Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

Archaeologies of African American Life in the Upper Mid-Atlantic
Archaeologies of African American Life in the Upper Mid-Atlantic
Archaeologies of African American Life in the Upper Mid-Atlantic
Ebook485 pages5 hours

Archaeologies of African American Life in the Upper Mid-Atlantic

Rating: 0 out of 5 stars

()

Read preview

About this ebook

A 2018 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title
 
New scholarship provides insights into the archaeology and cultural history of African American life from a collection of sites in the Mid-Atlantic
 
This groundbreaking volume explores the archaeology of African American life and cultures in the Upper Mid-Atlantic region, using sites dating from the eighteenth through the twentieth centuries. Sites in Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York are all examined, highlighting the potential for historical archaeology to illuminate the often overlooked contributions and experiences of the region’s free and enslaved African American settlers.
 
Archaeologies of African American Life in the Upper Mid-Atlantic brings together cutting-edge scholarship from both emerging and established scholars. Analyzing the research through sophisticated theoretical lenses and employing up-to-date methodologies, the essays reveal the diverse ways in which African Americans reacted to and resisted the challenges posed by life in a borderland between the North and South through the transition from slavery to freedom. In addition to extensive archival research, contributors synthesize the material finds of archaeological work in slave quarter sites, tenant farms, communities, and graveyards.
 
Editors Michael J. Gall and Richard F. Veit have gathered new and nuanced perspectives on the important role free and enslaved African Americans played in the region’s cultural history. This collection provides scholars of the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast regions, African American studies, material culture studies, religious studies, slavery, the African diaspora, and historical archaeologists with a well-balanced array of rural archaeological sites that represent cultural traditions and developments among African Americans in the region. Collectively, these sites illustrate African Americans’ formation of fluid cultural and racial identities, communities, religious traditions, and modes of navigating complex cultural landscapes in the region under harsh and disenfranchising circumstances.
 
LanguageEnglish
Release dateOct 17, 2017
ISBN9780817391508
Archaeologies of African American Life in the Upper Mid-Atlantic

Related to Archaeologies of African American Life in the Upper Mid-Atlantic

Related ebooks

Archaeology For You

View More

Related articles

Reviews for Archaeologies of African American Life in the Upper Mid-Atlantic

Rating: 0 out of 5 stars
0 ratings

0 ratings0 reviews

What did you think?

Tap to rate

Review must be at least 10 words

    Book preview

    Archaeologies of African American Life in the Upper Mid-Atlantic - Michael J. Gall

    ARCHAEOLOGIES OF AFRICAN AMERICAN LIFE IN THE UPPER MID-ATLANTIC

    EDITED BY

    MICHAEL J. GALL AND RICHARD F. VEIT

    The University of Alabama Press

    Tuscaloosa

    The University of Alabama Press

    Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35487-0380

    uapress.ua.edu

    Copyright © 2017 by the University of Alabama Press

    All rights reserved.

    Inquiries about reproducing material from this work should be addressed to the University of Alabama Press.

    Typeface: Scala Pro and Scala Sans Pro

    Manufactured in the United States of America

    Cover image: John Lewis Krimmel, Pepper-Pot: A Scene in the Philadelphia Market, 1811, oil on canvas; courtesy of Philadelphia Museum of Art, 125th Anniversary Acquisition, gift of Mr. and Mrs. Edward B. Leisenring Jr., 2001-196-1

    Cover design: Michele Myatt Quinn

    Cataloging-in-Publication data is available from the Library of Congress.

