In eighteenth-century Jamaica, an informal, underground economy existed among enslaved laborers. Mark Hauser uses pottery fragments to examine their trade networks and to understand how enslaved and free Jamaicans created communities that transcended plantation boundaries. An Archaeology of Black Markets utilizes both documentary and archaeological evidence to reveal how slaves practiced their own systematic forms of economic production, exchange, and consumption. Hauser compares the findings from a number of previously excavated sites and presents new analyses that reinterpret these collections in the context of island-wide trading networks. Trading allowed enslaved laborers to cross boundaries of slave life and enter into a black market of economic practices with pots in hand. By utilizing secret trails that connected plantations, sectarian churches, and these street markets, the enslaved remained in contact, exchanged information, news, and gossip, and ultimately stoked the colony's 1831 rebellion. Hauser considers how uprooted peoples from Africa created new networks in Jamaica, and interjects into archaeological discussions the importance of informal economic practice among non-elite members of society.

Whitney Battle-Baptiste outlines the basic tenets of Black feminist thought for archaeologists and shows how it can be used to improve historical archaeological practice.

"An excellent example of applying petrographic and chemical analysis to coarse earthenwares of the African Diaspora in order to examine the social networks created by enslaved laborers on Jamaica within the larger colonial and capitalist systems. . . . A wonderful contribution to Caribbean historical archaeology."--H-Net Reviews "Uses pottery fragments and other data to examine an informal, underground economy that existed among slaves, island-wide."--Chronicle Review "This is a convincing study, and the findings serve as a strong basis for the consideration of the role of the Sunday markets in African Jamaican life of the eighteenth century. . . . Hauser is a master in his field, and he writes extremely well."--Journal of Caribbean Archaeology "Eloquently weaves together historical, ethnographic, and archaeological evidence to illustrate the complexities of the internal markets, which suggest that the enslaved may have been able to use the social and economic networks they created in order to gain some relief or protection from the power of the colonial regime."--Winterthur Portfolio "In the best historical archaeology tradition, this is a corrective history that refutes Caribbean stereotypes and maps the histories of ignored peoples by examining the most seemingly mundane everyday material culture." --Paul Mullins, Indiana University-Purdue University

Through interdisciplinary approaches to material culture, the dynamics of a comparative transatlantic archaeology is developed.

The residents of Mississippian towns principally located in the southeastern and midwestern United States from 900 to1500 A.D. made many beautiful objects, which included elaborate and well-crafted copper and shell ornaments, pottery vessels, and stonework. Some of these objects were socially valued goods and often were placed in ritual context, such as graves. The funerary context of these artifacts has sparked considerable study and debate among archaeologists, raising questions about the place in society of the individuals interred with such items, as well as the nature of the societies in which these people lived. By focusing on how mortuary practices serve as symbols of beliefs and values for the living, the contributors to Mississippian Mortuary Practices explore how burial of the dead reflects and reinforces the cosmology of specific cultures, the status of living participants in the burial ceremony, ongoing kin relationships, and other aspects of social organization.

For thousands of years, the inhabitants of the Middle Cumberland River Valley harvested shellfish for food and raw materials and then deposited the remains in dense concentrations along the river. Very little research has been published on the Archaic period shell deposits in this region. Demonstrating that nearly forty such sites exist, this volume presents the results of recent surveys, excavations, and laboratory work as well as fresh examinations of past investigations that have been difficult for scholars to access. In these essays, contributors describe an emergency riverbank survey of shell-bearing sites that were discovered, reopened, or damaged in the aftermath of recent flooding. Their studies of these sites feature stratigraphic analysis, radiocarbon dating, zooarchaeological data, and other interpretive methods. Other essays in the volume provide the first widely accessible summary of previous work on sites that have long been known. Contributors also address larger topics such as geospatial analysis of settlement patterns, research biases, and current debates about site formation processes related to shell-bearing sites. This volume provides an enormous amount of valuable data from the abundant material record of a fascinating people, place, and time. It is a landmark synthesis that will improve our understanding of the individual communities and broader cultures that created shell-bearing sites across the southeastern United States. Contributors: David G. Anderson | Thaddeus G. Bissett | Stephen B. Carmody | Aaron Deter-Wolf | Andrew Gillreath-Brown | Joey Keasler | Kelly L. Ledford | D. Shane Miller | Dan F. Morse | Tanya M. Peres | Ryan W. Robinson | Leslie Straub | Andrew R. Wyatt A volume in the Florida Museum of Natural History: Ripley P. Bullen Series

