The Oxford Handbook of Public Archaeology

The Oxford Handbook of Public Archaeology, edited by Robin Skeates, Carol McDavid and John Carman, just came out last month (March, 2012)…I co-authored one of the chapters (Chapter 31: “Descent community partnering, the politics of time, and the logistics of reality: tales from North American, African diaspora, archaeology”)…but I have to confess, the volume ain’t cheap…

According to the OUP website, the volume seeks to…

reappraise the place of archaeology in the contemporary world by providing a series of essays that critically engage with both old and current debates in the field of public archaeology.  Divided into four distinct sections and drawing across disciplines in this dynamic field, the volume aims to evaluate the range of research strategies and methods used in archaeological heritage and museum studies, identify and contribute to key contemporary debates, critically explore the history of archaeological resource management, and question the fundamental principles and practices through which the archaeological past is understood and used today.

The volume also includes many friends & colleagues such as Fred McGhee, Adrian Praetzellis, Barbara Little, Michael Nassaney, Margaret Purser, Kevin Bartoy, Patrice Jeppson, Cheryl LaRoche, Alice Kehoe, and David Gadsby…and many, many more (it’s a “cast of thousands”).  Check it out (probably, quite literally…”check it out” of the nearest research library that has the money to buy it).

 

Howard Anthropology Under Fire

This month I have received a couple alarming e-mails from my colleagues at Howard University. It appears that Howard University President Sidney A. Ribeau has recently revealed his plans to close the anthropology program in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology–along with other programs such as the B.A. in African Studies, Classics, and Philosophy. This reduction in liberal arts programs is a disturbing trend not only among Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU), but also among smaller colleges and universities across the United States (Southern Arkansas University, where I currently teach, is considering scrapping its sociology major in the near future)…but, beyond the broad trend (which is something I may address in a later post), this specific case is a tragedy in a very particular sense.

 

Founders Library at Howard University

 

Howard University is the only one out of 105 HBCUs in the United States with a five-field approach to anthropology (the “fifth field” in this case is applied anthropology).  Moreover, the program has a strong emphasis in bioarchaeology and archeology.  The Howard Anthropology program came to national attention in the 1990s when they became an integral part of the African Burial Ground (ABG) project in New York City.    The importance of the ABG project lies not only in its archaeology and bioarcheology, but also in its politics.  It was an important moment for our discipline when an empowered descendant community wrested control of the project away from a firm that they saw as insensitive to its wishes and interests…they placed control of the removal, analysis and re-interment of 400 venerated ancestors in the hands of Dr. Michael Blakey and Howard University–a HBCU that has a reputation of good scholarship and black activism.  If such an event happened next year, will there be an anthropology program capable to taking on such a research project?

My colleagues pointed out in their email that the President’s decision will adversely impact the archaeology of Africa and the African Diaspora for a number of reasons. First, it will frustrate our efforts to recruit and train African Americans, students of African descent, and other minorities.  They call attention to the fact that, currently, the total number of registered minority members in the American Anthropological Association is less than 16%, and the number of African Americans is approximately 3%.  I will point out that several Howard University alumni (including Blakey who was the bioarcheologist for the ABG Project when he was a professor at Howard, but got his BA at HU in 1978 before going to UMass Amherst for his MA & Ph.D. ) have gone on to important careers in our discipline and made important contributions to anthropology.  I have believed for a long time that one of the avenues to increasing the number of practicing African-American archeologists is to get strong anthropology programs in HBCUs.  Losing Howard University’s anthropology program will be a definite blow to that endeavor.

The e-mail states that closing the program will…

…hinder our abilities to expose students of all majors to the past of Africa and the African Diaspora.”  Approximately 10,500 students are enrolled at Howard, and many of them are African Americans from all corners of the United States, Africa and other countries throughout the African Diaspora.  A closing will not only affect our students, but it will also impact local communities, descendant groups, indigenous peoples, underserved populations, and affiliated institutions.  Each of us in the Howard U. Anthropology Program works in collaboration with community interest groups.