    ISBN: 978-0-8173-1965-6

    E-ISBN: 978-0-173-9150-8

    ISBN-13: 978-0-8173-9150-8 (electronic)

    Contents

    List of Illustrations

    Acknowledgments

    Introduction: Exploring and Contextualizing Historic African American Life in a Cultural Borderland, 1690s to 1950s

    Michael J. Gall and Richard F. Veit

    PART I. SLAVERY AND MATERIAL CULTURE

    1. Identifying an Eighteenth-Century Slave Quarter Complex at the Cedar Creek Road Site in Southern Delaware

    William B. Liebeknecht

    2. Colonoware in the Upper Mid-Atlantic and Northeast

    Keri J. Sansevere

    3. An Archaeological View of Slavery and Social Relations at Rock Hall, Lawrence, New York

    Ross Thomas Rava and Christopher N. Matthews

    PART II. HOUSING, COMMUNITY, AND LABOR

    4. Navigation and Negotiation: Adaptive Strategies of a Free African American Family in Central Delaware

    Michael J. Gall, Glenn R. Modica, and Tabitha C. Hilliard

    5. The Material Culture of Tenancy: Excavations at an African American Tenant Farm, Christiana, Pennsylvania

    James A. Delle

    6. Mapping Marshalltown: Documentary Archaeology of a Southern New Jersey Landscape of Emancipation

    Janet L. Sheridan

    7. Tenants on the Woodlot: The Bird-Houston Site, St. Georges Hundred, Delaware

    Jason P. Shellenhamer and John Bedell

    8. The Relationships of Race, Class, and Food in the African American Community of Timbuctoo, New Jersey

    Christopher Barton

    PART III. DEATH AND MEMORIALIZATION

    9. Born a Slave, Died Free: Antebellum African American Gravemarkers in Northern New Jersey

    Richard F. Veit and Mark Nonestied

    10. Above the Valley and Below the Radar: Mount Gilead African Methodist Episcopal Church and Its Community

    Meagan M. Ratini

    11. An African American Union Soldier Remembered: James Elbert and the African Union Church Cemetery in Polktown, Delaware

    David Orr

    PART IV. REFLECTIONS

    12. Reflections on Dynamic African American Social Cultures and Communities in the Upper Mid-Atlantic, 1610s to 1950s

    Christopher C. Fennell

    13. African American Cultures and Place in the Greater Delaware Valley Borderland, 1620s to 1920s

    Lu Ann De Cunzo

    References Cited

    Contributors

    Index

    Illustrations

    FIGURES

    Figure I.1. Distribution of archaeological sites discussed in this book

    Figure I.2. John Lewis Krimmel, Pepper-Pot: A Scene in the Philadelphia Market, 1811

    Figure 1.1. Interpretive plan of the Cedar Creek Road Site, circa 1760

    Figure 1.2. Artist’s impressionistic reconstruction of the Cedar Creek Road Site

    Figure 1.3. Select artifacts recovered from the Cedar Creek Road Site

    Figure 1.4. West wall profile of the bloomery feature at the Cedar Creek Road Site

    Figure 2.1. Map of known sites with colonoware excavated from areas north of the Chesapeake region

    Figure 2.2. Images of colonoware fragments excavated from northern sites

    Figure 3.1 Location of the Rock Hall site and as it appears in 2015

    Figure 3.2. Detail of Morris Fosdick’s 1817 survey of Rock Hall and detail of his 1836 survey

    Figure 3.3. Artifacts from the eighteenth-century yard surface adjacent to the west cellar stairway entrance at Rock Hall

    Figure 3.4. Plan view of Unit 8 in Rock Hall manor house west yard showing the tabby fireplace base feature

    Figure 4.1. Site plan showing structural footprints, features, yard division areas, and a detail of the house footprint at the Cooper tenancy

    Figure 4.2. Three-dimensional rendering of the Cooper tenancy looking north

    Figure 4.3. Wheel-thrown colonoware recovered from Locus B of the Garrison Energy Site

    Figure 4.4. Possible ceremonial artifact cache within a dwelling hearth at Locus B of the Garrison Energy Site

    Figure 5.1. Three views of the William Parker House, 1880 to 1895

    Figure 5.2. Detail of 1851 map of Lancaster County showing the Pownall Tract

    Figure 5.3. Foundation wall of the William Parker House, Sadbury Township, Pennsylvania

    Figure 5.4. Artifacts recovered from the Parker House

    Figure 6.1. Locations of Marshalltown and Salem County in New Jersey

    Figure 6.2. Marshallville in Haines Neck area of Mannington Township 1849 showing earliest development

