build upon previous discussions and critiques to examine the current state of African diaspora bioarchaeology in global context in the early decades of the twenty-first century. We present a macro-level, chronological examination of published African diaspora and colonial African bioarchaeological research by region between 2001 and 2023 and conclude with a discussion of the current state of practices and engagement in the field and ethics of care.

Exercises in ethically engaged work in biological anthropology.

An ethical paradigm shift currently taking place within biological anthropology is pushing scholars to envisage and develop paths toward more ethical futures. Drawing from case studies in our own teaching, research, and fieldwork experience, we reflect on the complex, diverse, and dynamic nature of ethical considerations in our field. We discuss the acquisition and institutional narrative of a human osteological teaching collection at the University of Louisville as an embodiment of structural apathy turned structural violence, and the need for professional guidance in the potential retirement of deceased individuals from our classrooms. In documented collections (i.e., the Robert J. Terry Collection), we share our process and scholarly reemphasis of the humanity of a deceased individual through contextualized analysis (i.e., osteobiography and archival history) and postmortem agentive acts. Lastly, we present an archeological site in the U.S. Virgin Islands, which poses ethical concerns as biocultural bioarcheologists and archeologists attempt to negotiate the possible wishes of the deceased with the cultural value of reconstructing the community's otherwise undocumented past, all amidst the immediate threat of anthropogenic climate change. We offer these exercises and discussion in ethically engaged projects transparently and with an overarching admission that none are models for replication. Rather, at various stages in our careers and engagement with ethics, we acknowledge that progress is worthwhile, albeit challenging, and that proceeding forward collectively as biological anthropologists should be deliberate, reflexive, and compassionate for deceased individuals and their descendant communities, as well as among and between colleagues.

An African American Burial Ground in Philadelphia: “Discovered,” Protected, Eradicated

ABSTRACT Construction in 2018 brought to light a previously unknown Black graveyard that operated from 1826 to 1882 on the outskirts of densely populated Philadelphia. To assure dignified burials, founders of the African Friends to Harmony Burial Ground created a “beneficial,” a form widely used by contemporary African Americans. Burials ended in 1882 as urban development encroached on the graveyard. Within a few decades, it had been erased from property deeds and public memory. In 2019–20, the two churches deemed descendant communities by the property owner, the University of Pennsylvania, chose to relocate the remains. This article points to instances where Black cemeteries have been retained in place or emerged as crucial instances of public engagement. Exploring the aspirations and struggles of those who established and tended African Friends to Harmony ground, the article reveals the richness of its history but the missed opportunity to commemorate the region’s complex past.

Ethics and applications of isotope analysis in archaeology

AbstractThis synthesis explores specific ethical questions that commonly arise in isotopic analysis. For more than four decades, isotope analysis has been employed in archeological studies to explore past human and animal dietary habits, mobility patterns, and the environment in which a human or animal inhabited during life. These analyses require consideration of ethical issues. While theoretical concepts are discussed, we focus on practical aspects: working with descendant communities and other rights holders, choosing methods, creating and sharing data, and working mindfully within academia. These layers of respect and care should surround our science. This paper is relevant for specialists in isotope analysis as well as those incorporating these methods into larger projects. By covering the whole of the research process, from design to output management, we appeal broadly to archaeology and provide actionable solutions that build on the discussions in the general field.

Confined within a sugarcane monoculture: A participatory assessment of water pollution and potential health risks in the community of El Tiple, Colombia

Communities neighboring monoculture plantations are vulnerable to different forms of pollution associated with agro-industrial operations. Herein, we examine the case of El Tiple, a rural Afro descendant community embedded within one of the largest sugarcane plantations in the Americas. We implemented a participatory approach to assess water pollution, exposure via water ingestion, and non-carcinogenic health risks associated with the use of local water sources available to the community. We conducted household surveys to unveil demographic characteristics and family dynamics linked to water consumption. Additionally, we measured water quality parameters and assessed the concentration glyphosate, its major metabolite (aminomethylphosphonic acid) and metals and metalloids. Drinking water El Tiple households is sourced from three primary sources: the local aqueduct system, water delivery trucks, and private deep wells. Tests on water samples from both the local aqueduct and delivery trucks showed no traces of pesticides, metals, or metalloids surpassing regulatory limits set by Colombian or EPA standards. However, we found concentration of contaminants of primary concern, including mercury (up to 0.0052 ppm) and lead (up to 0.0375 ppm) that exceed the permissible regulatory thresholds in water from groundwater wells. Residents of the peripheric subdivisions of El Tiple are four times more reliant on well water extraction than residents of the central area of the town due to lack of access to public drinking water and sanitation infrastructure. Finally, adult women and school-age children have a higher health risk associated with exposure to local pollutants than adult men due to their constant presence in the town. We conclude that expanding the coverage of clean water and sanitation infrastructure to include all households of the community would be the most recommended measure to minimize exposure and risk via ingestion of water pollutants.

