Archaeology of Slavery in North America

I have been captivated by archaeology and I never thought I would. I say this because it never crossed my mind that I might be interested in this branch of Anthropology. It was first piqued back in 2009 when Dr. Stahl was just settling in here at UVIC and teaching her course on the Archaeology of Africa. I was simultaneously reading the Book of Negros and was stunned when I saw that the book was accurate in its depiction of it's time. I noticed the similarities in iron making and other metal works that Dr. Stalh had lectured about. This interest, however fervorant, dissipated as a I left school, went wandering in Barkley Sound for a few months and ended up in Kamloops selling Volkswagens, I all but forgot my sudden passion, until....

I ended up in Anth 392 and found once again a new interest in archaeology. While I took the course I fond a book in the book-exchenge in in the laundry room of my apartment. It was called "Roots". Now the point of this blog (you may be wondering) is that never before have I stumbled upon an interest that gets me so fired up! I think about research that i could do, what if there was an international NAGPRA of sorts? Would 1st generation slave (or 2nd or 3rd) remains be repatriated to Africa? Well of course not, just play the tape forward a little and you can see the major flaws. But this type of idea has me so engrossed in what excavation has been done in North America concerning those brought here on slave ships. Where are they buried? Have they been excavated? What did they find? How long before their cultural identity was stripped did they engrain their legacy when burying the dead? What was passed down??? I know these are questions that have most likely been answered but I still don't know them but I intend to find out. Just by reading these two books I realize how much I do not know about the dead and what it means to people. I don't even know what it means to me, to be honest. I intend on moving forward in my quest to find out what happened in a space and time where a new culture was formed by group under duress and oppression and without a language they were aloud to speak. For now I will finish that last pages of "Roots"

(links below are articles about African American slavery archaeology)

http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2946825?uid=3739400&uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=3737720&uid=4&sid=47698821244877

http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.library.uvic.ca/stable/2155932?&Search=yes&searchText=archaeology&searchText=african&searchText=american&searchText=slavery&searchText=culture&searchText=material&list=hide&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3Dthe%2Barchaeology%2Bof%2Bafrican%2Bamerican%2Bslavery%2Band%2Bmaterial%2Bculture%26Search.x%3D0%26Search.y%3D0%26wc%3Don&prevSearch=&item=1&ttl=3016&returnArticleService=showFullText

Sandra anderson and her bone sniffing dog Eagle a hoax

http://www.archaeology.org/online/features/dogs/index.html

The dog is not at fault. He was just trying to be a good dog and a loyal pet...and he was. It was his handler Sandra Anderson that brought disgrace this 'eagle-eyed' canine and thus upon herself. Most notably Anderson and Eagle were commissioned to assist in a land dispute between American Indian bands concerning burial grounds. This is a massive responsibility where repatriation of sacred land to the right band was hinged on her findings. Archeologists that had previously done research on the area were suspicious of what Anderson and Eagle found. As is noted in the article, if Anderson's account of where Eagle had detected remains were in fact validated this would deem the area the largest Native American burial ground in the Upper Midwest. While her claim was never overturned due to land use regulations against excavation a small sample of what lay beneath was nothing more than bedrock.
This is one example of the many travesties caused by Anderson and her actions called into question the validity of dog scent detection, which has shown much promise in the recovery of human remains.

Eagle and Anderson worked on war crime evidence recovery in Panama and in Bosnia as well as in the rubble at the World Trade Centers. These are not small expeditions by any means and  Eagle was recalled as a very well trained and resourceful sniffer dog (http://truthinjustice.org/sandra-anderson.htm). The unfortunate part is that she brought a lot of pain and undeserved suffering to many families whom counted on law enforcement and their affiliates to bring peace to them in recovering remains.