    Figure 6.3. Black-owned parcels in Marshallville, 1834 to 1858

    Figure 6.4. Black-owned parcels and subdivisions from 1858 to 1951

    Figure 7.1. Location of the Bird-Houston Site

    Figure 7.2. Location of the Bird-Houston African American tenancy relative to the Houston Family home

    Figure 7.3. Features identified at Locus A of the Bird-Houston Site

    Figure 8.1. Feature 13 on Map of Burlington County Mostly from Original Surveys, 1849

    Figure 8.2. National War Garden Commission, The Fruits of Victory, 1918

    Figure 8.3. J. Paul Verrees, Can Vegetables, Fruit and the Kaiser Too, c. 1918

    Figure 9.1. Locations mentioned in Chapter 9

    Figure 9.2. Gravemarker of Caesar

    Figure 9.3. Gravemarker of Jack

    Figure 9.4. Gravemarker of Ambo

    Figure 10.1. Location of Mount Gilead AME Church

    Figure 10.2. Extant markers and possible markers in the Mount Gilead AME Church Cemetery

    Figure 10.3. Front entrance of Mount Gilead AME Church, 2004

    Figure 11.1. Map of New Castle County, Delaware, from Actual Surveys and Records, 1881, showing Polktown and the African Union Church Cemetery

    Figure 11.2. Portion of the African Union Church Cemetery before final landscaping

    Figure 11.3. Portion of the African Union Church cemetery after final landscaping

    Figure 11.4. Military grave marker of James Elbert

    TABLES

    Table 2.1. Known Colonoware and vessel characteristics analyzed from sites in the upper Middle Atlantic and Northeast regions

    Table 2.2. Comparison of Barnes Typology colonoware from Virginia sites with upper Middle Atlantic and Northeast Regional Site colonoware characteristics

    Table 7.1. African American–headed Households in Summit Bridge, Mount Pleasant, and Armstrong Corner, 1840

    Table 10.1. Places of residence for individuals in the Mount Gilead Cemetery

    Acknowledgments

    We are greatly indebted to all of the contributors’ hard work, scholarly approaches, and research, which made this book possible. Additionally, we owe gratitude to our colleagues at RGA and Monmouth University, current and past students, members of the archaeological community, and friends, who continue to engage one another through archaeological research on the important study of African American life in the region. We are indebted to Allison, Tessa, Juliette, Jack, Joann, and Joseph Gall and Terri, Douglas, Rebecca, and Maryann Veit for their assistance. Our editor, Wendi Schnaufer, and anonymous reviewers were instrumental in seeing this volume through to print.

    Introduction

    Exploring and Contextualizing Historic African American Life in a Cultural Borderland, 1690s to 1950s

    MICHAEL J. GALL AND RICHARD F. VEIT

    On July 4, 1776, a committee of landed, wealthy white men led by Thomas Jefferson met in Independence Hall in Philadelphia and penned some of the most famous words in the English language, We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. At about the same time, roughly 90 miles away in Morris County, the Reverend Jacob Green, a Presbyterian minister and abolitionist, was drafting New Jersey’s first state constitution. This latter document, much more business-like than the former, noted, All inhabitants of this Colony, of full age, who are worth fifty pounds . . . shall be entitled to vote for representatives in the Council and Assembly (New Jersey Constitution 1776).

    Although Jefferson’s polished prose has had a half-life that far exceeds Green’s, both documents are interesting for what they do not say. Jefferson, a slaveholder, made no note of the fact that a large segment of society, namely enslaved and free blacks, would be excluded from equality under the policies set forth by his new document. Green, however, failed to note that in the state constitution he helped draft, free blacks and women were entitled to vote in local and state elections. Both groups were later denied the vote through an 1807 state law. Were these simply rhetorical lapses on the part of rushed authors, writing furiously as a British fleet approached the Atlantic Seaboard, or the result of political concessions ultimately aimed at preserving the authority of some at the expense of others—a racialized ideological battle that would rage for decades? We may never know. Regardless, they reflect the ambiguous, marginalized space that disenfranchised historic enslaved and free black residents of the upper Mid-Atlantic occupied.

