African Diaspora Archaeology

Through interdisciplinary approaches to material culture, the dynamics of a comparative transatlantic archaeology is developed.

Whitney Battle-Baptiste outlines the basic tenets of Black feminist thought for archaeologists and shows how it can be used to improve historical archaeological practice.

Archaeologists are increasingly interested in studying the experiences of Chinese immigrants, yet this area of research is mired in long-standing interpretive models that essentialize race and identity. Showcasing the enormous amount of data available on the lives of Chinese people who migrated to North America in the nineteenth century, this volume charts new directions by providing fresh approaches to interpreting immigrant life. In this volume, leading scholars first tackle broad questions of how best to position and understand these populations. They then delve into a variety of site-based and topical case studies, providing new approaches to themes like Chinese immigrant foodways and highlighting understudied topics including entrepreneurialism, cross-cultural interactions, and conditions in the Jim Crow South. Pushing back against old colonial-based tropes, contributors call for an awareness of the transnational relationships created through migration, engagement with broader archaeological and anthropological debates, and the expansion of research into new contexts and topics. Contributors: Linda Bentz | Todd J. Braje | Kelly N. Fong | D. Ryan Gray | J. Ryan Kennedy | Christopher Merritt | Laura W. | Virginia S. Popper | Adrian Praetzellis | Mary Praetzellis | Chelsea Rose | Douglas E. Ross | Charlotte K. Sunseri | Barbara L. Voss | Priscilla Wegars | Henry Yu

The moral mission archaeology set in motion by black activists in the 1960s and 1970s sought to tell the story of Americans, particularly African Americans, forgotten by the written record. Today, the archaeological study of African-American life is no longer simply an effort to capture unrecorded aspects of black history or to exhume the heritage of a neglected community. Archaeologists now recognize that one cannot fully comprehend the European colonial experience in the Americas without understanding its African counterpart. This collection of essays reflects and extends the broad spectrum of scholarship arising from this expanded definition of African-American archaeology, treating such issues as the analysis and representation of cultural identity, race, gender, and class; cultural interaction and change; relations of power and domination; and the sociopolitics of archaeological practice. "I, Too, Am America" expands African-American archaeology into an inclusive historical vision and identifies promising areas for future study.

The first multiauthor collection to focus on archaeology and the construction of gender in an African American context.

The African Diaspora Archaeology volume is compiled by Chris Fennell, organizer of the African Diaspora Archaeological Network (ADAN): www.diaspora.uiuc.edu. This publication includes an introduction by Fennell that reviews the field and 23 articles selected from Historical Archaeology. Including studies from Africa, the Caribbean, South America, and both the northern and southern US, this volume provides a fascinating look at African culture, sites, and artifacts and the traces the transition of African peoples from the Old World to the New. For a complete Table of Contents, please view http: //pastfoundation.org/lulu/m7b0h5.jpg, or visit the publication's homepage and click "preview" beneath the large image of the cover, which will display the first few pages of the book.

Winner of the Southern Anthropological Society's prestigious James Mooney Award, Uncommon Ground takes a unique archaeological approach to examining early African American life. Ferguson shows how black pioneers worked within the bars of bondage to shape their distinct identity and lay a rich foundation for the multicultural adjustments that became colonial America.Through pre-Revolutionary period artifacts gathered from plantations and urban slave communities, Ferguson integrates folklore, history, and research to reveal how these enslaved people actually lived. Impeccably researched and beautifully written.

This Handbook provides a comprehensive synthesis of African archaeology, covering the entirety of the continent's past from the beginnings of human evolution to the archaeological legacy of European colonialism. It includes a mixture of key methodological and theoretical issues and debates and situates the subject's contemporary practice.