The Archaeology of Slavery: A Comparative Approach to Captivity and Coercion (Center for Archaeological Investigations Occasional Paper Book 41)

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. Introduction: The Comparative Archaeology Of Slavery / Lydia Wilson Marshall -- Commodities Or Gifts? Captive/ Slaves In Small-scale Societies / Catherine M. Cameron -- Bioarchaelogical Case Studies Of Slavery, Captivity, And Other Forms Of Exploitation / Ryan P. Harrod And Debra L. Martin -- The Nature Of Marginality: Castle Slaves And The Atlantic Trade At San Domingo, The Gambia / Liza Girjanto -- Nineteenth-century Built Landscape Of Plantation Slavery In Comparative Perspective / Theresa A. Singleton -- 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 -- Blind Spots In Empire: Plantation Landscapes In Early Colonial Dominica (1763-1807) / Mark W. Hauser -- 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 -- Cities, Slavery, And Rural Ambivalence In Precolonial Dahomey / J. Cameron Monroe -- Slavery Matters And Materiality: Atlantic Items, Political Processes, And The Collapse Of The Hueda Kingdom, Benin, West Africa / Neil L. Norman -- The Impact Of Slavery On The East African Political Economy And Gender Relationships / Chapurukha M. Kusimba -- Maroon Archaeological Research In Mauritius And Its Possible Implications In A Global Context / Amitava Chowdhury -- Marronage And The Politics Of Memory: Fugitive Slaves, Interaction, And Integration In Nineteenth-century Kenya / Lydia Wilson Marshall -- The Indian Slave Trade And Catawba History / Mary Elizabeth Fitts -- Roman Columarium Tombs And Slave Identities / Dorian Borbonus -- Visible People, Invisible Slavery: Plantation Archaeology In East Africa / Sarah K. Croucher -- A Global Perspective On Maroon Archaeology In Brazil / Lucio Menezes Ferreira -- Fighting Despair: Challenges Of A Comparative, Global Framework For Slavery Studies / Christopher C. Fennell. Edited By Lydia Wilson Marshall. Includes Bibliographical References And Index. This book grapples with both the benefits and complications of a comparative approach to the archaeology of slavery. Themes include how to define slavery, how to identify slavery archaeologically, enslavement and emancipation, and the politics and ethics of slavery-related research.