    Within this marginalized space, slaves and free blacks struggled, negotiated, and navigated disparate social, cultural, and political structures unique to the region in an attempt to mitigate the obstacles they experienced in daily life. Individually and collectively, black residents sought ways to capitalize on select moments and opportunities as they engaged in processes of self-determination, identity creation, religious expression, and community formation. Despite centuries of overt and covert resistance and accommodation, the struggle to overcome systemic marginalization, racism, and disenfranchisement was—and continues to be—slow. Today, even with reams of legislation, a righteous abolition movement, a bloody Civil War, the Civil Rights Movement, the election of our first black president, and the Black Lives Matter Movement, issues of race continue to divide America. Indeed, with appalling regularity we hear of black men gunned down in the street. Churches are attacked by hate mongers, and too many young men of color are incarcerated for petty offenses.

    The historical contexts in which free and enslaved blacks in the upper Mid-Atlantic region lived are illuminated through historical archaeology, the archaeology of the modern world. These contexts shed light on present circumstances. Initially begun as a pragmatic science focused on gathering information about historic sites of national importance, historical archaeology’s focus quickly moved from the lifestyles of former elites to a more democratic, inclusive archaeology linked to the social history of the 1960s and 1970s. Today, many archaeologists see their work not simply as science but as a form of activism, a way to draw attention to society’s ills by highlighting the struggles of the disenfranchised and including marginalized groups in the broader conversation (Franklin 1997:26–50; Scham 2001:186). Historical archaeology offers important opportunities for more nuanced understandings of marginalized individuals and groups silent in the pages of history, and plays a crucial role in its ability to breathe new life into individuals from our long-forgotten past. Their lives were important to their families, friends, and fellow community members despite the pervasive and systemic racism, subjugation, disenfranchisement, and marginalization they faced. By revealing their stories through an examination of the items they left behind, we, too, recognize that their lives continue to matter, and their stories must be told.

    Archaeology is unique in its ability to provide poorly documented groups a rare opportunity to intimately convey stories of lives once led through an examination and contextualization of the material with which they were once so personally connected. This voice is crucial in conveying the dynamic lives of the region’s past black communities, and informs our current understanding of present-day African American society and culture in the upper Mid-Atlantic region. Conveying narratives of historic black lives through archaeology and their historically situated realities helps avoid, as Nigerian Novelist Chimamanda Adichie (2009) states, The danger of a single story focused on dominant groups at the expense of others and the crucial role the latter played in the nation’s development. Indeed, such narratives are essential to telling the cultural histories of the oft-relegated other in our collective past, offering modern disenfranchised groups one of many additional means of establishing a sense of place and belonging, built on a rich cultural heritage, and fostering historical cultural identity awareness (Agbe-Davies 2010:416; Franklin 1997:35–50; Scham 2001:193–196).

    Our work here is part social history, part activism. Building on more than a decade of recent research in the upper portion of the Middle Atlantic United States, this book presents new archaeological data on the routinely muted and forgotten lives of the region’s historic free and enslaved African, African Caribbean, and African American populations. This book also calls attention to the historical contexts in which enslaved and free blacks lived, the obstacles they faced in daily life, and the ongoing power struggles within white-dominated or -controlled communities. In so doing, this book gives voice to individuals whose stories have long been silenced by racist oppression, dominance, and structural violence. In many ways, it is an important step toward understanding the lived experience of black Americans in the region through archaeology.