 

Poster from the Windows from the Past Conference

 

Last February, I had the honor of being a part of Windows from the Present to the Past: the Archaeology of Africa and the African Diaspora–a conference at Howard University hosted by the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Office of the Provost, and Office of the Dean.  I was very impressed with the mix of scholars, students and faculty members that the conference brought together.  I had a great time, but my colleagues tell me it was much more of a success than that…they say that the conference served as a means for students and faculty members in other disciplines and Howard University departments to learn about our research. Since the conference, they tell me, the sizes of Howard’s archaeology classes have doubled in enrollment.

After a period of discussion, President Sidney A. Ribeau will make his final decisions shortly after December 1, 2010. Therefore, soon there will be a “Call for Action” and you will be asked to send letters to the President, other colleagues, influential community members, and prominent political leaders.

Send comments to either:

Eleanor King; emking@howard.edu OR

Florie Bugarin; florie_bugarin@yahoo.com

Block House Revisited, The Sacred & Profane Artifacts of Abraham Block

by David M. Markus and Jamie C. Brandon (submitted to Field Notes: the Newsletter of the Arkansas Archeological Society)

As we are celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the Arkansas Archeological Society is appropriate to look backward and revisit some of our important past projects.  The Kadohadacho Chapter and the Southern Arkansas University Research Station of the Arkansas Archeological Survey have been doing just that at Historic Washington State Park (HWSP).

Dr. Leslie "Skip" Stewart-Abernathy screening with local youth during the 1982 excavations at the Block House in Historic Washington State Park.

Archeological investigations at HWSP have been intermittent for the past thirty years—including the 1981 Arkansas Archeological Society Summer Training Program at the Sanders House and the subsequent programs at the home of Abraham Block in 1982 and 1983. At the Block House excavations, under the direction of Dr. Leslie C. “Skip” Stewart-Abernathy (then the Arkansas Archeological Survey Research Station Archeologist at the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff), society volunteers and Survey staff unearthed the remains of the Block family detached kitchen.

In 1827 Abraham and his wife Fanny along with their seven children moved to Washington, Arkansas in Hempstead County on the western frontier of America in search of economic opportunities. Originally from Bohemia and later from Richmond, Virginia Abraham was a merchant by trade and moved south and became an important regional merchant.  Abraham Block has also become famous in Arkansas and American Judaism as a very early Jew on the frontier and thus, the family figures strongly in the hagiography of Judaism in the United States.

Although many of the homes of prominent figures in the Washington community, Block included, have survived (the railroad went through Hope, eight miles away, and thus preserving Washington) the associated outbuilding such as kitchens, smokehouses, barns, privies, slave quarters and wells have been lost. Arguably these building are the most revealing in terms of the daily lives of their inhabitants.  The work of Dr. Stewart-Abernathy and the Society digs has done much to reconstruct the landscapes of these “urban farmsteads.”

During the 1982 and later 1983 society training programs held at the Block house, Dr. Stewart-Abernathy recovered the remains of a sealed trash deposit dating to the early 1840’s under the expected footprint of the Block kitchen. Within this pit were a variety of household ceramics that likely represent discards from the Block home as well as the family business and faunal remains related to food consumption. These remains provided an opportunity to closely examine the Blocks’ attitudes and adherence to a major tenet of traditional Judaism: the system of kashrut relating meat consumption. With the assistance of Dr. Barbara Ruff of the University of Georgia, Dr. Stewart-Abernathy analyzed the remains and found that despite kosher laws forbidding the consumption of pork and catfish, there were in fact a respectable amount of both recovered the pit. When this finding is taken in conjunction with documentary evidence, it is apparent that Block family efforts to adapt their Judaism to frontier conditions led to sometimes painful results closely similar to the currents and experiences that in turn led to Reform Judaism.

Kadohadacho Chapter volunteer Bob Campbell finishes cleaning out the mysterious chimney feature.

