The Archaeology of Liberty in an American Captial: Excavations in Annapolis

Abstract

Over the last two decades, there has been increasing attention to community archaeology, an archaeology which acknowledges the impact of archaeological research upon the communities among which it is conducted. Doing fieldwork has tangible effects upon the people we work among: archaeologists provide employment, spend money locally, negotiate local power structures, provide exotic connections, and, not least, change the landscape of knowledge by helping local people understand more or different things about their ancestors and about their own historical identity. While this is true worldwide, within American Historical Archaeology this strand of research has converged with a tradition of sophisticated materialist analysis highlighting not only class domination but also resistance and the persistence of alternative practices, ideologies and identities. A key element of this archaeology is public participation in the process of revealing a past of domination, struggle and resistance. The result is an archaeology which aspires not only to revise traditionally endorsed accounts of American history, but also to be an activist archaeology.Mark Leone began this line of activist, participatory historical archaeology many years ago in Annapolis, and many of the scholars currently contributing to this body of work have been trained or inspired by this project. In The Archaeology of Liberty in an American Capital, Leone summarizes twenty-five years of research at Annapolis.The Archaeology of Liberty in an American Capital: Excavations in Annapolis has received the Society for Historical Archaeology's James Deetz Book Award for 2008.

Beside the Seaside. The Archaeology of the Twentieth-Century English Seaside Holiday Experience: A Phenomenological Context

“…This theme is also picked up by Eleanor Casella in her 2005 study of the improving Sutro Baths complex in nineteenth-century San Francisco, and to a similar extent in Tricia Cusack's study of ordered landscapes of Victorian Irish seaside resorts (2010). A parallel example of space structuring human relations can be found in a different age at colonial Annapolis (Leone 2005). In the seaside resort though the issue is not surveillance and control over people, more control over nature and emphasis upon space for socialisation.…”

Introduction to Historical Archaeologies of Capitalism, Second Edition

“…Therefore, views of class have become increasingly relational, recognizing that it is through their relationships with each other that the lives and identities of workers, overseers, owners, colonizers, and colonized, are constituted (Silliman 2006, p. 149). Social systems of capitalism embrace fixed identities, and ideologies such as possessive individualism and rational objectification of social relations (Althusser 1971;Handsman 1981;Leone 2005;Matthews 2010), although historical archaeologists now see these separations as mutable and historically constructed. Therefore, the study of the creation and negotiation of these identities has become a major topic of study for historical archaeologists studying capitalism.…”

Community Organizing in Public Archaeology: Coalitions for the Preservation of a Hidden History in Florida

“…But as McGuire (2005:21) has noted, archaeology is a "weak weapon for political action." In evaluations of their vigorous public archaeology programs, Chidester and Gadsby (2009) and Leone (1995) express disappointment in their critical endeavors as public archaeologists; recently Leone (2005) points to his collaborative partnership as an answer to the question of audience for critical archaeological insights, but in the Bradenton case study the collaborations were in place and positive; the concern was an immediate threat to the potential of a property to reveal a hidden history. More publicity and more outreach are appropriate answers for public archaeology but are unlikely to be successful in a place like Bradenton where the descendants and the history are far removed from the current local community.…”