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Where Tradition and Pragmatism Meet: African Diaspora Archaeology at the Crossroads

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Abstract

The trope of “tradition” dominates archaeological studies of the African diaspora. Much of the information archaeologists have about traditions on the African continent or in the early diaspora comes from historical documents and from ethnography. Here, the author argues that pragmatism provides a model for analysis that allows archaeology a degree of independence from these allied datasets. Archaeologists, like other social scientists, confront the problem of the relative importance of social learning (i.e., tradition) vs. structure as forces shaping cultural expression in the African diaspora. An analytical strategy inspired by pragmatism is here applied to beads recovered from Tidewater Chesapeake slave quarters occupied in the 18th and early 19th centuries in order to demonstrate that tradition is only part of the story

Extracto

El tropo de “tradición” domina los estudios arqueológicos de la diáspora africana. Una gran parte de la información que los arqueólogos tienen sobre las tradiciones del continente africano o de la primera diáspora procede de documentos históricos y de la etnografía. En el presente documento, el autor argumenta que el pragmatismo proporciona un modelo para el análisis que permite a la arqueología un grado de independencia de estos conjuntos de datos aliados. Los arqueólogos, al igual que otros científicos sociales, se enfrentan al problema de la importancia relativa del aprendizaje social (es decir, la tradición) frente a la estructura como fuerzas que dan forma a la expresión cultural en la diáspora africana. Una estrategia analítica inspirada por el pragmatismo se aplica aquí a abalorios recuperados de los barrios esclavos de Tidewater Cheaspeake ocupados en el siglo XVIII y a principios del siglo XIX, con el fin de demostrar que la tradición es sólo parte de la historia.

Résumé

Le trope de la « tradition » domine les études archéologiques de la diaspora africaine. Beaucoup des informations dont disposent les archéologues à propos des traditions sur le continent africain ou sur les premières années de la diaspora proviennent de documents historiques et de l’ethnographie. Ici, l’auteur soutient que le pragmatisme fournit un modèle d’analyse qui permet à l’archéologie un degré d’indépendance de ces ensembles de données connexes. Les archéologues, comme d’autres spécialistes des sciences sociales, font face au problème de l’importance relative de l’apprentissage social (p. ex., la tradition) par rapport à la structure des forces façonnant les expressions culturelles dans la diaspora africaine. Une stratégie analytique inspirée par le pragmatisme est. ici utilisée pour les perles récupérées dans les quartiers d’esclaves de Tidewater Chesapeake, occupés au 18e siècle et au début du 19e siècle afin de démontrer que la tradition n’est qu’une partie de l’histoire.

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Notes

  1. Chicago Defender ( 1931 ).

  2. I went down to the crossroad

    fell down on my knees

    I went down to the crossroad

    fell down on my knees

    Asked the lord above “Have mercy now

    save poor Bob if you please”

    Yeeooo, standin at the crossroad

    tried to flag a ride

    ooo ooo eee

    I tried to flag a ride

    Didn't nobody seem to know me babe

    everybody pass me by

    Standin at the crossroad babe

    risin sun goin down

    Standin at the crossroad babe

    eee eee eee, risin sun goin down

    I believe to my soul now,

    Poor Bob is sinkin down

    You can run, you can run

    tell my friend Willie Brown

    You can run, you can run

    tell my friend Willie Brown

    [th]'at I got the crossroad blues this mornin Lord

    babe, I'm sinkin down

    And I went to the crossroad momma

    I looked east and west

    I went to the crossroad baby

    I looked east and west

    Lord, I didn't have no sweet woman

    ooh-well babe, in my distress

    The song may be heard on Youtube, <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qD2jXjV9Z8A>.

  3. Antifoundationalism: resisting the assertion that no steps toward new knowledge can be taken until it has been proven that the investigation rests on an infallible foundation. It rejects the view that “there are firm, unchangeable foundations to knowledge” (Baert 2005:192).

  4. Yelvington (2006) offers a critical analysis of this simplified picture of the “debate.”

  5. Icons are a third kind of sign; they are related to their objects by resemblance. While blue beads may have held iconic meanings for people in the past, any relationship between blue beads and protection is—because it is historically contingent and arbitrary—by definition, symbolic.

  6. For additional information about the sites, including maps and detailed descriptions, the reader is directed to <http://www.daacs.org >.

  7. Furthermore, two-by-two contingency tables suggest the difference between Rich Neck and Utopia II is insignificant, whereas the Fairfield assemblage differs significantly from both. Rich Neck vs. Utopia II: x 2=1.74, df=1, p>0.10; Fairfield vs. Rich Neck: x 2=5.79, df=1, p<0.02; and Fairfield vs. Utopia II: x 2=23.8, df=1, p<0.001.

  8. With the exception of ST116, which has only one bead—a blue one (DAACS 2014a).

  9. For the Tidewater Chesapeake sites, fewer than 5% of beads are made of materials other than glass. At the New York African Burial Ground, the rate was even lower, less than 2% (LaRoche 1994:6; Bianco et al. 2009: table 55). Only 2.6 % of the beads from the sites in the Stine et al. (1996) sample were amber, shell, or stone.

  10. Beads made of other materials do not cluster in a particular phase at Rich Neck, though there is a noticeable concentration of beads, especially shell beads, in Feature 5 and of copper alloy and porcelain beads in Feature 21. These two concentrations appear to be sets of beads, as they were recovered from distinct deposits within each feature.

  11. Though spherical/subspherical forms are the dominant shape in the regional assemblage (62% of all beads), this is not the case at Rich Neck. This is true whether one considers all beads or only glass beads.

  12. Again, this is true whether one considers all beads or only glass beads.

  13. The sample included all the sites shown in Fig. 4 (DAACS 2014a); x 2=6.79, df=1, p<0.01.

  14. Comparison of structures: x 2=33.3, df=1, p<0.001; comparison of phases: x 2=15.8, df=1, p<0.001. Even though there is an association between structure and phase, the bead color seems to be linked to structure (with all blue and no red) rather than occupation date (almost twice as many blue as red).

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Acknowledgments:

Many thanks to William White for inviting me to contribute to this exciting collection of articles. I also owe a debt of gratitude to the many people who have shaped my thinking on the issues I raise here, including Alex Bauer, Jocelyn Chua, J. Eric Deetz, Jean Dennison, Maria Franklin, Jillian Galle, Mark Hauser, Carol McDavid, Linda Stine, and Silvia Tomášková. And, finally, to those who read this article in its last stages, Jamie Arjona, Nori Comello, Christian Lentz, Annelise Morris, Eliza Richards, and the anonymous reviewers: thank you for helping me to express more clearly the ideas herein.

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  1. Department of Anthropology, University of North Carolina, 301 Alumni Building/CB No. 3115, Chapel Hill, NC, 27599-3115, U.S.A.

    Anna S. Agbe-Davies

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Agbe-Davies, A.S. Where Tradition and Pragmatism Meet: African Diaspora Archaeology at the Crossroads. Hist Arch 51, 9–27 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41636-017-0004-8

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