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Excavating Slave History

European, Indian and African cultures came together as African slaves worked northern farms to supply merchant ships and Southern plantations. Africans' lives on Northern plantations differed from those in the South, between provisioning and large labor-intensive crops. Archaeology neglected African Americans, focusing on architecture of white masters' big houses. 1600s kitchens were free-standing, occupied by slaves. Wood stains from decayed posts, coral-based mortar and other building traces, post hole and trench arrangement resemble slave-built dwellings of clay or mud mixed with branches or straw - wattle and daub - on Southern plantations resembled those in West Africa. Unglazed gray to brown African colono ware, earthen cookpots similar to Nigerian and Ghana pottery, were thought to be American Indian pottery. Indian artifacts, mostly wampum shells, could be from a pre-plantation camp, after Europeans arrived. Plantations also bred new slaves, especially since 1808 when it became illegal to import slaves to the United States. There's still slavery today in Sudan and other parts of Africa.

Black History Month was originally Black History Week, the second week of February, birthdates of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass, who strongly impacted America's blacks.

Archaeology

Lithic, STONE AGE 
     Old, man emerges to ice age. Middle, transition. New, agriculture.
Archaic, hunter/gatherer migratory. 
     Formative, agriculture, village. Classic, urban; cultural. 
Postclassic, breakdown of old; emphasize urban, military, secular
Pre-Hispanic, old culture
Populations, cultures linear thru time; beget descendants
Scattergram of artifacts, ecofacts found at site
Contact, brought in. Exotic, from elsewhere.

Prehistory

Speculative, no time line of individuals dates events 
Scholars use different terms, not always agree
Regional variations, classification systems
Exceptions to culture groups
Dating - margin of error
Cultural stages overlap