A Community Built on Sand – An Enviro-Microhistorical Narrative on The Philippi German Descendant Community

A Community Built on Sand – An Enviro-Microhistorical Narrative on The Philippi German Descendant Community

THE GEOARCHAEOLOGICAL LANDSCAPE OF WALLACE TANK PUEBLO (AZ Q:1:199 (ASM)), PETRIFIED FOREST NATIONAL PARK, ARIZONA: REHABILITATING THE DAMAGED CULTURAL LANDSCAPE OF A PUEBLO IV VILLAGE

Petrified Forest National Park (PEFO) is a unique landscape of physical beauty and paleontological treasures. Known for its ancient fossils, petrified wood, and awe-inspiring vistas, it is also well-known in the archaeological community as having some of the earliest villages on the southern Colorado Plateau. Additionally, it is home to a few large late precontact pueblos (Pueblo IV period: ~1275-1400 CE) that were once part of an extensive regional network of communities where people and goods moved across the landscape. Wallace Tank Pueblo is the largest Pueblo IV period village within the Park. This once thriving 600-room pueblo was home to the ancestors of the Zuni, Hopi, and other descendant communities. Over time the physical features of the village were damaged by historic ranching activities and natural erosion. It is now a scoured and degraded landscape where the once sustaining natural spring is not even identifiable. Because of the uniqueness of this village within the Petrified Forest environment consultations between the Park and descendant communities should consider management plans that will re-establish a spring-fed wetlands. Such a plan would not only focus on preservation of the cultural features, but also on the health of the environment and that of the descendants who maintain an emotional and spiritual connection to this ancestral village.

"To honor and remember": An ethical awakening to African American remains in museums.

In 2021, amid surging activism in the Movement for Black Lives, the Smithsonian Institution's possession of the remains of thousands of African Americans drew widespread attention. In response, the Smithsonian and its National Museum of Natural History undertook a series of steps to assess these remains and to develop a policy for returning as many as possible to descendants and descendant communities, under changes that would apply to all non-Native American remains in Smithsonian collections. This paper reviews the actions taken to date and the work that is still in progress or planned. I contextualize these steps more broadly within an "ethical awakening" to African American remains that have long been present, studied, and displayed in collections across the museum community in the United States, where other institutions have faced similar challenges and changes.

Chicago Area Archaeological Collections at the Field Museum

Abstract From surface finds to excavated collections, the Field Museum cares for thousands of archaeological items from the Chicago area. The collections reflect those put together by several key antiquarians in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, materials recovered by early archaeologists starting in the 1920s using the Chicago Field Method, and material resulting from a pre–cultural resource management salvage excavation in the 1950s. The collections also include donations in the twentieth century by private individuals. This article contextualizes the history of these archaeological collections and their impact on recent studies and descendant communities, including the Hočąk, Baxoje, Nutachi, Jiwere, Myaamia, Kickapoo, Kaskaskia, and Potawatomi. In so doing, we outline how the provenance of these collections reflects temporal trends of museum archaeology and curation and how various epistemologies are being brought to bear by recent work of archaeologists and Indigenous artists and craftspeople.

“The Dead Have Been Awakened in the Service of the Living”: Activist Community-Engaged Archaeology in Charleston, South Carolina

AbstractIn 2013, 36 Ancestors of African descent were identified in an unmarked eighteenth-century burial ground during construction in Charleston, South Carolina. The site, later referred to as the Anson Street African Burial Ground, was buried beneath the growing city and forgotten in the centuries that followed. The ethical treatment of these ancestral remains was of paramount importance to our community. Historically, narratives relating to the lives of African descendant people in Charleston have been inadequately documented and shared. For these reasons, we engaged the local African American community in a multifaceted memorialization process. Together, we sought to sensitively ensure that the Ancestors’ identities and lives were fully explored according to the collective descendant community's wishes. To this end, we involved the community in researching and celebrating the Ancestors’ lives through arts and education programs and analyzed their and community members’ DNA to elucidate their ancestry. Our engagement initiatives increased access for all ages to archaeological, historical, and genetic research and encouraged active participation in the design of a permanent memorial. The Anson Street African Burial Ground Project provides a successful example of community-engaged activist archaeology focused on honoring the Ancestors and their descendants.