    Borderland Archaeology

    Our geographic focus is the area between New York City and Philadelphia, extending south into Delaware and northeast onto Long Island, with particular attention paid to the Delaware Valley. Geographers may quibble over whether this area is the lower Northeast or the upper Middle Atlantic. Regardless of these fine distinctions, it was a borderland bounded by two of the great cities of early America: New York and Philadelphia. Examination of archaeological sites, historic communities, and material culture collections associated with eighteenth- through twentieth-century black populations reveals much about the lives of historic-period rural Africans, African Americans, and formerly enslaved African Caribbean individuals in the region. These studies, a selection of which are featured here, have enriched and complicated our understanding of race, slavery, and freedom for black residents from the early colonial period to the mid-twentieth century (see Figure I.1). Archaeology of historic free and enslaved urban residents in the geographic focus area has been featured in published works and popularized by the National Park Service (2013a, 2015a, 2015b) and others (Cotter et al. 1992:284–287). These include sites like the First African Baptist Church cemetery in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (Parrington and Roberts 1984:26–32; 1990:138–170; Parrington et al. 1989); the presidential home of George Washington in Philadelphia; the site of African American James Dexter’s house in Philadelphia; an African American presence at Block 1191 in Wilmington, Delaware (Beidleman et al. 1986; Catts 1988); and the African Burial Ground in New York City (Perry et al. 2009). This study focuses on the seldom-publicized archaeology of rural free and enslaved blacks in the region.

    Situated between New England, a stronghold of the abolition movement, and the area south of the Chesapeake River and Bay, a region heavily reliant on enslaved labor, our study area was a cultural borderland. Indeed, the Delaware Valley was a Quaker-dominated region where some of the earliest moves to emancipate enslaved individuals occurred. Philadelphia, in particular, was at the center of the Abolition movement. New York City (Still 1886), Long Island (Griswold 2013; Hayes 2007; Hayes and Mrozowski 2007; Trigg and Landon 2010), and northern New Jersey (Gigantino 2015; Hodges 1997a) all had significant enslaved populations but also witnessed ongoing debates about emancipation. Religion, economics, and culture all shaped the ongoing debates in the region regarding the legal status and place of free and enslaved blacks in society. Historians have been quick to point out that the American Revolution failed to free most African Americans, except those who cast their lot with the Crown (Jasanoff 2011), and the years after the Revolution saw an increase in the use of enslaved laborers as their work provided a route to economic recovery for the owners of damaged farms (Hack 2012). Racism and a biased legal system also shaped the experience of African Americans during this period. The deeply conflicted attitudes held toward blacks at this time are perhaps best reflected in the activities of the American Colonization Society led by Reverend Robert Finley of Basking Ridge, New Jersey, with the avowed goal of relocating freed people of African descent to Africa despite their birth location (Greene 2012:149). The competing debates among whites directly impacted the daily lives of blacks in the region and reverberated through their communities.

    In an effort to selectively accommodate, endure, and resist racist oppression and its associated obstacles, free and enslaved blacks in the upper Mid-Atlantic employed social and cultural strategies of agency (Casella 2009:28). Working within existing cultural structures and improvising where opportunities permitted or necessitated, enslaved and free blacks employed various strategies to modify power dynamics and exert control during select moments over specific aspects of life, or in defined spaces. Often, these strategies required assistance by others with mutually held goals, forged alliances, and social bonds and networks in close and more distant black and even white communities (Ginsburg 2010:63; Simpson and Macy 2004:1373–1409).

    Bonds and networks, both of friendship and kinship, might be initiated and solidified through shared or similar experiences, political or social views, customs, religion, and use of visual identity cues marking intragroup inclusion. These cues include clothing, language, art, music, dance, pottery use, religious observances, home and landscape spatial use, personal adornments, and meal preparation, among other cultural manifestations (Geismar 2015: 190–194; Heath and Bennett 2000:38–55; Orser 1998:68–69; see Sansevere: this volume; Tuma 2006:1–26; Westmacott 1992; White 2008:19–20; Yamin and Ziesing 2015:128–130). Such tactics enabled disenfranchised individuals to challenge existing cultural norms, selectively modify their own cultural identities, solidify intragroup identities, resist or mitigate oppression, and find ways to negotiate opportunities for self-determination.