This Handbook provides a comprehensive roadmap to the burgeoning area of Afro-Latin American Studies. Afro-Latins as a civilization developed during the period of slavery, obtaining cultural contributions from Indigenous and European worlds, while today they are enriched by new social configurations derived from contemporary migrations from Africa. The essays collected in this volume speak to scientific production that has been promoted in the region from the humanities and social sciences with the aim of understanding the phenomenon of the African diaspora as a specific civilizing element. With contributions from world-leading figures in their fields overseen by an eminent international editorial board, this Handbook features original, authoritative articles organized in four coherent parts: • Disciplinary Studies; • Problem Focused Fields; • Regional and Country Approaches; • Pioneers of Afro-Latin American Studies. The Routledge Handbook of Afro-Latin American Studies will not only serve as the major reference text in the area of Afro-Latin American Studies but will also provide the agenda for future new research.

Fourteen in-depth case studies incorporate empirical data with theoretical concepts such as ritual, aggregation, and place-making, highlighting the variability and common themes in the relationships between people, landscapes, and the built environment that characterize this period of North American native life in the Southeast.

In Modeling Entradas, Clay Mathers brings together leading archaeologists working across the American South to offer a comprehensive, comparative analysis of Spanish entrada assemblages. These expeditions into the interior of the North American continent were among the first contacts between New- and Old-World communities, and the study of how they were organized and the routes they took—based on the artifacts they left behind—illuminates much about the sixteenth-century indigenous world and the colonizing efforts of Spain. Focusing on the entradas of conquistadors Francisco Vázquez de Coronado, Hernando de Soto, Tristán de Luna y Arellano, and Juan Pardo, contributors offer insights from recently discovered sites including encampments, battlefields, and shipwrecks. Using the latest interpretive perspectives, they turn the narrative of conquest from a simple story of domination to one of happenstance, circumstance, and interactions between competing social, political, and cultural worlds. These essays delve into the dynamic relationships between Native Americans and Europeans in a variety of contexts including exchange, disease, conflict, and material production. This volume offers valuable models for evaluating, synthesizing, and comparing early expeditions, showing how object-oriented and site-focused analyses connect to the anthropological dimensions of early contact, patterns of regional settlement, and broader historical trajectories such as globalization. Contributors: Robin A. Beck | Edmond A. Boudreaux III | John R. Bratten | Charles Cobb | Chester B. DePratter | Munir Humayun | David J. Hally | Ned J. Jenkins | James B. Legg | Brad R. Lieb | Michael Marshall | Clay Mathers | Jeffrey M. Mitchem | David G. Moore | Christopher B. Rodning | Daniel Seinfeld | Craig T. Sheldon Jr. | Marvin T. Smith | Steven D. Smith | John E. Worth A volume in the Florida Museum of Natural History: Ripley P. Bullen Series

The late Pleistocene-early Holocene landscape hosted more species and greater numbers of them in the Southeast compared to any other region in North America at that time. Yet James Dunbar posits that a misguided reliance on using Old World origins to validate New World evidence has stalled research in this area. Rejecting the one-size-fits-all approach to Pleistocene archaeological sites, Dunbar analyzes five areas of contextual data—stratigraphy; chronology; paleoclimate; the combined consideration of habitat, resource availability, and subsistence; and artifacts and technology—to resolve unanswered questions surrounding the Paleoindian occupation of the Americas. Through his extensive research, Dunbar demonstrates a masterful understanding of the lifeways of the region’s people and the animals they hunted, showing that the geography and diversity of food sources was unique to that period. He suggests that the most important archaeological and paleontological resources in the Americas still remain undiscovered in Florida’s karst river basins. Building a case for the wealth of information yet to be unearthed, he provides a fresh perspective on the distant past and an original way of thinking about early life on the land mass we call Florida. A volume in the Florida Museum of Natural History: Ripley P. Bullen Series