Historical Archaeology:

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Chapter 16

• Historical Archaeology
• Insights on American History

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Outline

• Historical Archaeology Just a Handmaiden to
  History?
• Hidden History The Archaeology of
  African-Americans
• Correcting Inaccuracies
• Re-Examining Americas History
• Conclusion Historical Archaeologys Future

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Historical Archaeology

• Looks at material remains from past societies
  that also left behind written documentation about
  themselves.
• The first historical archaeology in America took
  place about 150 years ago.
• James Hall, a civil engineer, and direct
  descendant of Miles Standish, located the
  foundations of the Standish homestead in Duxbury,
  Massachusetts and, in 1853, he conducted detailed
  excavations there.

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Historical Archaeology

• During the first half of the 20th century,
  historical archaeologists labored mostly to
  supplement historical records.
• This perspective is evident in public
  interpretive projects, such as Plymouth
  Plantation, Colonial Williamsburg, and the Little
  Bighorn battlefield.
• Such projects concentrated on a very few selected
  sites, particularly houses of the rich and
  famous, forts, and military sites.

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Historical Archaeology Comes of Age

• Mainstream historical archaeology began to look
  at the larger social context, rather than at
  historical significance.
• In the 1960s, historical archaeology began to
  focus on historically disenfranchised groups,
  seeking to uncover the history of African-
  Americans, Asian-Americans, Native Americans
  during the historic period, and
  Hispanic-Americans.

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Characteristics of Historical Archaeology

• Modern historical archaeology often has a
  strongly postprocessual flavor.
• Deal with time periods that are considerably
  shorter than those of prehistoric archaeology.
• Historical archaeology is often very close to
  ustemporally and emotionally.

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Themes in Historical Archaeology

• The study of historically disenfranchised groups.
• Questions about the recent past that history
  books answer unsatisfactorily.
• The nature of European colonialism (the
  developing capitalism of that time) and its
  effects on indigenous peoples.

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Map of Monticello
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New York Citys African Burial Ground

• In 1991, the bones of 427 enslaved Africans,
  interred by their community and forgotten for
  centuries, were discovered beneath a parking lot
  in downtown New York City.
• In 1626, the Dutch West India Company unloaded
  its first shipment of enslaved Africans in New
  Amsterdam (todays New York City) 11 young men.

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New York Citys African Burial Ground

• The Dutch were experiencing a labor shortage in
  their colonies, and found slave labor to be the
  answer to building and maintaining the colony.
• 18th century New York law prohibited the burial
  of Africans in Manhattans churchyards.
• New Yorks African population established a
  cemetery outside of the city and from 1712 to
  1790, the community buried between 10,000 and
  20,000 people.

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New York Citys African Burial Ground

• Dr. Michael L. Blakeys analysis of some 400
  individuals from the burial ground found that
  half the population died before age 12.
• Some were clearly worked to death
• Enlarged muscle attachments demonstrated
  continual demands on their physical labor.
• Bones showed cranial and spinal fractures from
  excessive loads on the head and shoulders.

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Fort Mose Colonial Americas Black Fortress of
Freedom

• Fort Mose, 50 miles south of the Georgia-Florida
  border was the first legally sanctioned, free
  African-American community in the country.
• Beginning with the founding of Charles Towne by
  the British in 1670, Spain employed free Africans
  to further its colonial objectives by having them
  populate and hold territories vulnerable to
  foreign encroachment.

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Fort Mose Colonial Americas Black Fortress of
Freedom

• Both free and slave Africans were used in
  military operations, a black militia having been
  established in St. Augustine.
• By 1673, the Spanish crown declared that all
  escaped fugitives from British plantations were
  to be granted sanctuary and, eventually, freedom
  in Spanish Florida so that by their example and
  by my liberality, others will do the same.

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Medieval Mind-set

• The culture of the early (pre-AD 1660) British
  colonies that emphasized the group rather than
  the individual and in which the line between
  culture and nature was blurred people were seen
  as conforming to nature.

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Georgian Order

• A worldview (ca. 1660/16801820) arising in the
  European Age of Reason and implying that the
  world has a single, basic immutable order.
• Using the powers of reason, people can discover
  what that order is and control the environment as
  they wish.
• The Georgian order is informed by the rise of
  scientific thought and by the order in
  Renaissance architecture and art.

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Future of Historical Archaeology

• Historical archaeology is today one of the most
  rapidly expanding and exciting directions in
  Americanist archaeology.
• Challenges to existing histories and the recovery
  of the history of disenfranchised groupswill
  generate debates and dialog for years.

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Quick Quiz
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• 1. _____ _____ looks at material remains from
  past societies that also left behind written
  documentation about themselves.

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Answer historical archaeology

• Historical archaeology looks at material remains
  from past societies that also left behind written
  documentation about themselves.

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• 2. In the 1960s, historical archaeology began to
  focus on
• Elite colonial settlements.
• Diary entries of colonial women.
• Historically disenfranchised groups.
• All of the above.

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Answer C

• In the 1960s, historical archaeology began to
  focus on historically disenfranchised groups.

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• 3. Fort Mose is important because it is
  considered
• The first legally sanctioned, free
  African-American community in the country.
• The burial site of hundreds of former slaves.
• The only former fort that preserved historic
  documents such as diaries and civil records.
• All of the above.

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Answer A

• Fort Mose is important because it is considered
  the first legally sanctioned, free
  African-American community in the country.