    As Merrick Posnansky points out (1999:22), one of the great fallacies of Americanist historical archaeology is to treat African societies as monolithic. Indeed, as he notes, Those enslaved were a mélange of people . . . drawn from a 3,000 mile [West Africa] coastline (1999:25). This coastline was marked by regional differences in ethnicity, culture, technology, housing, subsistence practices, foodways, political systems, kinship, and religion. Moreover, many slaves were shipped to the Mid-Atlantic, an area diverse in its own right, only after enslavement in the Caribbean or the Deep South. A. J. Williams-Myers notes, Prior to 1748 the bulk of African slaves imported into the colony [New York] came primarily from the British Caribbean colonies—such as Barbados, Jamaica, and Antigua, and from the mainland colonies of South Carolina and Virginia. After 1748 there was an appreciable increase in the trafficking of slaves from Africa in New York (1994:21). In contrast, slaves sold in and near Delaware ports prior to the mid-eighteenth century embarked from West Africa, the Caribbean, and the Southeast colonies (Etlis and Halbert 2008; Williams 1996:14). Contextualizing the disparate cultural traditions practiced by West Africans and African Caribbeans is critical to understanding African American culture among the enslaved and free in the upper Mid-Atlantic region (Agbe-Davies 2010:413–417).

    Mounting material evidence reveals that many aspects of West African, African Caribbean, and Southeast African American cultural practices were transferred in modified form to the upper Mid-Atlantic region. There, these elements blended with each other and with existing local European American and Native American customs and traditions due to daily interactions and forced living and working arrangements among individuals of different ethnic and cultural backgrounds. The cultural practices were combined in ways that permitted self-determination and the development of new cultural identities among enslaved and later free blacks alike (Cantwell and Wall 2015:29–55; Gall et al. 2016; Hodges 1997:16–17, 29–30, 43–44, 56–58, 77–79, 187; see Gall et al.; Liebecknecht; Rava and Matthews; and Sansevere, this volume). Many of the traditions reflect the diverse origins of the Mid-Atlantic region’s West African descendant populations and the richly varied traditions they brought to the region via the transatlantic slave trade. Cultural traditions were modified over time and place, particularly as new individuals arrived in the region after the Great Migration between the 1910s and 1960s, during which time several million southern African Americans migrated to urban centers in the Northeast.

    Archaeological evidence indicates that many traditions, customs, and technologies early enslaved and free blacks practiced in the upper Mid-Atlantic region were based on aspects of West African cultural practices. African ironworkers shipped to the British colonies in America found their skills in demand at ironworks throughout the Mid-Atlantic and, as noted by Liebeknecht (this volume), brought West African cultural practices to the Americas (Groucher 2010:277–291). Some communities were laid out in ways that resembled West African settlements (Barton 2014c), yards were meticulously swept, and in some cases structures were even built using techniques derived from African originals (Ferguson 1992).

    Various West African religious traditions were often transferred, reinvented, and hybridized as disparate groups intermingled and exchanged ideas, as reflected in several chapters in this book (see Gall et al.; Liebeknecht; Rava and Matthews, this volume). Ritual caches provided protection for dwellings and inhabitants, honored gods and spirits, and were used for malicious purposes. The meanings and uses of single items or grouped objects were often modified from their intended manufactured purpose and reimagined to suit different cultural needs. An ancient Native American stone axe might be repurposed as a thunderstone and offered to Shango, the Yoruba thunder or storm god (Leone 2008:5; Parrinder 1961:31), and colonoware vessels might be inscribed with cosmograms or offered to river gods (Ferguson 1992). The presence of artifact caches found throughout the upper Mid-Atlantic highlight the continuance of private nkisi or other similar spiritual rituals traditionally practiced by many West Africans and individuals of West African descent (Anderson 2005; Chireau 2006; Galke 2000; Olupona 1993:260–264; Parrinder 1961; Young 2007). Shrines to ancestors and gods (Samford 1999) coexisted with African Methodist Episcopal Churches and Quaker meetings as African Americans deployed diverse religious belief systems as tools of survival in the face of forced labor coupled with intense prejudice and racism.

