Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-m6dg7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T09:44:43.735Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Archaeology of African-American Slave Religion in the Antebellum South

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 December 2008

Charles E. Orser Jr
Charles E. Orser Jr
Affiliation:
Midwestern Archaeological Research Center 4640Illinois State UniversityNormal, IL 61761-4640USA
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

An interest in New World slavery is a recent and exciting development within American archaeology. As archaeologists have rushed to discover the material aspects of what slaves ate, what kinds of dwellings they inhabited, and what sorts of material culture they used, they have also gathered information about slave religion. Although much of this information is incomplete and open to numerous interpretations, it nonetheless exposes an important area of archaeological endeavour. I explore some of what is today known about the slaves' religious observances, both African-inspired and non-African. My focus is on the antebellum period, roughly from 1800 to 1861, of the American South, with some reference to other times and places.

Type
Articles
Information
Cambridge Archaeological Journal , Volume 4 , Issue 1 , April 1994 , pp. 33 - 45
Copyright
Copyright © The McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research 1994

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adams, W.H. (ed.), 1987. Historical Archaeology of Plantations at Kings Bay, Camden County, Georgia. Gainesville (FA): Department of Anthropology, University of Florida.Google Scholar
Andrews, S.C. & Young, A.L., 1992. Plantations on the periphery of the Old South: modeling a new approach, in Plantations on the Periphery: The Archaeology of Small Slave Holding Sites, ed. Faulkner, C.H.. Knoxville (TN): University of Tennessee Press.Google Scholar
Ascher, R. & Fairbanks, C.H., 1971. Excavation of a slave cabin: Georgia, U.S.A. Historical Archaeology 5, 3–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Babson, D.W., 1990. The archaeology of racism and ethnicity on southern plantations, in Historical Archaeology on Southern Plantations and Farms, ed. Orser, C.E. Jr. Historical Archaeology 24(4), 20–28.Google Scholar
Baker, S.G., 1972. Colono-Indian pottery from Cambridge, South Carolina, with comments on the historic Catawba pottery trade. Notebook (of the South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology) 4(1), 3–30.Google Scholar
Brown, K.L. & Cooper, D.C., 1990. Structural continuity in an African-American slave and tenant community, in Historical Archaeology on Southern Plantations and Farms, ed. Orser, C.E. Jr. Historical Archaeology 24(4), 7–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cade, J.B., 1935. Out of the mouths of ex–slaves. Journal of Negro History 20, 294–337.Google Scholar
Childe, V.G., 1926. The Aryans: A Study of Indo-European Origins. New York (NY): Alfred A. Knopf.Google Scholar
Cooley, R.B. 1926. Homes of the Freed. New York (NY): New Republic.Google Scholar
DuBois, W.E.B., 1961. The Souls of Black Folk: Essays and Sketches. Greenwich (CT): Fawett.Google Scholar
Duffy, J., 1962. Portugal in Africa. Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Epperson, T.W., 1990. Race and the disciplines of the plantation, in Historical Archaeology on Southern Plantations and Farms, ed. Orser, C.E. Jr. Historical Archaeology 24(4), 29–36.Google Scholar
Ewbanks, T., 1856. Life in Brazil. New York (NY): Harper and Brothers.Google Scholar
Fairbanks, C.H., 1974. The Kingsley slave cabins in Duval County, Florida. Conference on Historic Site Archaeology Papers 7, 62–93.Google Scholar
Fairbanks, C.H., 1984. The plantation archaeology of the southeastern coast. Historical Archaeology 18(4), 1–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ferguson, L.G., 1978. Looking for the ‘Afro’ in Colono–Indian pottery. Conference on Historic Site Archaeology Papers 12, 68–86.Google Scholar
