Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

“It’s Not About Us”: Exploring White-Public Heritage Space, Community, and Commemoration on Jamestown Island, Virginia

  • Published:
International Journal of Historical Archaeology Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

This article explores the complex dynamics involved in making African Diaspora histories and cultures visible at Historic Jamestowne, a setting traditionally viewed as white public heritage space. In response to the 400th anniversary of the forcible arrival of Africans in Virginia, archaeologists and heritage professionals at Jamestown are engaging the local African American descendant community in collective knowledge production centered around Angela, one of the first African women that lived at Jamestown in the 1620s. This article explores the production of dominant histories, alternative interpretations of the (colonial) past, and relationships between heritage sites and local descendant communities.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7
Fig. 8

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Agbe-Davies, A. (2004). Up in Smoke: Pipe-Making, Smoking, and Bacon’s Rebellion. Doctoral dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.

  • Agbe-Davies, A. (2015). Tobacco, Pipes, and Race in Colonial Virginia: Little Tubes of Mighty Power. Left Coast Press, Walnut Creek, CA.

  • Allen, J. S. and Jobson, R. C. (2016). The decolonizing generation: (race and) theory in anthropology since the eighties. Current Anthropology 57(2): 129-148.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ambler, J. J. (1826). Records of the History of the Ambler Family in Virginia. Alderman Library, University of Virginia, Charlottesville.

    Google Scholar 

  • Atalay, S. (2012). Community-Based Archaeology: Research With, By, and for Indigenous and Local Communities. University of California Press, Berkeley.

  • Archive Williamsburg. (2016). 1957 Audio recording of Sam Robinson, sexton of Jamestown Memorial Church, Jamestown, Virginia, Digital Data and Media. YouTube, Open Context, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLzJQ70L7Lw. Accessed May 2019.

  • Bailey, M. (2015). #transform(ing) DH writing and research: an autoethnography of digital humanities and feminist ethics. DHQ: Digital Humanities Quarterly 9(2): 1-10.

    Google Scholar 

  • Battle-Baptiste, W. (2011). Black Feminist Archaeology. Left Coast Press, Walnut Creek, CA.

  • Battle-Baptiste, W. (2017). Cruise ships, community, and collective memory at Millars Plantation, Eleuthera, Bahamas. Historical Archaeology, 51(1): 60-70.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Berry, D. R. and Gross, K. N. (2020). A Black Women's History of the United States. Beacon Press, Boston.

    Google Scholar 

  • Blakey, M. L. (1997). Past is present: comments on “In the realm of politics: prospects for public participation in African-American plantation archaeology.” Historical Archaeology 31(3): 140-145.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Blakey, M. L. (1999). Scientific racism and the biological concept of race. Literature and Psychology 45: 29-43.

    Google Scholar 

  • Blakey, M. L. (2001). Bioarchaeology of the African diaspora in the Americas: its origins and scope. Annual Review of Anthropology 30(1): 387-422.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Brady, L. M. (2009). (Re)Engaging with the (un)known: collaboration, Indigenous knowledge, and reaffirming Aboriginal identity in the Torres Strait Islands, Northeastern Australia. Collaborative Anthropologies 2:33-64.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Breunlin, R. and Regis, H. A. (2009). Can there be a critical collaborative ethnography?: creativity and activism in the Seventh Ward, New Orleans. Collaborative Anthropologies 2:115-146.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Brown, M. R. and Horning, A. J. (2004). Jamestown Island: A Comprehensive Analysis of the Jamestown Archaeological Assessment, 1992–1996. National Park Service, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, and College of William and Mary, Williamsburg.

  • Bush, G. (2007). President Bush Celebrates America’s 400th Anniversary in Jamestown. Electronic document, White House Archives. https://georgewbushwhitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2007/05/20070513.html. Accessed May 2019.

  • Camp, S. L. (2011). Materializing inequality: the archaeology of tourism laborers in turn-of-the-century Los Angeles. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 15(2): 279-297.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Castañeda, Q. E. (2008). The “ethnographic turn” in archaeology: research positioning and reflexivity in ethnographic archaeologies. In Castaneda, Q. E. and Matthews, C. N. (eds.), Ethnographic Archaeologies: Reflections on Stakeholders, Archaeological Practices. AltaMira Press, Lanham, MD, pp. 25-62.

