“A Cluster of Sacred Symbols”: Interpreting an Act of Animal Sacrifice at Kingsley Plantation, Fort George Island, Florida (1814–39)

@article{Davidson2015ACO,
  title={“A Cluster of Sacred Symbols”: Interpreting an Act of Animal Sacrifice at Kingsley Plantation, Fort George Island, Florida (1814–39)},
  author={James M. Davidson},
  journal={International Journal of Historical Archaeology},
  year={2015},
  volume={19},
  pages={76-121}
}
  • James M. Davidson
  • Published 14 January 2015
  • History
  • International Journal of Historical Archaeology
Archaeologists often attempt to link artifacts recovered from enslaved plantation contexts to African-derived spiritual belief systems. Recent excavations within the slave cabins of Kingsley Plantation have revealed many artifacts that potentially held religious significance for the first-generation enslaved Africans who lived there between 1814 and 1839, the most significant of which was an intact chicken sacrifice buried in a slave cabin floor. The types of spiritual acts that involve animal… 
View on Springer
11 Citations
Highly Influential Citations
1
Background Citations
2

11 Citations

Citation Type

Citation Type

Enslaved African conjure and ritual deposits on the Hume Plantation, South Carolina
Twenty-one ritual deposits have been found in and around cabin sites along the slave street on the former Hume Plantation on Cat Island, South Carolina. Earliest deposits date back to the eighteenth…
Jug Factories and Fictions: A Mixed Methods Analysis of African-American Stoneware Traditions in Antebellum South Carolina
ABSTRACT During the antebellum period, incipient ceramic industries scattered across South Carolina’s agricultural landscape. In the Edgefield district, a number of family-owned kilns contracted…
Black and White Beads in the African Diaspora
African diaspora archaeology has its roots in American plantation archaeology of the 1960s and 1970s. One of the first artifacts recovered from these contexts was the simple blue glass bead,…
The Subfloor-Pit Tradition in the United States: A Florida Case Study and Critical Reappraisal of Its Origins
Subfloor pits, or root cellars, associated with African American housing and dating from the 17th through the 19th centuries, have been documented archaeologically in the Mid-Atlantic states and…
Rival landscapes of Georgia’s coastal plantations
Animal Biographies in the Iron Age of Wessex: Winnall Down, UK, Revisited
During the 3rd to the 1st century BC on a small settlement consisting of a handful of roundhouses set in an area of open-country close to arable land, a six-year-old male horse was killed. Following…
The Poverty of Archival Riches: Reconstructing Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Mauritian History
  • R. Allen
  • History
    International Journal of Historical Archaeology
  • 2021
Negotiating Freedom in Florida: A Study of Ethnogenesis and Resistance at Three Nineteenth-Century Florida Sites
  • M. Ibarrola
  • History
    International Journal of Historical Archaeology
  • 2021
SPACES AND PLACES OF LOWCOUNTRY GEORGIA PLANTATIONS: A CASE STUDY OF WATTLE AND TABBY DAUB SLAVE CABINS ON SAPELO ISLAND, GEORGIA
Introduction: New Directions in African Diaspora Archaeology
...
...

References

SHOWING 1-10 OF 141 REFERENCES
Material culture and African-American spirituality at the hermitage
In this article, artifacts excavated from 19th-century African-American contexts at the Hermitage plantation near Nashville, Tennessee, are examined in light of their possible use in religious…
New Perspectives from Old Collections
Abstract Charles Fairbanks advanced the field of plantation archaeology in 1968 in his pioneering excavation in the cabins of enslaved laborers at Kingsley Plantation, Florida, with a focus on…
The Archaeology of African-American Slave Religion in the Antebellum South
  • C. Orser
  • History
    Cambridge Archaeological Journal
  • 1994
An interest in New World slavery is a recent and exciting development within American archaeology. As archaeologists have rushed to discover the material aspects of what slaves ate, what kinds of…
Ideology and the Archaeological Record in Africa: Interpreting Symbolism in Iron Smelting Technology
Abstract This essay explores the interface between specific features in the archaeological record pertaining to African iron smelting and various symbolic meanings that are linked to those remains by…
Some Notes on Animal Symbolism in African Religion and Culture
The relationship between the sacred and nature has lately received considerable attention in the study of indigenous traditions. Drawing upon my fieldwork, my own life situation as a twin in the…
Ethnographic Analogy, Archaeology, and the African Diaspora: Perspectives from a Tenant Community
From its inception, archaeologists have been forced to rely on ethnographic analogies when attempting to make behavioral interpretations for past humans. In the study of the institution of slavery,…
Did the Gods of Africa Die? A Re-Examination of a Carroll House Crystal Assemblage
The discovery of an African-American ritual cache within the eighteenth-century Carroll House provides an example of a West African-derived nkisi (minkisi pl). While the exact meaning behind the…
Subfloor Pits and the Archaeology of Slavery in Colonial Virginia
This book discusses the daily life and culture of enslaved Africans and their descendants. Enslaved Africans and their descendants comprised a significant portion of colonial Virginia populations,…
Secret and sacred: Contextualizing the artifacts of African-American magic and religion
Although historical archaeologists have accumulated a large amount of data regarding African-American magical and religious systems, researchers still underestimate the importance of magical and…
House-Yard Burials of Enslaved Laborers in Eighteenth-Century Jamaica
Four burials were excavated from discrete house-yard compounds in an eighteenth century African Jamaican slave settlement at Seville plantation. Though only four in number, these individuals provide…
...
...