"I, Too, Am America": Archaeological Studies of African-American Life

by Theresa A. Singleton (Editor)

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.

Genres: Archaeology, Anthropology, History

368 pages, Paperback

First published August 22, 1999

Reviews

[Larry Lamar Yates]

We badly need the studies in this book, and many more like them. We cannot bring those that slavery killed or ruined to life. But any remotely honest approach to life requires that we learn what they lost – and what we lost. One of the articles in this book deals with Fort Mosé, “the first legally sanctioned free black town in the United States,” set up by the Spanish colonial authorities in 1738, largely as a community of Africans escaped from British South Carolina. They found sanctuary in Catholic Florida, where they could convert and no longer have slave status. The article covers information from historical records and from archaeological study, and notes that “as a tangible symbol of African-American history, self-determination, and participation in colonial American life, Mosé has generated a kind of public fascination and governmental commitment that is rarely achieved when a story is told with words alone.”