The archeological record became increasingly complex in 1998 when the Sponsored Research Program of the Arkansas Archeological Survey, under the direction of Randy Guendling, returned to the Block yard space as part of work done at the Park. Guendling, along with Mike Evans and Jared Pebworth, tested both the side and back yards with augers and based on those findings dug several backhoe trenches in an attempt to locate early nineteenth century features. One of the trenches skirted the base of a long-since dead tree where brick remains were being exposed due to soil erosion. This trench, dug not five meters from the location of the kitchen excavations in the 1980’s, revealed the intact base of a brick feature—possibly a chimney or pier. This complicated the view of the Block urban farmstead landscape. Is this possibly an earlier structure?  Is it an end chimney for the kitchen uncovered in the 1980’s? Is it a previously unknown building contemporaneous with that kitchen?  These questions, along with the further contextualization of the Block family yard space, will serve as the basis of the senior author’s Master’s Thesis in Anthropology at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville.

During Archeology Month in 2010, the Kadohadacho Chapter assisted the authors in answering these questions. Between March 22nd and March 27th and again on April 9^th and 10th a total of 8 units (four 2×2 meter units and four 1×2 meter units) were dug surrounding the mystery brick feature. These excavations resulted in the complete exposure of the brick feature confirming that it is, in fact, a chimney. A sealed midden (probably protected beneath a structure) to the north of the chimney indicates that it likely relates to a building separate from the kitchen located to the east.  This was a dense deposit containing a multitude of artifacts including: many fragments of ceramics (often with the same transfer-print patterns as those excavated in the kitchen pit), nails, glass (including an etched glass goblet), food remains (animal bone ), artifacts of a more personal nature including children’s toys (marbles, toy teas sets and doll fragments), music-related artifacts (mouth harp and harmonica reed plate), armaments (gunflint, lead shot, bullets and cartridges), and objects related to personal adornment (i.e., buttons, small metal clasp, straight pins).  These artifacts are of a domestic nature (so this is not a barn, smoke house or privy) and date to the same period as the artifacts recovered in the 1980’s.  So…who is living in this structure? Likely candidates are enslaved Africans in the service of the Block Family.

You can see pictures of the Block House excavations at Farther Along’s Flickr site:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jcbrandon/sets/72157623521464409/

The authors discovered documents in the historian’s files at Historic Washington State Park, specifically a hand drawn map from an informant named “Moss Rowe,” that seems to confirm that the building was used as a slave quarters. Such an interpretation fits with the idea of the Blocks’ as slave owners. While not terribly involved in the trafficking of slaves, the Blocks did own and sell slaves gained as collateral in their merchant ventures. Period documents show that at most the Blocks’ owned five slaves at any time, and given their location in an urban context this number seems correct.

We are currently processing the rather large number of artifacts that were recovered from these excavations.  Watch for future talks, and articles in Fields Notes and other journals for further interpretations as the senior author’s thesis develops.

Thanks to Historic Washington State Park for being great hosts—we appreciate all the hospitality.  Thanks to all of the Kadohadacho Chapter members, volunteers and staff who helped make the dig possible:  Hannah Berry, Joseph Berry, Maggie Berry, Finn Buckley, Hayes Buckley, Bob Campbell, Pritam Chowdhury, Rick Conkey, Charlotte Conkey, Daniel Conkey, Kyle Farmer, Canaan Gideon, Debra Hartley, Cole Herberg, Thomas Herberg, Holli Howard, Andre Levvorn, Connie Masters, Myrtle McGeehee, Duncan McKinnon, Karen Mills, Tom Purdin, and Sarah Wade.  A special thanks to Dr. Leslie “Skip” Stewart-Abernathy, who lead the excavations at the Block House in 1982-1984, for coming out and working with us during the dig!

Jamie Brandon screens with help from Finn Buckley, Hays Buckley, Cole Herberg, Thomas Herberg and HWSP Superintendent Joe Buckley.