  • Collins, P. H. (2000). Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. Routledge, New York.

  • Collins, P. H. (2017). Ethnic and racial studies on violence, intersectionality and transversal politics. Ethnic and Racial Studies 40(9): 1460-1473.

  • Cook, S. R. (2015). The activist trajectory and collaborative context: Indigenous peoples in Virginia and the formation of an anthropological tradition. Collaborative Anthropologies 7(2): 115-141.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Crenshaw, K. (1991). Mapping the margins: intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of color. Stanford Law Review 43(6): 1241-1299.

  • Drake, S. C. (1980). Anthropology and the Black experience. Black Scholar 11(7): 2-31.

  • DuBois, W. (2005 [1915]). The Negro. Project Gutenberg, Salt Lake City.

  • Edlund, A. W. (2019). Full text of President Trump's speech at Jamestown Commemoration of American democracy. Electronic Document, Richmond Times-Dispatch, https://richmond.com/news/local/government-politics/full-text-of-president-trumps-speech-at-jamestown-commemoration-of-american-democracy/article_e8e587e9-07c1-557c-9c1f-104e2f03bd95.html. Accessed Aug 2019.

  • Edwards-Ingram, Y. (2001). African American medicine and the social relations of slavery. In Charles E. Orser (ed.), Race and the Archaeology of Identity. The University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City, pp. 34-53.

  • Epperson, T. W. (2004). Critical race theory and the archaeology of the African diaspora. Historical Archaeology 38(1): 101-108.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Equal Justice Initiative (EJI). (2017). Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror (3rd Ed.). EJI, Montgomery.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fanon, F. (1963). The Wretched of the Earth. Grove Press, New York.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fields, B. (1990). Slavery, race, and ideology in the United States of America. New Left Review 181: 95-118.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fitzhugh Brundage, W. (2003). Meta Warrick’s 1907 “Negro Tableaux” and (re)presenting African American historical memory. Journal of American History 89(4): 1368-1400.

  • Franklin, M. (1997). “Power to the People”: sociopolitics and the archaeology of Black Americans. Historical Archaeology 31(3): 36-50.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Franklin, M. (2001). A Black feminist-inspired archaeology? Journal of Social Archaeology 1(1): 108-125.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gallivan, M., Moretti-Langholtz, D. and Woodard, B. (2011). Collaborative archaeology and strategic essentialism: Native empowerment in Tidewater Virginia. Historical Archaeology 45(1): 10-23.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gilroy, P. (1993). The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.

  • Goodman, A. H., Moses, Y. T., and Jones, J. L. (2020). Race: Are We So Different? 2nd ed. Wiley-Blackwell, Malden, MA.

  • Gould, A. et al. (1993). General Management Plan Colonial National Historical Park. National Park Service, Denver.

    Google Scholar 

  • Grasso, C. and Wulf, K. (2008). Nothing says “democracy” like a visit from the queen: reflections on empire and nation. Journal of American History 95(3): 764-781.

  • Grosfoguel, R., Oso, L., and Christou, A. (2015). Racism, intersectionality and migration studies: framing some theoretical reflections. Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power 22(6): 635-652.

  • Handler, R. (2008). A dangerously elusive method: disciplines, histories, and the limits of reflexivity. In Castañeda, Q. E. and Matthews, C. N. (eds.), Ethnographic Archaeologies: Reflections on Stakeholders, Archaeological Practices. AltaMira Press, Lanham, MD, pp. 95-118.

  • Harrison, F. V. (1995). The persistent power of “race” in the cultural and political economy of racism. Annual Review of Anthropology 24(1): 47-74.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Harrison, F. V. (1997). Anthropology as an agent of transformation: introductory comments and queries. In Harrison, F. V. (ed.), Decolonizing Anthropology: Moving Further Toward an Anthropology of Liberation. American Anthropological Association, Arlington, VA, pp. 1-15.

