African Re-Genesis: Confronting Social Issues in the Diaspora

Ripped from motherland and family, ethnically mixed to quell the potential of uprisings, and brutalized by regimes of hard labor, the heart - the spirit - of Africa did not stop beating in the New World. Rather, it survived and has re-emerged; changed by contacts with new cultures and environments, but still part of the continuum of African tradition: an African Re-Genesis. This is the first volume in its field to emphasize the interdisciplinary temporal and geographic comparative research of Archaeology, Anthropology, History and Linguistics to allow us to form unique perspectives on broader trends in the transformation and (re-) emergence of African Diaspora cultures. African Re-Genesis confirms that regardless of discipline, from continental Africa to Europe, the Western Hemisphere and Indian Ocean, all Diaspora research requires a relevance to modern communities and sensitivity to the interplay with contemporary cultural identities. Matters concerning race and cultural diversity, though ostensibly de-fused by the vocabulary of political correctness, remain contentious. Indeed, the topic of racial relations has become to the twenty-first century what sex was to the nineteenth century - something best not discussed in public, and better talked around than confronted directly. African Re-Genesis strikes at the nerve of urgency that the past, present and future globalization of African cultures, is a cornerstone of the entire human experience, and it thus deserves recognition as such.

Table of Contents:
Part I. Heritage and Contemporary Identities; Contested Monuments: African-Americans and the Commoditisation of Ghana's Slave Castles; Back-to-Africa; Cognitive Issues Related to Interpreting the African Caribbean; Historiographical Issues in the African Diaspora Experience in the New World; Part II. Historical and Anthropological Perspectives; Archaeology and History in the Study of African-Americans; History-Anthropology Collaboration on the New York City African Burial Ground Project; Documenting Slavery for St. Eustatius, Netherlands Antilles; Mohammah Gardo Baquaqua's Journey in the Americas; Banya: A Suriname Slave Play that Survived; Constructing Identity through Inter-Caribbean Interactions; Part III. Archaeology and Living Communities; The Cane River African Diaspora Archaeological Project; The Emergence of a Creole Community on St. John, Danish West Indies; Determining the Scale of Informal Economy through the Distribution of Local Coarse Earthenware in Eighteenth Century Jamaica; African Community Identity at the Cemetery: The Archaeological Study of the African Diaspora in Brazil; The Maroon Trail in Suriname; Archaeological, Anthropological and Linguistic Evidence for Kongo Influences; Medium Vessles and the Longue Dure: the Endurance of Ritual Ceramics and the Archaeology of the African Diaspora; Part IV: Slavery in Africa: Other diasporas; Impacts of Trans-Atlantic Slave trade on the West African Hinterlands; Toward an Archaeology of the Other African Diaspora.

About the Author :

Jay B. Haviser is the Archaeologist for the Netherlands Antilles Government since 1982. He received his Doctorate in Archaeology from Leiden University, the Netherlands, in 1987, and his publications include African Sites Archaeology in the Caribbean. Dr. Haviser is the President of the International Association for Caribbean Archaeology; Senior Regional Representative for the Caribbean and Central America of the World Archaeological Congress; and past President of the Museums Association of the Caribbean. Kevin C. MacDonald is Senior Lecturer in African Archaeology at University College London. He received his Doctorate in Archaeology from Cambridge University, U.K., in 1994. A veteran West African field researcher in both prehistoric and historic Archaeology, his publications include The Origins and Development of African Livestock (with Roger Blench). His research interests include the archaeology and history of African states and agriculture, as well as the African Diaspora in French Colonial North America.