My Life in Cemeteries

Last week I got to help give away one of those giant-sized checks—you know… like Ed McMahon.  It’s a great feeling to give one of those things away…nothing makes people feel happy like giving them an over-sized check.  The check was actually from the Arkansas Humanities Council and was destined for the Washington Hill Cemetery Association.  The money was a grant to help Washington Hill with their cemetery preservation project as a part of an AHC grant initiative geared at helping to document and preserve endangered African-American cemeteries.  My organization, the Arkansas Archeological Survey, is partners with the AHC in this initiative.  My services are a required, but free, part of the grant process…

The Arkansas Humanities Council gives the Washington Hill Cemetery Association a grant check for their preservation program: Left to right: Ronald Majors (Assoc. Pastor of Macedonia Baptist Church), George Wylie, Juanita Hopson, Gloria Majors, Herman Hopson (with check), Lasaundra Deloach-Williams (Arkansas Humanities Council), Paul Austin (Arkansas Humanities Council), Jamie Brandon, Ora Wylie, and J. A. Hale.

You may remember me talking about my take on cemeteries in earlier posts, but over the last 4 years I have become increasingly involved in cemetery preservation in southwestern Arkansas.  I’m often way behind on these projects, due to my busy schedule…but they are dear to my heart.  Archeology can be a very abstract and esoteric pursuit, but my cemetery projects are an example of concrete “good” that my discipline can do—actually helping real people with real problems.

You can see more pictures from Washington Hill Cemetery and the grant check ceremony on my Flickr page (follow the link below):

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jcbrandon/sets/72157623767580245/

This year two projects have worked to bring the issue of cemetery preservation to the public.  In March, AETN premiered “Silent Storytellers,” a film project by Hop Litzwire and Casey Sanders that explores some of the many issues surrounding cemetery preservation in Arkansas.  This film includes sections on a couple projects that involve the AAS/AHC…and mentions a few cemetery projects here in southwestern Arkansas; including the successful Paraloma Cemetery preservation project in Sevier County, the very endangered Oak Grove Cemetery in Hempstead County and Cedar Grove, a postbellum African-American cemetery in Lafayette County that had to be excavated and relocated by archeologists in the 1980s. You can find out more at the AETN website:

http://www.aetn.org/programs/silentstorytellers/homepage

The second documentary is “Buried Treasures – The Stories of the Bold Pilgrim Cemetery”–a short documentary that looks into the lives and final resting places of African-Americans who migrated to Conway County, Arkansas in the late 1800’s.  AETN has not aired this documentary yet…but you can view it online at:

http://www.aetn.org/programs/silentstorytellers/videoextras/media/buried_treasures_-_thestories_of_the_bold_pilgrim_cemetery

Also…you can see both of these documentaries if you are attending the April 30-May1 workshop put on by the Preservation of African American Cemeteries, Inc. to be held at the University of Arkansas at Monticello…Check out the below link for program details…

http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~paac/2010paacregform.pdf

I’ll see some of you there…or maybe I’ll run into you in some cemetery in Arkansas.

Race, Katrina and Public Intellectuals

Last night I attended SAU’s Kathleen Mallory Lecture. The series was named in honor of a long-time Professor of English and Foreign Languages at SAU who has been instrumental in the National Writing Project program, the Youth Writing Festival hosted by SAU among other important contributions.

The lecture series is meant to bring scholars working in the fields of African diasporic and African-American studies to Southern Arkansas University to share their scholarship with students and members of he greater community. . .sounds right up my alley, eh?

At any rate, this spring’s lecture was a breath of fresh air…Dr. Melissa Harris-Lacewell (Assoc. Professor of Politics and African American Studies at Princeton University) provided a thoughtful analysis of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina with an emphasis on how the actual disaster was not the hurricane, but the structural inequalities that the hurricane highlighted–a long history of environmental racism, differential access to transportation, resources and political voice.