  • Harrison, F. V. (2016). Theorizing in ex-centric sites. Anthropological Theory 16(2-3): 160-176.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hantman, J. (2008). Jamestown’s 400th anniversary old themes, new words, new meanings for Virginia Indians. In Patricia E. Rubertone (ed.), Archaeologies of Placemaking: Monuments, Memories, and Engagement in Native North America. Left Coast Press, Walnut Creek, pp. 217–242.

  • Heywood, L. M. and Thornton J. (2007). Central Africans, Atlantic Creoles, and the Foundation of the Americas, 1585-1660. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

  • hooks, b. (1990). Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics. South End Press, Boston.

    Google Scholar 

  • hooks, b. (2001). Salvation: Black People and Love. William Morrow, New York.

    Google Scholar 

  • Horn, J. P. (2018). 1619: Jamestown and the Forging of American Democracy. Basic, New York.

  • Horning, A. J. (1995). A Verie Fit Place to Erect a Great Citie: Comparative Contextual Anaysis of Archaeological Jamestown. Doctoral dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.

  • Horning, A. J. (2006). Archaeology and the construction of America’s Jamestown. Post-Medieval Archaeology 40(1): 1-27.

  • Horning, A. (2016). Transatlantic Currents: Exploring the Past, Present, and Future of Global Historical Archaeology. Historical Archaeology 50(3): 5-23.

  • Horning, A., Kelso, W. M., Luccketti, N. M., and Cotter, J. L. (1998). Journey to Jamestown. Archaeology 51(2): 56-63.

  • Horning, A. J., Blanton, D., Rehm, K. G., and Heath, B. J. (2001). Jamestown Archeological Assessment: Colonial National Historical Park, Yorktown, Virginia. US Government Printing Office, Washington, DC.

  • James, C. L. R. (1963). The Black Jacobins. Random House, New York.

  • James Madison’s Montpelier. (2018). Engaging Descendant Communities in the Interpretation of Slavery at Museums and Historic Sites: A Rubric of Best Practices Established by the National Summit on Teaching Slavery. James Madison’s Montpelier, Orange, VA.

  • Kelso, W. M. (1995). Jamestown Rediscovery I: Search for 1607 James Fort. Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities, Jamestown.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kelso, W. M. (2006). Jamestown, the Buried Truth. University of Virginia Press, Charlottesville.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kelso, W. M. and Straube, B. A. (2004). Jamestown Rediscovery, 1994-2004. Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities, Richmond.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kelso, W. M., Mrozowski, S. A., Currie, D., Edwards, A. C., Brown, M. R., Horning, A. J., Brown, G. J., and Dandoy, J. R. (1995). Differential pollen preservation in a seventeenth-century refuse pit, Jamestown Island, Virginia. Historical Archaeology 29(2): 43-54

  • King, J. A. (2001). Objects, Artifacts, Images, and Printed Material, and Brief Biographical Sketches Related to the Commemoration of Jamestown, Virginia in the Antebellum Years. Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Williamsburg.

    Google Scholar 

  • LaRoche, C. J. and Blakey, M. L. (1997). Seizing intellectual power: the dialogue at the New York African Burial Ground. Historical Archaeology 31(3): 84-106.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • La Salle, M. J. (2010). Community collaboration and other good intentions. Archaeologies 6(3): 401-422.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lee, L. (2014). Giles B. Jackson (1853–1924). Electronic document, Encyclopedia Virginia. https://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Jackson_Giles_B_1853-1924. Accessed May 2020.

  • Levin, J. (2011). Activism leads to excavation: the power of place and the power of the people at the President’s House in Philadelphia. Archaeologies 7(3): 596-618.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lewis, Q. (2015). Materiality, white public space, and historical commemoration in nineteenth-century Deerfield, Massachusetts. In McGovern, A. M. and Matthews, C. N. (eds.), The Archaeology of Race in the Northeast. University Press of Florida, Gainesville, pp. 273-290.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lindgren, J. M. (1993). Preserving the Old Dominion: Historic Preservation and Virginia Traditionalism. University Press of Virginia, Charlottesville.

