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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