    Beyond religion, the pepper-pot soup so famous in nineteenth-century Philadelphia, is a fine example of the ideas—or, in this case, cuisine, adapted from African, Caribbean, and local culinary traditions and sold by market vendors of African descent throughout the city (see Figure I.2). The dish embodies the mixture of cultural traditions often adopted and reinvented by many West African, African Caribbean, and African American free and enslaved individuals, who created new identities for themselves in the region from the eighteenth through the twentieth century. The cultural identities African and African descendant communities developed in the upper Mid-Atlantic were certainly not monolithic but varied over time and place, resulting in richly diverse traditions. Perhaps not surprisingly, creole dishes like pepper pot were sometimes cooked in colonoware vessels derived from African and Caribbean practices (see Sansevere, this volume), which themselves could have religious significance.

    Whether in the form of food, clothing, or religious observations, cultural retentions and selective modifications of cultural traditions granted disenfranchised individuals an ability to express themselves as individuals, foster cultural cohesion, and promote group identities. These strategies also offered opportunities for social, religious, and economic liberation (Hodges 1997a:80). Brought to light through archaeology, such survival strategies necessitated the use of material culture, religion, community and relationship building, malleable identity formation, and transgressions against authority to institute cultural and social change and mitigate disenfranchisement (Scott 1990:25–69). In essence, archaeology reveals that even while living in a state of subjugation, individuals of African descent were able to shape their own lives, maintain valued cultural practices, and build long-lasting, vibrant communities in the region.

    Through archaeology, unique opportunities are made available that shed significant light on historically muted groups like the upper Mid-Atlantic region’s historic enslaved and free black populations. Often, everyday lives of such individuals are exposed only through the cultural material they left behind. The materials examined through archaeology range in form from documents, monuments, buildings, landscapes, and communities to everyday items used, broken, and casually tossed aside or cherished objects secreted away. These various forms of material culture offer a contrasting view from which to juxtapose the identity created for blacks by others, and the identity they chose for themselves, sometimes expressed only to others within their community.

    Archaeology can bring to light past private lives and resistance against white oppression both in plain sight and behind closed doors. Indeed, in grave markers and cemeteries, we see the lives of individuals who successfully negotiated an oppressive system, and were able to overcome incredible prejudice and become valued and celebrated members of communities whose lives were seen as worthy of commemoration (see Orr; Veit and Nonestied, this volume). Similarly, their public resistance to authority, whether in the form of riots, military action, or their selective acquiescence to those in control, may also be gleaned from close readings of various forms of material culture. In this vein, archaeology provides an extraordinary window into the material manifestations of dominance by individuals with social and economic capital over marginalized and historically muted social, gender, ethnic, and racial groups. Through the lens of archaeology, cultural material analyses provides valuable insight into and intimately acquaints us with such past lives, their struggles and successes, religious beliefs, group and individual identities, and cultural behaviors. Archaeology also grants opportunities to expose the ways disenfranchised groups manipulated their surroundings to alleviate confining, subordinate, and dehumanizing living conditions.

    By developing individual narrative biographies and specifically situating the forgotten and poorly documented within local historical contexts, we are better positioned to interpret the ways such individuals consciously used culture to negotiate and navigate the harsh realities of everyday life and racial inequality on a regional scale (Cowgill 2000:57; Orser 2015:315). For enslaved and free blacks in the pre- and postcolonial upper Mid-Atlantic region, this reality existed within the oppressive confines of slavery, subservience, racism, and segregation created in a society dominated by white control. This environment was also characterized by conflicting views on abolition, Christian proselytizing, and constant surveillance of enslaved and free blacks by paternalistic whites (Essah 1996; Hodges 1997a:76–77; McDaniel and Julye 2009:135–138; Soderlund 1985; Williams 1996:83–88). Individuals living in oppressive situations found opportunities to express themselves and create meaningful personal identities and successful communities. Maneuvering between opportunities to act, resist, express, and acquiesce enabled the organic formation of new cultural identities and changing cultural practices over time (Gero 2000:37; Mrozowski 2010:16–39). This formation required knowledge of existing social and cultural structures, and the development of important social, labor, institutional, and kin networks. These social tools afforded subaltern groups a means of adapting to, challenging, and redefining their social and cultural realities.

