This week's Archaeology at Home message is designed broadly around the theme of Caribbean archaeology but with a focus on the fascinating work that ARF affiliates are doing in that region related to heritage stewardship, community archaeology, and the African diaspora. I want to thank Dr. Elena Sesma and Prof. Bill White for alerting me to some of these resources.
To kick things off, have a look at this video from November 2019, featuring Bill White and Ayana Omilade Flewellen, among others, reflecting on unearthing the lives of enslaved Africans on the Caribbean island of St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands. In this 7-minute video, the all-black team of archaeologists explains its approach to unearthing the day-to-day lives of enslaved Africans at Estate Little Princess, a former sugarcane and rum plantation on St Croix.
From that video, you can read more about the project in this article, which contains another (6-minute) video about the Estate Little Princess project.
In case you missed it, just before the shutdown we heard an ARF brown bag talk by postdoctoral researcher Elena Sesma about her research on contemporary landscape archaeology in the Bahamas (one-hour video on ARF's YouTube channel).
Hot off the press (posted just two days ago!) is this informative (48-minute) podcast from The Arch & Anth Podcast --"In the Caribbean, what is the relationship between ecology and the archaeology of slavery?" featuring Dr. Justin Dunnavant (Vanderbilt University) discussing his research on African diaspora archaeology, and his work with various organizations and initiatives that involve training up students in maritime archaeology, sharing historical knowledge with wider publics, and fostering relationships with communities.
If you have time for more, here is an 18-minute video from National Geographic about The Slave Wrecks Project, an international network of researchers and institutions hosted by the National Museum of African American History & Culture.
You also may be interested in checking out the galleries of the Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery (DAACS). DAACS is a Web-based initiative designed to foster inter-site, comparative archaeological research on slavery throughout the Chesapeake, the Carolinas, and the Caribbean. The galleries page is a great way to get a sense of the DAACS collections and the kind of research they support.
This is a very broad theme, so if you still want more, check out the podcast A History of the Caribbean in 100 objects. It's actually only about one dozen objects, but it's a fun way to learn about Caribbean archaeology and prehistory.
And, finally, there are a few articles that address heritage resource assessments in the wake of devastating hurricanes in the region. See coverage by Smithsonian Magazine of the aftermath of Hurricane Dorian in The Bahamas and a piece about work in Puerto Rico by an archaeologist at UCSD.