The Archaeology of Slavery: A Comparative Approach to Captivity and Coercion

by Lydia Wilson Marshall (Editor), Catherine M. Cameron (Contribution by), Ryan P. Harrod (Contribution by), Debra L. Martin (Contribution by), Liza Gijanto (Contribution by)

Overview

Plantation sites, especially those in the southeastern United States, have long dominated the archaeological study of slavery. These antebellum estates, however, are not representative of the range of geographic locations and time periods in which slavery has occurred. As archaeologists have begun to investigate slavery in more diverse settings, the need for a broader interpretive framework is now clear.

The Archaeology of Slavery: A Comparative Approach to Captivity and Coercion, edited by Lydia Wilson Marshall, develops an interregional and cross-temporal framework for the interpretation of slavery. Contributors consider how to define slavery, identify it in the archaeological record, and study it as a diachronic process from enslavement to emancipation and beyond.

Essays cover the potential material representations of slavery, slave owners’ strategies of coercion and enslaved people’s methods of resisting this coercion, and the legacies of slavery as confronted by formerly enslaved people and their descendants. Among the peoples, sites, and periods examined are a late nineteenth-century Chinese laborer population in Carlin, Nevada; a castle slave habitation at San Domingo and a more elite trading center at nearby Juffure in the Gambia; two eighteenth-century plantations in Dominica; Benin’s Hueda Kingdom in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; plantations in Zanzibar; and three fugitive slave sites on Mauritius—an underground lava tunnel, a mountain, and a karst cave.

This essay collection seeks to analyze slavery as a process organized by larger economic and social forces with effects that can be both durable and wide-ranging. It presents a comparative approach that significantly enriches our understanding of slavery.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780809333981
Publisher:	Southern Illinois University Press
Publication date:	12/12/2014
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	426
File size:	11 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Lydia Wilson Marshall is an assistant professor of anthropology at DePauw University. She has published articles in the Journal of African Archaeology and African Archaeological Review and is active in the fields of historical archaeology and African archaeology.

  Contributors include Lynsey A. Bates, Dorian Borbonus, Kenneth L. Brown,  Catherine M. Cameron, Amitava Chowdhury,Sarah K. Croucher,Christopher C. Fennell, Lúcio Menezes Ferreira,Mary Elizabeth Fitts, Liza Gijanto, Ryan P. Harrod, Mark W. Hauser, Chapurukha M. Kusimba, Debra L. Martin,  J. Cameron Monroe, Neil L. Norman, and Theresa A. Singleton.

Table of Contents

List of Figures
List of Tables

1. Introduction: The Comparative Archaeology of Slavery
Lydia Wilson Marshall

2. Commodities or Gifts? Captive/Slaves in Small-Scale Societies
Catherine M. Cameron

3. Bioarchaeological Case Studies of Slavery, Captivity, and Other Forms of Exploitation
Ryan P. Harrod and Debra L. Martin

4. The Nature of Marginality: Castle Slaves and the Atlantic Trade at San Domingo, the Gambia
Liza Gijanto

5. Nineteenth-Century Built Landscape of Plantation Slavery in Comparative Perspective
Theresa A. Singleton

6. “The Landscape Cannot Be Said to Be Really Perfect”: A Comparative Investigation of Plantation Spatial Organization on Two British Colonial Sugar Estates
Lynsey A. Bates

7. Blind Spots in Empire: Plantation Landscapes in Early Colonial Dominica (1763–1807)
Mark W. Hauser

8. Retentions, Adaptations, and the Need for Social Control within African and African American Communities across the Southern United States from 1770 to 1930
Kenneth L. Brown

9. Cities, Slavery, and Rural Ambivalence in Precolonial Dahomey
J. Cameron Monroe

10. Slavery Matters and Materiality: Atlantic Items, Political Processes, and the Collapse of the Hueda Kingdom, Benin, West Africa
Neil L. Norman

11. The Impact of Slavery on the East African Political Economy and Gender Relationships
Chapurukha M. Kusimba

12. Maroon Archaeological Research in Mauritius and Its Possible Implications in a Global Context
Amitava Chowdhury

13. Marronage and the Politics of Memory: Fugitive Slaves, Interaction, and Integration in Nineteenth-Century Kenya
Lydia Wilson Marshall

14. The Indian Slave Trade and Catawba History
Mary Elizabeth Fitts

15. Roman Columbarium Tombs and Slave Identities
Dorian Borbonus

16. Visible People, Invisible Slavery: Plantation Archaeology in East Africa
Sarah K. Croucher

17. A Global Perspective on Maroon Archaeology in Brazil
Lúcio Menezes Ferreira

18. Fighting Despair: Challenges of a Comparative, Global Framework for Slavery Studies
Christopher C. Fennell

Contributors
Index

Editorial Reviews

This volume brings the archaeological study of slavery to a global level.”—CHOICE

“Lydia Wilson Marshall and colleagues have performed an essential service for those working across disciplines on the global reach and temporal range of human bondage. The Archaeology of Slavery is more than its ambitious title intends: it is an impressive collection of comparative world history, of methodologies within and beyond the disciplines, and of muscular theorizing. This will be our go-to collection for years ahead.”—James F. Brooks, author of Captives and Cousins: Slavery, Kinship and Community in the Southwest Borderlands

From the Publisher