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Thursday Open Thread: African-American Archaeologists

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Good Morning Obots!

Today’s featured archaeologist:

Whitney Battle-Baptiste
Whitney Battle-Baptiste is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Dr. Battle-Baptiste is a historical archaeologist interested in race, gender, and cultural landscapes. Her theoretical interests include Black Feminist theory, critical race theory and the African Diaspora. Her publications include commentaries and papers in edited volumes on historical archaeology and slavery in the Southern United States. She has conducted field work at many sites, including the home of Andrew Jackson in Nashville, Tennessee; Rich Neck Plantation in Williamsburg, Virginia; and The Abiel Smith School in Boston, Mass. Her latest research is at the W. E. B. DuBois boyhood homesite in Great Barrington, Mass. 
 

Black Feminist Archaeology

Black feminist thought has developed in various parts of the academy for over three decades, but has made only minor inroads into archaeological theory and practice. Whitney Battle-Baptiste outlines the basic tenets of Black feminist thought and research for archaeologists and shows how it can be used to improve contemporary historical archaeology. She demonstrates this using Andrew Jackson’s Hermitage, the WEB Du Bois Homesite in Massachusetts, and the Lucy Foster house in Andover, which represented the first archaeological excavation of an African American home. Her call for an archaeology more sensitive to questions of race and gender is an important development for the field.

Here is a clip of Dr. Battle-Baptiste (Dr. BB as she is known to students) talking to students about various inconsistencies with slave narratives – while holding her young child and pregnant with another! Way to multi-task Dr. BB!