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