    Google Scholar 

  • McCartney, M. W. (2007). Virginia Immigrants and Adventurers, 1607-1635: A Biographical Dictionary. Genealogical Publishing, Baltimore, MD.

  • McCartney, M. W. and Walsh, L. S. (2003). A Study of the Africans and African Americans on Jamestown Island and at Green Spring, 1619-1803. National Park Service, Colonial National Historical Park, Williamsburg.

    Google Scholar 

  • McGill, D. (2010). The public’s archaeology: utilizing ethnographic methods to link public education with accountability in archaeological practice. Archaeologies 6(3): 468-484.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McLennan, S. (2012). Jamestown 350th Anniversary, 1957. Electronic document, Encyclopedia Virginia. https://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Jamestown_350th_Anniversary_1957. Accessed Apr 2019.

  • Meskell, L. (2002). The intersections of identity and politics in archaeology. Annual Review of Anthropology 31: 279-301.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Morris, A. (2017). Materialities of homeplace. Historical Archaeology 51(1): 28-42.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mullins, P. R. (2008a). Excavating America’s metaphor: race, diaspora, and vindicationist archaeologies. Historical Archaeology 42(2):104-122.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mullins, P. R. (2008b). The politics of a global archaeology of race and the color line: response to Armstrong, Bell, Brandon, and Dawdy. Historical Archaeology 42(2): 157-162.

  • NPS. (2020). Colonial NHP annual park recreation visitation (1904 - last calendar year). Electronic document. https://irma.nps.gov/Stats/SSRSReports/Park%20Specific%20Reports/Annual%20Park%20Recreation%20Visitation%20(1904%20-%20Last%20Calendar%20Year. Accessed Jul 2020.

  • Orser, C. E., Jr. (2007). The Archaeology of Race and Racialization in Historic America. University Press of Florida, Gainesville.

  • Osei-Tutu, B. (2002). The African American factor in the commodification of Ghana’s slave castles. Transactions of the Historical Society of Ghana 6:115-133.

    Google Scholar 

  • Page, H. E. (1999). No Black public sphere in white public space: racialized information and hi-tech diffusion in the global African diaspora. Transforming Anthropology 8(1-2): 111-128.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Page, H. E. and Thomas, R. B. (1994). White public space and the construction of white privilege in U. S. health care: fresh concepts and a new model of analysis. Medical Anthropology Quarterly 8(1): 109-116.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Painter, N. (2010). The History of White People. W. W. Norton, New York.

  • Perry, W. and Paynter, R. (1999). Artifacts, ethnicity, and the archaeology of African Americans. In Singleton, T. A. (ed.), “I, Too, Am America”: Archaeological Studies of African-American Life. University Press of Virginia, Charlottesville, pp. 299-310.

  • Ren, A. C. (2006). Maya archaeology and the political and cultural identity of contemporary Maya in Guatemala. Archaeologies 2(1): 8-18.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Risam, R. (2018). New Digital Worlds: Postcolonial Digital Humanities in Theory, Praxis, and Pedagogy. Northwestern University Press, Evanston, IL.

  • Roberts, S. (2019). Trump's Jamestown speech draws protest inside and out. Electronic document, The Virginia Gazette, https://www.dailypress.com/virginiagazette/news/va-vg-donald-trump-jamestown-400-protests-0730-story.html. Accessed Aug 2019.

  • Said, E. W. (1997). Overlapping territories, intertwined histories. In Newton, K. M. (ed.), Twentieth-Century Literary Theory. Palgrave, London, pp. 3-14.

  • Samirah, I. S. (2019). Why I disrupted Trump’s speech at Jamestown: I could not place the comfort of the president ahead of the discomfort of his targets. Electronic document, The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/08/why-i-disrupted-the-presidents-speech-at-jamestown/595366/. Accessed Aug 2019.

  • Smedley, A. and Smedley, B. D. (2012). Race in North America: Origin and Evolution of a Worldview. Westview Press, Boulder, CO.

  • Smith, J. D. (2002). Managing White Supremacy Race, Politics, and Citizenship in Jim Crow Virginia. University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill.

