This work excavates the ecological and land-based strategies of Black communities during the 19^th century amidst the layered contexts of recent emancipation from enslavement and the ongoing violence of racial capitalism. Archaeofaunal remains from the Dunkerhook community, in what is today called Paramus, New Jersey, are analyzed to craft an understanding of the community’s ecological practices, knowledges, and foodways relevant to their subsistence, resilience, and wellbeing. Using the frameworks of Black Ecologies, I advocate for a view of Black land relations as multispecies relations in contrast to, yet contiguous to and complicated by the prevailing conditions of domination. Finally, I ask: is Black liberation possible outside of kinship to land?

In the 1840s, Jewish Five Points resident Harris Goldberg discarded trash behind his 472 Pearl Street home. 150 years later, archaeologists recovered remnants of a roast beef dinner, fragments of glass tableware, and even the skull of a household pet parrot. Another interesting discovery was that of several lead plumbes or seals that were traditionally affixed to the legs of slaughtered chickens to reassure Jewish buyers about freshness and proper kosher procedures. This paper discusses these seals—the photo slides of which are housed at the NYC Archaeological Repository—and contextualizes them within a broader international history of plumbe usage. The author hopes that this paper and related research will allow New York City's Jewish community to tap into a past of pre-war immigration and the persistence of tradition in the city's most notorious 19th-century working class neighborhood.

In 1825, two years before Emancipation in New York State and in a climate of intense anti-Black racism, two Black men purchased land north of the urban core of New York City. Over the next three decades, other Black men and women and European (mostly Irish) immigrants also purchased land there. Together they created a community that included three churches, a school, planted fields, and dozens of homes. In 1857, the City of New York used the right of eminent domain and an argument about the “greater good” to take their land, raze their village, and build Central Park. The village did not re-form elsewhere and was neglected in city histories. This paper focuses on what our historical archaeological investigations have revealed about this forgotten community, particularly how in their everyday interactions with one another and the local environment, Seneca Villagers cultivated a thriving and relatively self-sufficient and sheltered community.

This paper investigates the historical significance of unity, resistance, and leadership within the early African Methodist Episcopal Church. By employing methodological frameworks that incorporate anthropological theory, Black and African-descendant feminisms, critical race theory, and ethnohistory, the study examines the diverse narratives and political dynamics embedded in the multitude of places and people that were within this network. The materiality of dress, in general, is symbolic; what someone wears is a nod to the items they can ascertain. Thus, sartorial practices will be considered to assess resistance, unity, and symbolism within the AME church system. The focus on dress materiality and adornment will be enhanced through literary examples that further highlight notions of agency and strategic positionality within racially charged environments. Ultimately, this study aims to holistically understand AME churches as sites of empowerment, placemaking, and envisioning an inclusive future.

Agriculture in the United States is rooted in the exploitation of labor and class and carries a legacy into the present-day agricultural industry. This paper examines migrant labor camps in New York, from 1943-2000, which trapped thousands of migrant farm laborers from the American South and Caribbean into systems of perpetual debt. During this period, 157 migrant labor camps operated through a peonage system that exploited workers and their families. These systems of marginalization included substandard living conditions, abusive crew leaders, and physical and emotional violence. Laborers where often penalized for seeking cheaper alternatives to overinflated camp commissary food and supplies. Camps were intentionally inaccessible by the surrounding communities and journalists hoping to expose these conditions. This contemporary archaeological analysis provides a comparative review of similar archaeological projects, explores potential avenues of resistance through materiality, and investigates the longue durée of anthropological processes affecting workers in the present agricultural industry.

Located on what was considered “undesirable” land, a community founded by formerly enslaved Africans in the mid-19th century was able to thrive in the last northern state to abolish slavery. This paper will utilize the historical record as well as findings from a recent archeological survey to examine the community of Dunkerhook, located in Bergen County, NJ and members who contributed to its self-sufficiency and resilience. Special focus will be given to a woman whose leadership and medicinal skills aided in the growth of this community and combatted the social, economic, physical and psychological deterioration that so often plagues marginalized communities.

This paper reflects on and shares insights from the Oak Bluffs Historic Highlands Archaeology (OBHHA) project, a community-based historic landscape study that maps the construction and growth of an early-20th Black vacationing community in the Highlands area of Oak Bluffs, Massachusetts. The project focuses on the role of space, place, racialization, and collective memory in the construction of this community, in shaping the built and natural landscape, in residents and visitors’ experiences, and the production of meaning and historical knowledge.

The OBHHA project has sought to answer these questions by investigating how short- and long-term residents of this resort town shaped and experienced the landscape. The project also seeks to identify the ways in which these factors were shaped by Black vacationers’ experiences of racism, struggles against structures of racialized social and economic exclusion, and assertions of a right to leisure and joy.

References to the Black community living along Dunkerhook Road in late 19th and early 20th century Bergen County, NJ newspapers often provided a narrow and paternalistic lens through which to view the community. Commonly reported were their social and church activities, and two residents of the road, Catherine Bennett and her husband Ben, were notably mentioned. Using the ceramic assemblage from the Bennett’s former house, this paper speculates how the Black family mediated class and race in a racially stratified society. The assemblage pattern suggests the Bennetts participated in an emergent consumer culture, signaling to others their rise into the middle class. Additionally, decorative teawares indicate the Bennetts emphasized social rituals tied to their visibility. This paper argues that middle-class status was one strategy Black Americans used to divert scrutiny from white society, portray respectability, and thus provide security for their community.

This paper examines the results from a multi-modal survey conducted on the northeastern-most coast of North America. It focuses on the assemblage of a Cold War radar base constructed near the community of Hopedale, Nunatsiavut, the Inuit self-governing region of Labrador, Canada. This assemblage reveals the dual nature of the material culture present at the site, reflecting both militaristic and leisure-related items prioritized and shipped to the sub-Arctic by the US, as well as the significant waste generated by excessive technological development during the 1950s-60s. Further, this assemblage (and its absences—i.e., items removed from the base by Nunatsiavummiut) reveals the way that Inuit reckon in the present and past with US Air Force occupation. I argue that Inuit circumvent slow and acute forms of violence wrought by the USAF through adaptive re-use of the radar site to 1) navigate the landscape and 2) facilitate practices that go beyond mere subsistence.