The first multiauthor collection to focus on archaeology and the construction of gender in an African American context.

The moral mission archaeology set in motion by black activists in the 1960s and 1970s sought to tell the story of Americans, particularly African Americans, forgotten by the written record. Today, the archaeological study of African-American life is no longer simply an effort to capture unrecorded aspects of black history or to exhume the heritage of a neglected community. Archaeologists now recognize that one cannot fully comprehend the European colonial experience in the Americas without understanding its African counterpart. This collection of essays reflects and extends the broad spectrum of scholarship arising from this expanded definition of African-American archaeology, treating such issues as the analysis and representation of cultural identity, race, gender, and class; cultural interaction and change; relations of power and domination; and the sociopolitics of archaeological practice. "I, Too, Am America" expands African-American archaeology into an inclusive historical vision and identifies promising areas for future study.

Because some classes of people may not have been considered worthy of notice by dominant social groups in the past, they may be less visible to us today in historical and archaeological records; consequently, they remain less studied. This volume attempts to redress this oversight by presenting case studies of historical and archaeological research on various ethnic, racial, gender, and socioeconomic groups in colonial and post-colonial North America. These contributions illustrate how historical archaeologists and ethnohistorians have used documentary and archaeological evidence to retrieve information on neglected aspects of American history. They explore ways of making more visible Native Americans, African Americans, and Euro-Americans of differing ethnic groups and economic classes, and also shed new light on such groups as celibate religious communities, women in predominantly male communities, and working-class and middle-class women in urban communities. Material evidence on "those of little note" provides not only fresh insight into our understanding of daily life in the past, but also a refreshing counterpoint to the male- and Euro-centered analysis that has characterized much of historical archaeology since its inception. Readers will find many chapters rewarding in their application of sophisticated feminist theory to archaeological data, or in their probing of complex relational issues concerning the construction of gender identity and gender relationships. As the first archeaeologically-focused collection to examine the interconnectedness of gender, class, race, and ethnicity in past societies, Those of Little Note sets new standards for future research. CONTENTS I--Introduction 1. Through the Lens of Gender: Archaeology, Inequality, and Those "Of Little Note" / Elizabeth M. Scott II--Native American and African American Communities 2. Cloth, Clothing, and Related Paraphernalia: A Key to Gender Visibility in the Archaeological Record of Russian America / Louise M. Jackson 3. "We Took Care of Each Other Like Families Were Meant To": Gender, Social Organization, and Wage Labor Among the Apache at Roosevelt / Everett Bassett 4. The House of the Black Burghardts: An Investigation of Race, Gender, and Class at the W. E. B. DuBois Boyhood Homesite / Nancy Ladd Muller III--All Male and Predominantly Male Communities 5. "With Manly Courage": Reading the Construction of Gender in a 19th-Century Religious Community / Elizabeth Kryder-Reid 6. The Identification of Gender at Northern Military Sites of the Late 18th Century / David R. Starbuck 7. Class, Gender Strategies, and Material Culture in the Mining West / Donald L. Hardesty IV--Working Women in Urban Communities 8. Mrs. Starr's Profession / Donna J. Seifert 9. Diversity and 19th-Century Domestic Reform: Relationships Among Classes and Ethnic Groups / Suzanne M. Spencer-Wood

Black feminist thought has developed in various parts of the academy for over three decades, but has made only minor inroads into archaeological theory and practice. Whitney Battle-Baptiste outlines the basic tenets of Black feminist thought and research for archaeologists and shows how it can be used to improve contemporary historical archaeology. She demonstrates this using Andrew Jackson‘s Hermitage, the W. E. B. Du Bois Homesite in Massachusetts, and the Lucy Foster house in Andover, which represented the first archaeological excavation of an African American home. Her call for an archaeology more sensitive to questions of race and gender is an important development for the field.

Winner of the Southern Anthropological Society's prestigious James Mooney Award, Uncommon Ground takes a unique archaeological approach to examining early African American life. Ferguson shows how black pioneers worked within the bars of bondage to shape their distinct identity and lay a rich foundation for the multicultural adjustments that became colonial America.Through pre-Revolutionary period artifacts gathered from plantations and urban slave communities, Ferguson integrates folklore, history, and research to reveal how these enslaved people actually lived. Impeccably researched and beautifully written.

A 2018 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title New scholarship provides insights into the archaeology and cultural history of African American life from a collection of sites in the Mid-Atlantic This groundbreaking volume explores the archaeology of African American life and cultures in the Upper Mid-Atlantic region, using sites dating from the eighteenth through the twentieth centuries. Sites in Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York are all examined, highlighting the potential for historical archaeology to illuminate the often overlooked contributions and experiences of the region’s free and enslaved African American settlers. Archaeologies of African American Life in the Upper Mid-Atlantic brings together cutting-edge scholarship from both emerging and established scholars. Analyzing the research through sophisticated theoretical lenses and employing up-to-date methodologies, the essays reveal the diverse ways in which African Americans reacted to and resisted the challenges posed by life in a borderland between the North and South through the transition from slavery to freedom. In addition to extensive archival research, contributors synthesize the material finds of archaeological work in slave quarter sites, tenant farms, communities, and graveyards. Editors Michael J. Gall and Richard F. Veit have gathered new and nuanced perspectives on the important role free and enslaved African Americans played in the region’s cultural history. This collection provides scholars of the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast regions, African American studies, material culture studies, religious studies, slavery, the African diaspora, and historical archaeologists with a well-balanced array of rural archaeological sites that represent cultural traditions and developments among African Americans in the region. Collectively, these sites illustrate African Americans’ formation of fluid cultural and racial identities, communities, religious traditions, and modes of navigating complex cultural landscapes in the region under harsh and disenfranchising circumstances.