Georgianization. Structural oppositions in Deetz Medieval Culture Asymmetrical Corporate Labor of...

Georgianization

Structural oppositions in Deetz

Medieval Culture

• Asymmetrical• Corporate• Labor of self • Traditional• Local• Organic

Georgian culture

• Balanced• Individualized• Labor of others• Popular/Modern• Global• Ordered

Individualism

ONE POT + ONE PLACE = ONE PERSON

Death’s Head“Here lies buried”

Cherub“Here lies the body of”

Urn and willow“In Memory of”

Typical epitaphs

Increasing abstraction: Common fate of death was re-symbolized first in a more pleasant afterlife and then in

the recognition of the life lived

Order, Segregation, Secularism

Individualism Freedom

freedom from traditional social relations

Beyond the people without history

• Moral mission: – to help the poor, powerless, and

inarticulate

• Social Action: – Africans and African Americans as key

players in the “formation and transformation of the black Atlantic world”

Ethnicity: self-conscious identity

• African– West African/Central African– Fon, Igbo, Kongo, Yoruba, etc.

• African American/Black• “Oppressed ethnicity”• Race and Racism

Class

• White over black– During and after slavery

• Internal class dynamics within African and African American communities– African elites and bourgeoisie– African American middle class

Gender?

• Very few studies of gender in African Diaspora archaeology

• Reflects persistence of moral mission

Interaction• Acculturation

– Simple replacement of African-derived items and practices with European/Euroamerican

– Simplistic one-way reading of meaning

• Creolization– Interaction and exchange/agency in social and

cultural form– Multidimensional and creative: “new” cultures– Segregated approach

• Power relations– Domination and resistance/agency in political

form– Integrated approach

Material Culture

• How do objects produce history?• Recursive:

– objects act on makers and users

• Emblematic expressions of identity

Africa in America

• Most agree that “African Americans form a culturally distinct community with its own heritage” (Singleton p.8)

• At least in part a result of its African background

• How was this cultural identity constructed; – What were the sources? What were the

contexts? What were the intentions?• How do we answer these questions?

Atlantic African Slave

Trade

Trans-Atlantic exports by region1650-1900

Region

Number of slavesaccounted for

%

Senegambia 479,900 4.7

Upper Guinea 411,200 4.0

Windward Coast 183,200 1.8

Gold Coast 1,035,600 10.1

Blight of Benin 2,016,200 19.7

Blight of Biafra 1,463,700 14.3

West Central 4,179,500 40.8

South East 470,900 4.6

Total 10,240,200 100.0

Trans-Atlantic imports by region1450-1900

Region

Number of slaves

accounted for %

Brazil 4,000,000 35.4

Spanish Empire 2,500,000 22.1

British West Indies 2,000,000 17.7

French West Indies 1,600,000 14.1

British North America and United States 500,000 4.4

Dutch West Indies 500,000 4.4

Danish West Indies 28,000 0.2

Europe (and Islands) 200,000 1.8

Total 11,328,000 100.0

Revisionist School• Placing Africans and their descendent at

the center of their own histories• Breaking with world systems/dependency

theory which saw– Africa as passive agent in Euro-African

interactions– Africans and Americans at a lower stage of

development– saw the slave as powerless and established

slavery as the principle source of explanation• reduced the African identity of the slave• Flattened African American identity to that of the

slave

Thornton: Revisit Sources• Atlantic trade was not essential to African

well-being and development• African economy was productive, diverse, and

well-integrated• Africans largely controlled the nature of their

interactions with Europeans• African trade, including the slave trade, was

voluntary– Slavery was part of African societies and the

Atlantic slave trade articulated with established practices

Early sites of Atlantic raid and trade

Azores

Madeira

Cape Verde Islands

Major African trade routes

PrestigeDepiction of the meeting between the

Portuguese expedition and the Kongolese Royal Family