An ethical framework for geophysical survey in historic Black cemeteries

AbstractHistoric Black cemeteries in the south‐eastern United States are actively threatened by development, neglect, environmental degradation and vandalism. Geophysical archaeological tools are often championed as a solution to document unmarked graves, determine cemetery boundaries and help preserve these spaces. This process can be problematic as geophysical instruments themselves do not find graves; rather, the data collected are reviewed by a skilled professional to interpret where graves might be present. Archaeological geophysical practitioners thus hold a great responsibility to conduct themselves in an ethical manner. Important considerations include archaeological ethics, professionalism and honest communication, as well as centring the needs of preservation within the communities of descendants and stakeholders, if possible, in the way we process, interpret and communicate results.

Advancing Local US Transitional Justice Initiatives: A University Partnership Alongside Descendant Communities

ABSTRACT This article suggests that the ongoing denial by the USA federal government of historical human rights infractions against African Americans and people of African descent led to a proliferation of local transitional justice efforts. Drawing from a university-driven transitional justice project, this article offers an analysis of local initiatives and highlights one of its six transitional justice collaborations. The university project sought to decolonize its structure and approach, drawing on methods of cultural humility, desire-based research and deep listening. This article responds to the success and challenges of decolonizing a transitional justice project within academia. Findings suggested that local initiatives face obstacles due to enduring legacies of harms and silenced histories, necessitating communities to substantiate their claims. Capacity issues and funding are challenged due to centuries of disinvestment. The article offers lessons learned for potential ally organizations who seek to advance transitional justice where government-sponsored redress continues to be denied.

A Collections-Based View of the Future of Archaeology

AbstractThis theme issue has two primary goals: to illuminate the underdeveloped or faltering areas of the discipline as they relate to archaeological collections and to offer tangible paths forward to address the systemic problems identified as they impact the future of archaeology. Present-day archaeology is complicated due to its many sectors of practice: academia/faculty; cultural resource management; federal, state, and local government; tribal governments and communities; descendant communities; students; the general public; and different types of archaeological repositories. Given this complexity, it can be difficult to identify the expectations (and realities) of each sector, which, if better understood, would help illuminate the nuances of preservation, accountability, discoverability, and use of archaeological collections across the discipline. Without a solid understanding of these nuances, efforts to advance the discipline are undermined. This introduction provides an overview of the articles that address emerging and urgent issues and offer viable steps forward. These challenges include the interrelationships between ethics, collaboration, and training; the preservation and management of digital records and data; collections discovery and reuse; collections-based research; training in material culture; making collections knowable to constituencies outside archaeology; preparing for repatriation from a management perspective; and the intricacies of the archaeological digital data system.

Making Archaeological Collections More Findable and Accessible through Increased Coordination

AbstractArchaeologists seek to improve our understanding of the past by studying, preserving, protecting, and sharing nonreplaceable archaeological resources. Archaeological collections hold information that can assist these aims as long as they are properly cared for, identified, and accessible. One of the most serious barriers is the lack of large-scale coordinated efforts to make archaeological collections findable and accessible. This article suggests that developing and implementing the use of a standardized set of attributes regarding collections provides solutions and strategies to find collections. These attributes can connect and standardize existing archaeological collections from a variety of sources (federal and state agencies, CRM firms, Indigenous and descendant communities, and academic departments), serving the profession in multiple ways. Most critically, the baseline data can be synthesized to inform and direct priorities for future fieldwork, thereby decreasing redundancy in archaeological collections and improving curation efforts nationwide. Such efforts would also provide a resource to students and researchers looking to understand and interpret the past at multiple scales by encouraging more collections-based research and less archaeological site destruction. Access for descendant communities will also be improved with information about their cultural heritage. This, in turn, encourages transparency and collaboration between those communities and archaeologists.

The Portrait of Islamic Arab Descendant Community in Maintaining Identity and Diversity in Bali

The Portrait of Islamic Arab Descendant Community in Maintaining Identity and Diversity in Bali

Collaborative multimethod geophysics at the Prewitt Slave Cemetery, Northport, Alabama

AbstractThis paper serves to highlight the partnership built between the Prewitt Slave Cemetery Association (PSCA) and the University of Alabama (UA) through the work conducted by the UA archaeological field school at the Prewitt Slave Cemetery (PSC) in Fall 2022. During this collaborative project, the field school students geolocated, recorded and photographed more than 700 above‐ground grave markers and conducted a multi‐method geophysical survey that included magnetic gradiometry, electrical resistance, electromagnetic induction and ground‐penetrating radar. Results from this survey aided researchers in identifying the locations of over 800 marked and unmarked graves. The benefits of the partnership between PSCA and UA were mutual and multiple. First, the data recorded by the UA field school helped the PSCA achieve its immediate goal of identifying unmarked graves, allowing the organization to move forward with efforts to preserve and protect the PSC. Second, the UA field school students gained valuable experience related to proper cemetery study techniques, including geophysical survey, and learned to conduct community‐based participatory research in collaboration with descendant communities. Additionally, this project allowed for further research related to the use of multiple methods of geophysical instrumentation for identifying unmarked graves beyond ground‐penetrating radar.