    Google Scholar 

  • SAA (Society for American Archaeology). (2017). Archaeologies of Listening. The SAA Archaeological Record 7(4): 15-37.

  • SBA (Society of Black Archaeologists), Theoretical Archaeology Group (North America), and Columbia University Center for Archaeology. (2020). Archaeology in the Time of Black Lives Matter. Vimeo, Uploaded by Columbia Center for Archaeology, June 25, 2020. https://vimeo.com/433155008. Accessed 24 Sept 2020.

  • Supernant, K. and Warrick, G. (2014). Challenges to critical community-based archaeological practice in Canada. Canadian Journal of Archaeology 38(2): 563-591.

    Google Scholar 

  • The Jamestown-Williamsburg-Yorktown Celebration Commission. (1958). Report of the Virginia 350th Anniversary Commission: Jamestown Festival, 1607-1957. Division of Purchase and Printing, Richmond.

    Google Scholar 

  • Thomas, D. A. (2018). Decolonizing disciplines. American Anthropologist 120(3): 393-397.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Thornton, J. K. (1998). The African experience of the “20 and Odd Negroes” arriving in Virginia in 1619. William and Mary Quarterly 55(3): 421-434.

  • Tillet, S. M. (2009). In the shadow of the castle: (trans)nationalism, African American tourism, and Gorée Island. Research in African Literatures 40(4): 122-141.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Trouillot, M. R. (2015). Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History. Beacon Press, Boston.

    Google Scholar 

  • Valkonen, S. and Wallenius-Korkalo, S. (2016). Practicing postcolonial intersectionality: gender, religion and indigeneity in Sámi social work. International Social Work 59(5): 614-626.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • White, E. F. (2001). Dark Continent of our Bodies Black Feminism and the Politics of Respectability. Temple University Press, Philadelphia.

    Google Scholar 

  • Willis, W. S. (1963). Divide and rule: red, white, and Black in the Southeast. The Journal of Negro History 48(3): 157-176.

  • Yarsinske, A. W. (1999). Jamestown Exposition: American Imperialism on Parade. Arcadia, Charleston, SC.

  • Young, D. (2017). Meet “Angela,” one of the 1st slaves to arrive in America. The Root (website), https://www.theroot.com/meet-angela-one-of-the-1st-slaves-to-arrive-in-ameri-1798429714. Accessed Jan 2018.

  • Youngquist, P. (2005). The Afro futurism of DJ Vassa. European Romantic Review 16(2): 181-192.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

This article is adapted from my master’s thesis, undertaken at the Department of Anthropology at the College of William and Mary, on the intersection of race, memory, community, and archaeology on Jamestown Island in southeast Virginia. I would like to express my sincerest thanks to the community collaborators who shared their knowledge, questions, and memories with me. I am grateful to my faculty advisor Joseph Jones for his guidance, encouragement, and thoughtfulness. I would like to express the deepest appreciation to my committee members, Michael Blakey and Audrey Horning for their enthusiasm, constructive criticisms, and feedback. I greatly appreciate the support and funding I received from Jamestown Rediscovery Foundation, the National Park Service’s Colonial National Historical Park, and William & Mary’s Office of Graduate Studies and Research to conduct research at the Angela Site. A special thanks to Camille Westmont and Elizabeth Clay for inviting me to participate in this thematic issue. I would like to thank Adela Amaral, Neil Norman, Ravynn Stringfield, Jennifer Porter-Lupu, Tiffany Cain-Fryer, and Aja Lans for reviewing versions of this article and offering helpful suggestions.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Anthropology Department, William & Mary, P.O. Box 8795, Williamsburg, VA, 23187-8795, USA

    L. Chardé Reid

Authors
  1. L. Chardé Reid
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to L. Chardé Reid.

Additional information

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Reid, L.C. “It’s Not About Us”: Exploring White-Public Heritage Space, Community, and Commemoration on Jamestown Island, Virginia. Int J Histor Archaeol 26, 22–52 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10761-021-00593-9

Download citation

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10761-021-00593-9

Keywords

Search

Navigation