- Kenneth. G.
Kelly
- Ph.D. University of California,
Los Angeles 1995
- Associate Professor
- Undergraduate Director
- Office Hours:
Mondays & Tuesdays 11:00 - 12:00
& By Appointment
- Ph. No and Location: 777-2616 Hamilton
College Room 200B
Click here to go to my home page I specialize in Historical Archaeology and
African Archaeology. My research interests include culture contact
and change, transformation and the origin of complex societies, ethnohistory,
Africa, and the Caribbean. I have concentrated on studying the archaeology
of the African Diaspora, and have conducted research in Jamaica, and in Togo and
Bénin, West Africa, and most recently in Guadeloupe. My research at
Seville, which contributed to my MA from William and Mary (1989), was focused on
the African Jamaican villages home to the enslaved labor force on the large
sugar plantation. My long-term project, archaeological research at Savi
and Ouidah, towns in Bénin dating to the period of the Slave Trade, began in
1991. This, the first long term archaeological project in Bénin, has
studied the ways in which African political elites controlled and manipulated
the presence of European traders to their own advantage. During the summer
of 1999 two of our MA students spent six weeks with me working at Savi,
gathering data for their theses.In 2001 I began developing a new research focus,
studying plantation villages on the French Island of Guadeloupe. Here, I
am continuing to study the archaeology of the African Diaspora by investigating
how Africans enslaved in the French Colonial system created a new Creole culture
in ways similar to, or different from people enslaved elsewhere in the Caribbean.
An initial survey I conducted in May 2001 (with former USC MA student Peggy
Brunache) identified nearly 20 archaeological sites associated with the villages
where enslaved Africans lived.During the summer of 2002 I spent 2 months in Guadeloupe
with a team of archaeology students from the University of South Carolina, the
University of Texas, Syracuse University, and Yale, conducting preliminary
excavations of two sites, La Mahaudière
and Grande Pointe. I identified these sites during a survey in 2001, and chose
to excavate on them because they both exhibited well preserved house
foundations, and they were both on public land, where subsequent interpretation
could make use of our results. From 2003 until 2005, I focused my research efforts on La Mahaudière, where my team has made a number of exciting discoveries. For the past several years we have included French and other European archaeology students in our project. In 2005 I began a new field project in Martinique, beginning with archaeological survey of Habitation Crève Cœur, an 18th and 19th century sugar plantation in the southern part of that island. In 2006 I conducted an initial archaeological survey of a series of sites associated with the 19th century slave trade in the West African nation of Guinea. I am hopeful that this research direction will prove fruitful in the long run. In 2007 I returned to Habitation Crève Cœur to continue more extensive excavations. Some of the courses I have taught include
undergraduate introductory archaeology and survey courses in world archaeology
and biological anthropology; the graduate courses I have taught include our
graduate seminar on historical archaeology, the archaeology of the African
Diaspora, and our historic archaeology lab class.
Document's URL: http://www.cla.sc.edu/anth/Faculty/KGKelly1/Kelly.html
Published 10/7/02; 12:05:40 PM by the College Arts & Sciences, University of South Carolina.
Update (01/25/2008) and Maintained by Claudia Carriere, cfcarri@mailbox.sc.edu. ©Copyrighted
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