Quaker Studies

This volume presents 14 articles by 18 authors, and collectively examines the archaeology of African American life and cultures in the Upper Mid-Atlantic region, using sites dating from the 18th through 20th 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 African American inhabitants both free and enslaved. Particular focus is made on the Delaware Valley and the interaction between African Americans and Quaker and Methodist communities.

Archaeologies of African American Life in the Upper Mid-Atlantic brings together cutting-edge scholarship from both emerging and established scholars. Through sophisticated theoretical lenses and employing up-to-date methodologies, the volume’s authors 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. Contributors synthesize the material finds of archaeological work in slave quarter sites, tenant farms, communities, graveyards, and in archival research.

The volume presents new and nuanced perspectives on the important role free and enslaved African Americans played in the region’s cultural history. It 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.