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Ephemeral and forgotten: an archaeological investigation of race, marginalization and historic preservation

Year: 2021
Type: dissertation
Abstract: This dissertation investigates inhabitants of a ridge near the present-day Fred W. Smith National Library for the Study of George Washington at Mount Vernon, Virginia. Excavations of this area from 2008-2010 uncovered three clusters of artifacts dating from 1800-1830, during Bushrod Washington’s ownership of Mount Vernon. Investigators argued that these clusters represented either three house sites or a combination of houses and an outbuilding. Researchers could find no documentary evidence that anyone lived in this area during Bushrod’s tenure. My research employs a mixture of historical anthropological and archival analysis, archaeological analysis and evaluation of comparative evidence to examine various hypotheses about who lived at this ridge. I examine what can be told about this site from these various lines of evidence and argue that individuals previously enslaved by George Washington lived at this site. I explore what the remaining questions about this site show about how anthropologists understand racial constructs and the ways that structural racism shapes the discipline. The Mount Vernon sites analyzed in this study illuminate how the enduring impact of past forms of structural racism continues to shape both diversity within archaeology and how archaeologists investigate and interpret sites occupied by marginalized groups. I examine how the interplay between these issues and historic preservation laws and practices can make it difficult to protect sites associated with marginalized groups. As a result. preservation laws nominally designed to protect historic sites actually act in an exclusionary manner and promote disparity in whose heritage we choose to preserve.
Language: English
Subfield: Anthropology
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7046950951
Cites: 53
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Related to: 10