Even better is the fact that Dr. Harris-Lacewell kept a great sense of humor in her presentation that made discussions about race a bit more approachable for those who are usually uncomfortable with the topic…Dr. Harris-Lacewell is a fine example of what I think a public intellectual should look & sound like…and exactly what I needed to feel a bit more excited about SAU.

Kudos to her, kudos to the Kathleen Mallory series and kudos to SAU.

Find out (a lot) more about Dr. Harris-Lacewell at:
http://www.melissaharrislacewell.com/

Of course, I like her even more when I see that she shares my inexplicable urge to put my whole life on the web.

Call to Home….Or Someplace Like Home

Below is a section from Carol Stack’s Call To Home (a narrative-style ethnography/novel about urban African-Americans returning to their southern hometowns)…the passage struck me this afternoon–I can’t imagine why (he said sarcastically).

I come from a small town in Western Tennessee. When I lived there I was considered an intellectual and not quite normal. When I moved to Memphis for college I was considered a rural rube (which I quickly began to identify with and wear as a badge of honor) and, thus, not quite normal…After that, I moved to Fayetteville, Arkansas and Austin Texas…all the time staying in intellectual circles and being the token rural, southern, white boy from a working-class background.

Now I’ve moved to Magnolia….a town very much like the county seat of my home county in Tennessee…I find myself confronting long abandoned feelings and roles….

Not to mention that I’m living 5 hours away from my wife for the foreseeable future.

“Hank spent two more years in Brooklyn. He got over being mad and drove down to visit Billie almost every weekend, but, of course, people still talked, and Billie herself wasn’t always certain where the marriage was heading. A man can get used to city life. Up there he could get his hands on this and that–he could hustle. Down home it was a different story.

Maybe a man could make up his mind, decide to turn his back on what he had acquired a taste for. But the question was, could he get used to the country again, to the South? Could he wait patiently enough for people in Chowan Springs to get used to him again, to be able to trust him? Billie prayed Hank would change…”

April 4

As this is the anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (04/04/1968), I’ll ask you to take a minute and check out the National Civil Rights Museum which was built in and around the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee–the very place where Dr. King was struck down.

As an ex-Memphian, I do have mixed feelings about the National Civil Rights Museum. First, when I worked at Garrow and Assoc. (an archaeological contract firm in Memphis that was then located across the street from the Lorraine), I witnessed first hand the displacement of many working poor from the premises prior to the creation of the museum…That’s right, leave it to Memphis to kick out poor folks (many of whom were people of color) in order to build a shrine to Dr. King. Click here to check out the 14 year protest of Jacqueline Smith–the last tenant of the Lorraine Motel–and find out why she urges folks to boycott the NCRM.

My second reservation is that the exhibits at the NCRM might lead an uninformed visitor to believe that the Civil Rights Movement stopped when MLK was assassinated (the exhibits end with the room where he spent his last hours and continue across the street in the building from which he was shot). Although, on the other hand, I’ll give them points for their recent inclusion of interpretations of the black power movement (i.e. the Black Panthers and Malcolm X).

These caveats aside, I really do believe in the museum’s general message and mission… so, check them out on the web…or better yet, visit the museum in person…But put your “critical reading” glasses on.

www.negroartist.com

I received an unsolicited e-mail the other day from someone who would rather “keep [his] name and contact information private.” The author of this e-mail explained that he authored and hosted a site– http://www.negroartist.com/

The author went on to explain that:

“This site was developed for everyone to use freely at no charge… in other words I will place an artist, dealer, writer etc. on here at no charge. I directly link to their site or provide their direct contact information.”

As this is the philosophy of our own Project Past web site (although we are a platform for anthropologists, archaeologists & historians), it caught my attention…

Take a look at the site….it is rather busy, but has a good amount of content. For my interest, it not only includes hundreds of links to African-American artists (such as Blue Lady by Kelvin Curry pictured to the right), but it also has quite a lot of content relating to African-American history….including galleries of 19th & 20th century images of African-Americans (including negative popular-culture stereotypes) and hunks of slave narratives.

