The Materiality of Freedom

Barnes (staff archaeologist for the South Carolina Department of Archives and History in Columbia) presents 15 archaeological investigations of the material culture of post-slavery African-American life in the Reconstruction and Jim Crow eras that are attentive to the myriad ways in which archaeology can be and has been deployed politically. Examples of topics discussed include white privilege and silencing of African Americans in cultural resource management, archaeological investigation of the Phyllis Wheatley Home for Girls in Chicago (a charitable institution that worked to provide female African American migrants from the South with cultural and intellectual resources); gender in late 19th- and early 20th-century Black Dallas; the archaeology of Jim Crow-era African-American life on Louisiana's sugar plantations; African-American spiritual adaptation in the early 20th century; race and displacement in the archaeology of 20th-century university landscapes; the excavation of the Harriet Tubman Home in Auburn, New York; and infrastructure and African-American achievement in Annapolis, Maryland. Annotation c2011 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)