NSF Award
1558235
With support from the National Science Foundation, Ms Alicia Odewale will conduct archaeological research to examine the natural and social challenges associated with New World slaves in multiple regions within the New World. In addition to archaeologically investigating the risks plaguing these communities, the researchers will also compare the strategies each enslaved community employed to mitigate both social and natural hazards in their environment. This comparative study uses a mixed methods approach, combining the use of slave narratives and primary accounts with archaeological evidence recovered from the former residential spaces of enslaved peoples living in environmentally distinct regions. This research goes beyond current African Diaspora scholarship to highlight the experiences of enslaved peoples serving the most elite factions of society, as well as uncovering those specific environmental challenges of primary concern to enslaved peoples living within urban insular and rural landlocked regions across the Diaspora, and compares the range of cultural adaptations different enslaved communities used to overcome the challenges they faced. The current project remains relevant for risk prone communities across the globe, as certain marginalized or indigenous cultures continue to be threatened by external forces beyond their control. Investigating the use of different strategies to diminish the effects of external forces in the past will present new directives in how to better protect marginalized peoples in the future. <br/><br/>Alicia Odewale and her team will conduct new archaeological investigations around the Danish West India and Guinea Company Warehouse inside the Christiansted National Historic Site in St. Croix, and compare these newly recovered artifacts to the extensive material already being processed by the Archaeology Department at the Montpelier Plantation Estate in Virginia. The investigators will identify and rank the primary risks of most concern to the enslaved community in each region from first-hand accounts of enslaved peoples in the West Indies and Virginia. Four types of risk sensitive artifact classes including: faunal remains, metal wares, ceramics and trade goods found at each site will then be used to identify the possible cultural responses to those challenges that presented the greatest threats to the enslaved community in each region. The central question of this study asks which of these sites presents a riskier environment for enslaved peoples during the late plantation era. The investigators hypothesize that the social and natural hazards present in the urban Caribbean environment for the royal enslaved laborers in St. Croix will pose a greater threat to the enslaved community than the rural antebellum plantation environment belonging to the presidential enslaved laborers in Virginia. Combining the written words of enslaved peoples with archaeological evidence will create a more informed study of the diversity of experiences that existed across the African Diaspora and provide a more inclusive environment for archaeologists, students and descendant communities to work together.
