This episode is the first of a three-part series produced by Eleanor Neil, contributing editor at American Anthropologist and Anthropological Airwaves. From the African American Burial Ground in New York City to the memorialization of violence in Northern Ireland to professional archaeology in the eastern Mediterranean, Eleanor asks archaeologists with different regional and methodological specialties to choose a single object or site, and, in their own words describe how this this site or artefact speaks to the interaction between archaeology and political or social identity across time and place.

Here, Dr. Cheryl Janifer LaRoche discusses the African American Burial Ground in lower Manhattan and the influence it has had on public engagement, perceptions of slavery in the northern United States, and the empowerment inherent in recognizing one’s own past in the archaeological record. 

Dr. LaRoche’s is Associate Research Professor at the University of Maryland School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation. Her research on 18th and 19th-century free Black communities, institutions, and spaces combines law, history, oral history, archaeology, geography and material culture to define Black cultural landscapes, often navigating the convergences of public, private, political and social interests.

Further Reading: 
LaRoche, Cheryl J. and Michael L. Blakey, ‘Seizing Intellectual Power: The Dialogue at the New York African Burial Ground’, Historical Archaeology, Vol. 31, No. 3 (1997), pp. 84-106.

Leone, Mark P. and Cheryl J. LaRoche, Jennifer J. Babiarz, ‘Archaeology of Black Americans in Recent Times’, Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 35 (2005), pp. 575-598.

Transcript: https://www.americananthropologist.org/podcast/archaeological-identities-part-01
Close-Captioning: https://youtu.be/XVlc4t1ZH8A 

Credits:
Writing, Production & Editing: Eleanor Neil
Production Support: Anar Parikh
Executive Producer - Anar Parikh
Thumbnail Image: Wally Gobetz, “NYC - Civic Center: African American Burial Ground National Monument” (2008) 
African American Burial Ground Memorial
Featured Music: “Spirit Blossom” by Roman Belov
Intro/Outro Music: "Waiting" by Crowander

S04E03: Archaeological Identities - Part One

Anthropological Airwaves is the official podcast of American Anthropologist, the flagship journal of the American Anthropological Association. It is a venue for highlighting the polyphony of voices across the discipline’s four fields and the infinite—and often overlapping—subfields within them. Through conversations, experiments in sonic ethnography, ethnographic journalism, and other (primarily but not exclusively) aural formats, Anthropological Airwaves endeavors to explore the conceptual, methodological, and pedagogical issues that shape anthropology’s past, present, and future; experiment with new ways of conversing, listening, and asking questions; and collaboratively and collectively push the boundaries of what constitutes anthropological knowledge production. Anthropological Airwaves shares the journal’s commitment to advancing research on the archaeological, biological, linguistic, and sociocultural aspects of the human experience by featuring the work of those who study and practice anthropology within and beyond the academy.