    Examining the experiences of individuals, families, and local communities through the lens of archaeology also provides an ability to better interpret broader issues of cultural development in regional settings. For decades, historical archaeologists working in the southeastern United States and the Chesapeake Bay region have been intensively engaged in the archaeology of African American life. Archaeological research in these regions is prolific, with several published works that focus specifically on the lives of enslaved and free Africans and African Americans (e.g., Barnes 2011; Ellis and Ginsburg 2010; Ferguson 1992, 2013; Franklin and Fesler 1999a; Heath and Gary 2012; Leone 2005; Schablitsky 2011:45–66; Singleton 1985, 1999; Yentsch 2004). Through plantation archaeology, and more recently urban archaeology, research on black life in these regions has focused on the identification and examination of the geographically separate spaces in which blacks and whites historically lived and worked. Extensive research in these cultural regions has produced a rich and nuanced understanding of life for free and enslaved blacks. These more southern regions each embodied a cultural history distinct from that in the upper Mid-Atlantic.

    By comparison, the upper Mid-Atlantic has seen markedly fewer studies on the archaeology of black life, many of which are restricted to gray literature (e.g., Baker 1978; Bullen and Bullen 1945; Catts and Custer 1990; Catts et al. 1989; Hoseth et al. 1994; Independence Hall Association 2014; LaRoche and Blakey 1997:111–123; Schuyler 1980). Interest in the topic has recently spread across academia, cultural resource management firms, historic preservation circles, historical societies and commissions, and, most importantly, local descendant communities. Interest has resulted in more inclusive academic research on the study of black life in the region’s past and is changing long-held assumptions about historical black life in the upper Mid-Atlantic, an area where many current-day residents are surprised to learn slavery once existed.

    Historical Overview

    The area of the upper Mid-Atlantic examined here was historically characterized by significant Quaker, Methodist, and Presbyterian population concentrations; a diversified agricultural base; and early abolition efforts (Essah 1996; Hodges 1997a; McDaniel and Julye 2009; Williams 1996). There, African American populations, generally enslaved, were present from the earliest phases of colonial settlement in the seventeenth century to the close of the Civil War. Many Africans were shipped to the region from western Africa after enslavement for one or more generations in the Caribbean and southeastern American colonies, where they were seasoned before being sold in the upper Mid-Atlantic (Williams 1996:14). Others were shipped directly from ports in West Africa, such as the Bight of Africa, Bight of Benin, Senegambia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Gambia, Angola, Gold Coast, Windward Coast, Ivory Coast, and West Central Africa. Individuals taken from these West African regions were from varied ethnic groups with disparate religious and cultural traditions (Eltis and Halbert 2008; Walsh 2001:148, 153–154, 156 and Table 1; Williams 1996:41). By the mid-eighteenth century, most slaves in the Delaware Valley region were American born, but were exposed to West African and African Caribbean cultural traditions through kin and social networks.

    In 1790, enslaved blacks constituted 80.6 percent of the black population in New Jersey, but by 1850 that number had fallen to just one percent or 236 people (Essah 1996:39). In Delaware, 69.5 percent (n = 8,887) of the black population was enslaved in 1790 or 15 percent of the total population, but by 1850 the number of enslaved individuals was reduced to 2,290 or 2.5 percent of all Delaware residents (Williams 1996:249–250). Similar trends were evident in Pennsylvania and New York, although no slaves were reported on the 1850 census in either state. The percentage of the enslaved population also varied by county within each state during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries based on dominance and social leanings of and divisions within various religious groups (Hodges 1997a; Soderlund 1987; Williams 1996). Differences in cultural, economic, and agricultural practices also resulted in numerical variations in the enslaved population between counties.

    Enslaved individuals resided in urban locations and in the rural hinterland, where they worked as domestics, household servants, and farmhands and in both craft and industrial settings, especially ironworks (Newton 1998:12). The cultural, economic, and religious dynamics in the upper Mid-Atlantic were markedly different from those of more southern Anglican and mono-crop

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1