In Columbia, not far from USC, volunteers and students are assisting me in an urban archaeology of Historic Columbia's Seibels House site, where we have uncovered thousands of artifacts and a large pit in a brick kitchen. The Seibels House and its kitchen are two of the oldest standing structures in the capital--the former being over 200 years old. We seek to understand the history of African Americans in early Columbia as well as urban land use from this site.

Further afield, I have teamed up with oral historians, architectural scholars, naturalists, and local elders in a team project at the Strawberry Plains Audubon Center, in north-central Mississippi. Strawberry Plains was a plantation in the 19th century that continued to be used by descendants of slaveholders and enslaved African Americans into the 20th century. A Mansion, 2 cemeteries, some slave quarters ruins, and over 20 wooden tenant house sites sit on over 2 square miles of property that the Audubon Society now administrates. Short winter field work sessions have produced mostly 19th and 20th century items, including a World War II food rations coupon book that was owned by a man who was related to one of the elders who attends a nearby church. The challenge at Strawberry Plains will be to reenvision archaeology to include more recent history and less ancient artifacts into a framework for understanding race relations, rural life, and African American cultural practices that spanned slavery and modern U.S. periods.

Mexico is my most recent project. I am particularly fond of it because it has brought me back to early colonial period sites, which are my favorite type. The sites that I have been investigating in the state of Vera Cruz are also of great interest because they allow me to bridge interests in cimarrones (Maroons) settlements, plantations, and mission sites established by Maroons. Few archaeological projects have successfully integrated this range of sites into a coherent program that deals with the various conditions affecting Africans, as well as the interchanges between those at different settlements. Cities like Yanga (the name of a Maroon) were originally established by Maroons in the 16th century. The people of Yanga, originally called San Lorenzo de los Negros, hold a large festival in August to celebrate the heroism of the African leader whose name the town has adopted. A larger city called Cordoba actually was founded in order to prevent the formation of other Maroon towns in the colonial period. A town called Amapa was formed by cimarrones that signed treaties and lived in a mission settlement on the border of the present states of Vera Cruz and Oaxaca. Various plantations dot the landscape between these settlements. As relatively few sites in Latin America have been studied to the same extent as sites in Anglo America, I anticipate that Mexico will allow me to make contributions to historical archaeology.

CURRICULUM VITAE

NEW COURSE - FALL 2006: Anthropology of Violence and Peace