Ferguson, L.G., 1991. Struggling with pots in colonial South Carolina, in The Archaeology of Inequality, eds. McGuire, R.H. & Paynter, R.. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 28–39.Google Scholar
Ferguson, L.G., 1992. Uncommon Ground: Archaeology and Early African America, 1650–1800. Washington (DC): Smithsonian Institution Press.Google Scholar
Frazier, E.F., 1964. The Negro Church in America. New York (NY): Schocken.Google Scholar
Writers', Georgia Project. 1940. Drums and Shadows: Survival Studies Among the Georgia Coastal Negroes. Athens (GA): University of Georgia Press.Google Scholar
Hall, R.L., 1989. Religious symbolism of the iron pot: the possibility of a Congo-Angola origin. Western Journal of Black Studies 13, 125–9.Google Scholar
Handler, J.S., 1983. An African pipe from a slave cemetery in Barbados, West Indies, in The Archaeology of the Clay Tobacco Pipe, VIII. America, ed. Davey, P.. Oxford: BAR, 245–53.Google Scholar
Handler, J.S. & Lange, F.W., 1978. Plantation Slavery in Barbados: An Archaeological and Historical Investigation. Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Handler, J.S., Corruccini, R.S. & Mutaw, R.J., 1982. Tooth mutilation in the Caribbean: evidence from a slave burial population in Barbados, Journal of Human Evolution 11, 297–313.Google Scholar
Handler, J.S., Lange, F.W. & Orser, C.E. Jr, 1979. Carnelian beads in necklaces from a slave cemetery in Barbados, West Indies. Ornament 4(4), 15–18.Google Scholar
Hawkes, C., 1954. Archaeological theory and methods: some suggestions from the Old World. American Anthropologist 56, 155–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heath, B., 1989. Afro–Caribbean Pottery from St Eustatius, Netherlands Antilles. Unpublished paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology, Baltimore.Google Scholar
Herskovits, M.J., 1958. The Myth of the Negro Past. Boston (MA): Beacon.Google Scholar
Johnson, M.P. & Roark, J.L., 1984. Black Masters: A Free Family of Color in the Old South. New York (NY): W.W. Norton.Google Scholar
Joyner, C., 1984. Down by the Riverside: A South Carolina Slave Community. Urbana (IL): University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Killion, R. & Waller, C. (eds.), 1973. Slavery Time When I Was Chillun Down on Marster's Plantation: Interviews with Georgia Slaves. Savannah (GA): Beehive.Google Scholar
Klingelhofer, E., 1987. Aspects of early Afro–American material culture: artifacts from the slave quarters at Garrison Plantation, Maryland. Historical Archaeology 21(4), 112–19.Google Scholar
Kovel, R.M. & Kovel, T.H., 1953. Dictionary of Marks: Pottery and Porcelain. New York (NY): Crown.Google Scholar
Lees, W.B. & Kimery–Lees, K.M., 1979. The function of Colono–Indian ceramics: insights from Limerick Plantation, South Carolina. Historical Archaeology 13, 1–13.Google Scholar
McKee, L., 1992. Summary Report on the 1991 Field Quarter Excavation. Nashville (TN): The Hermitage.Google Scholar
Mathewson, R.D., 1972. Jamaican ceramics: an introduction to the 18th–century folk pottery in West African tradition. Jamaica Journal 6, 54–6.Google Scholar
Mintz, S.W. & Price, R., 1976. An Anthropological Approach to the Afro–American Past: A Caribbean Perspective. Philadelphia (PA): Institute for the Study of Human Issues.Google Scholar
NoëlHume, I. Hume, I., 1962. An Indian ware of the colonial period. Quarterly Bulletin of the Archaeological Society of Virginia 17, 1.Google Scholar
Orser, C.E. Jr, 1984. The past ten years of plantation archaeology in the southeastern United States. South–eastern Archaeology 3, 1–12.Google Scholar
Orser, C.E. Jr, 1990. Archaeological approaches to New World plantation slavery, in Archaeological Method and Theory 2, ed. Schiffer, M.B.. Tucson (AZ): University of Arizona Press, 111–54.Google Scholar
Orser, C.E. Jr, 1991. The archaeological search for ethnicity in the historic United States. Archaeologia Polona 29, 109–21.Google Scholar
Orser, C.E. Jr, 1992. Bibliography of slave and plantation archaeology (as of December 31, 1991). Slavery and Abolition 13, 316–37.Google Scholar