The site is quite eclectic in its attempts at being comprehensive, but it is a worthwhile endeavor….check it out.

Differing Development in Huston, Dallas & Northwest Arkansas

Tommy Head, a friend and colleague of my wife (and a native of Huston, Texas), sent me a link to a fascinating publication that I would have never found on my own….In the March 2006 issue of Governing Online (a magazine for state and local governments) there is an article entitled “Land Rush: Inner cities are becoming hot places to live. Does government have any business telling developers to keep out?” by By John Buntin (it also contains a GREAT photo essay by the same author, see example below). This article outlines the current situation in Houston’s Third Ward, a traditional African-American enclave that is currently being invaded by artists, young professionals and their “gleaming new urban lofts.”

What fascinated me about this article was 1) the historical similarities between Houston and Dallas and 2) the differing tone about development in these urban areas vs. the tone typically used when covering development in historically rural Northwest Arkansas. In the Governing article, one of its principle figures (Garnet Coleman) takes an entirely negative view of the process….he, in fact, turns class and racial discourse on its head with statements like: “You can tell a neighborhood’s turning, when you see them out at night walking their dogs.”

…Gotta love that

The article, however, does a good job of covering the different understandings and the basic conflict presented by gentrification….Houston’s case is eerily similar to Dallas, where James Davidson, Maria Franklin & I have documented a similar history of space, class, race and urbanization through the historical and archaeological records. Check out a paper we gave to the SHA in 2004, or James Davidson’s chapter in our Household Chores and Household Choices volume.

In a different gear, these two cases present us with a discursive disjuncture when compared against the case of “rural” Northwest Arkansas. Benton County is the fastest growing county in Arkansas and is the 3rd fastest growing county in the United States. The Rogers/ Bentonville/ Springdale/ Fayetteville metropolitan area growth is creating higher demand for residential amenities. Wal-Mart, Tyson, J.B. Hunt and vendors are bringing in upper level management to facilitate their expanding Corporations. These transformations change the structure and feeling of the community in ways not dissimilar to urban transformations, but the public tone is radically different.

But compare for a moment the tone in this Governing article with the overwhelmingly positive tone normally present in articles describing development in Northwest Arkansas.

Building Boom, State economic officials tour Siloam Springs, Deserving of better treatment, Most lifestyle centers aim for urban entertainment, and many many more….

The Covenant with Black America

“[I]t was the rise and growth among the slaves of a determination to be free and an active part of American democracy that forced American democracy continually to look into the depths. . . . One cannot think then of democracy in America or in the modern world without reference to the American Negro.”–W.E.B. Du Bois, The Gift of Black Folk (1924)

“The word covenant we borrow from the Latin convenio, from con, together, and venio, I come; signifying a contract or agreement made between two parties; to fulfill the conditions of which they are mutually bound.”–Adam Clarke

I recently watched the CSPAN coverage of Tavis Smiley’s Covenant with Black America panel discussions….From a “intellectual celebrity” point of view there was an entertaining dialog between Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, Dr. Cornel West and Tavis Smiley about the long-debated issue of separatism…but I was more interested in the larger issue of The Covenant than I was individual personalities….

While I fully agree with my peers that Smiley’s Covenant may be a bit more “mainstream” than some may want/like, what I DO like about the Covenant is that it is a platform for discussion…and a platform that appears to be working….

One of my colleagues has passed along (via H-AFRO-AM on H-NET) three things worth noting:

1. During the CSPAN broadcast of the first town meeting, there were 2 million hits to the web site.
2. The Covenant is the number one seller on the Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Dalton web sites. If the momentum continues, The Covenant could well be number one on the NY Times best seller list this week, a first for a Black publisher–the book is published by Third World Press.
3. Commitments have been made by both the Republican and Democratic parties to hold public meetings of all the 2008 Presidential candidates, before any primary or caucus, to ask all the candidates to respond to The Covenant…in what form they ACTUALLY address it remains, however, to be seen.