Saying what we mean, meaning what we say: Managing miscommunication in archaeological prospection

AbstractIn North America, archaeological prospection has recently undergone a surge in popularity, resulting in higher visibility for both scientific and fringe narratives. This has been partially due to increasingly sensationalized media articles that promote the use of technology to locate overgrown and subsurface features in the landscape. The heightened profile of the field and increasingly sensitive contexts in which it is applied (e.g., locating potential unmarked graves) has expanded the discipline beyond its usual settings where typical archaeological prospection rhetoric and narratives are applied. In this paper, we explore how the presentation of archaeological prospection can impact descendant communities and their burial and cultural spaces. We identify rhetoric, discourse and narrative as key considerations that have resulted in the twisting of interpretations to support fringe narratives. We present two case studies: (1) denialism surrounding unmarked graves at former Indian Residential Schools and (2) the reinterpretation of Indigenous spaces by Graham Hancock's Ancient Apocalypse. We draw upon these seemingly disparate examples as evidence that ambiguity in scholarly communication and ‘certainty’ in fringe communication can both be used to the detriment of Indigenous and other descendant communities in various ways that we term pseudoarchaeological colonialism. Finally, we recommend strategies on how to disseminate results in non‐harmful ways and confront the wrongful usage of archaeological prospection.

One health approach to toxocariasis in quilombola communities of southern Brazil

BackgroundToxocariasis has been listed among the most neglected parasitic diseases worldwide, with approximately one fifth of the global population exposed, particularly those living under poverty. In Brazil, communities of descendants of enslaved blacks (quilombola) have historically had some of the highest rates of vulnerability and poverty, characterized by lack of health assistance, poor quality of life, and nutritional insecurity.MethodsA cross-sectional sampling of quilombola individuals living in four communities of southern Brazil, as well as their dogs and the soil, was carried out from December 2021 to March 2022. Sociodemographic and other information such as water source, alimentary habits, and dog and cat ownership were gathered using a semi-structured questionnaire for assessing toxocariasis risk factors. Human serum samples were tested by ELISA for anti-Toxocara spp. IgG antibody detection was carried out on dog feces and hair, and soil samples were surveyed for presence of Toxocara spp. eggs.ResultsOverall, 172/208 individuals (82.7%, 95% CI = 77.0–87.2) were seropositive, the highest seroprevalence rate to date in Brazil. Male gender (P = 0.029), educational level (P = 0.026), and drinking water source (P = 0.043) were associated with seropositivity by univariate analysis. Final logistic regression revealed increased odds (P = 0.017, OR = 7.6, 95% CI = 1.5–42.7) to have seropositivity in individuals > 50 years old (< 10 years old). As expected, individuals with soil contact were more likely seropositive (P = 0.038, OR = 4.4, 95% CI = 1.1–18.8). Although retrieved in only 5/96 (5.2%) dog feces, Toxocara spp. eggs were found in 18/60 (30.0%) soil samples.ConclusionsThe high vulnerability and seroprevalence observed in quilombola communities clearly demand a One Health approach for detection, monitoring, and prevention of infection by Toxocara spp. in both human and dog populations.Graphical

Going local with ancient DNA: A review of human histories from regional perspectives.

Ancient DNA (aDNA) has added a wealth of information about our species' history, including insights on genetic origins, migrations and gene flow, genetic admixture, and health and disease. Much early work has focused on continental-level questions, leaving many regional questions, especially those relevant to the Global South, comparatively underexplored. A few success stories of aDNA studies from smaller laboratories involve more local aspects of human histories and health in the Americas, Africa, Asia, and Oceania. In this Review, we cover some of these contributions by synthesizing finer-scale questions of importance to the archaeogenetics field, as well as to Indigenous and Descendant communities. We further highlight the potential of aDNA to uncover past histories in regions where colonialism has neglected the oral histories of oppressed peoples.

The future of archaeology is (still) community collaboration

In this contribution to our periodic ‘Archaeological Futures’ series, Lindsay M. Montgomery and Tiffany C. Fryer reflect on the reshaping of archaeological praxis in the Americas through recent developments in collaborative community-engaged research. Over the past 20 years, new theoretical and methodological approaches informed by decolonisation and Black feminism have shifted power dynamics within the discipline. The authors review this growing body of research, highlighting trends in collaborative archaeological research and discussing some of the ongoing challenges and tensions. They argue that this collaborative paradigm marks a new future for archaeology in the Americas, which will increasingly centre on topics of importance to Black and Indigenous scholars and descendant communities.