Orser, C.E. Jr, Nekola, A.M. & Roark, J.L., 1987. Exploring the Rustic Life: Multidisciplinary Research at Millwood Plantation, a Large Piedmont Plantation in Abbeville County, South Carolina, and Elbert County, Georgia. Atlanta (GA): National Park Service.Google Scholar
Orser, C.E. Jr, Owsley, D.W. & Shenkel, J.R., 1986. Gaining access to New Orleans' first cemetery. Journal of Field Archaeology 13, 342–5.Google Scholar
Owsley, D.W., Orser, C.E. Jr, Montgomery, R. & Holland, C.C., 1985. An Archaeological and Physical Anthropological Study of the First Cemetery in New Orleans, Louisiana. Baton Rouge (LA): Louisiana Division of Archaeology.Google Scholar
Patten, D., 1992. Mankala and Minkisi: possible evidence of African American folk beliefs and practices. African American Archaeology 6, 5–7.Google Scholar
Perdue, C.L. Jr, Barden, T.E. & Phillips, R.K. (eds.), 1976. Weevils in the Wheat: Interviews with Virginia Ex–Slaves. Charlottesville (VA): University Press of Virginia.Google Scholar
Peterson, W., Novak, M. & Gleason, P., 1982. Concepts of Ethnicity. Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Puckett, N.N., 1926. Folk Beliefs of the Southern Negro. Chapel Hill (NC): University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Raboteau, A.J., 1978. Slave Religion: The ‘Invisible Institution’ in the Antebellum South. New York (NY): Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Rawick, G.D., 1972. From Sundown to Sunup: The Making of the Black Community. Westport (CT): Greenwood.Google Scholar
Rawick, G.D., 1977a. The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography, Supplement Series 1, vol. 1: Alabama Narratives. Westport (CT): Greenwood.Google Scholar
Rawick, G.D., 1977b. The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography, Supplement Series 1, vol. 12: Oklahoma Narratives. Westport (CT): Greenwood.Google Scholar
Rawick, G.D., 1977c. The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography, Supplement Series 1, vol. 6: Mississippi Narratives, Part 1. Westport (CT): Greenwood.Google Scholar
Rawick, G.D., 1977d. The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography, Supplement Series 1, vol. 10: Mississippi Narratives, Part 5. Westport (CT): Greenwood.Google Scholar
Schuyler, R.L.(ed.), 1980. Archaeological Perspectives on Ethnicity in America: Afro–American and Asian American Culture History. Farmingdale (NY): Baywood.Google Scholar
Singleton, T.A., 1991. The archaeology of slave life, in Before Freedom Came: African–American Life in the Antebellum South, eds. Campbell, E.D.C. Jr & Rice, K.S.. Richmond (VA): The Museum of the Confederacy, 155–75.Google Scholar
Smith, J.F., 1973. Slavery and Plantation Growth in Antebellum Florida, 1821–1861. Gainesville (FA): University of Florida Press.Google Scholar
Smith, S. (ed.), 1976. An Archaeological and Historical Assessment of the First Hermitage. Nashville (TN): The Hermitage.Google Scholar
South, S., 1991. Archaeology at Santa Elena: Doorway to the Past. Columbia (SC): South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology.Google Scholar
Stampp, K.M., 1956. The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante–Bellum South. New York (NY): Vintage.Google Scholar
Stewart, T.D. & Groome, J.R., 1968. The African custom of tooth mutilation in America. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 28, 31–42.Google Scholar
Stuckey, S., 1987. Slave Culture: Nationalist Theory and the Foundations of Black America. New York (NY): Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Thompson, R.F., 1983. Flash in the Spirit: African and Afro–American Art and Philosophy. New York (NY): Random House.Google Scholar
Vernon, R., 1988.17th–century Apalachee Colono–Ware as a reflection of demography, economics, and acculturation. Historical Archaeology 22(1), 76CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Webber, T.L., 1978. Deep Like the Rivers: Education in the Slave Quarter Community, 1831–1865. New York (NY): W.W. Norton.Google Scholar
Wheaton, T.R. & Garrow, P.H., 1985. Acculturation and the archaeological record in the Carolina lowcountry, in The Archaeology of Slavery and Plantation Life, ed. Singleton, T.A.. New York (NY): Academic Press, 239–59.Google Scholar