Boarding: Black Women in Nantucket Generating Income and Building Community

Abstract

This article addresses Black women's economic roles in nineteenth-century Nantucket, Massachusetts, during the island's ascendency as the center of a global whaling industry. Much of the existing scholarship highlights men's participation in the whaling industry, while Black women's contributions remain obscured. I use two main lines of evidence to interpret Black women's working lives: census records and ceramic vessels recovered from the Boston-Higginbotham House, a historic residence that was occupied by two Black families for almost 200 years. Changes in vessel forms over time indicate that Black women were increasingly finding ways to supplement the income of their spouses. I argue that Black women played an integral role in their household's economy, and in supporting the whaling industry, especially as boardinghouse operators. This form of entrepreneurship also served to expand Black families' opportunities for building social networks and strengthening the Black community. [Black women, boarding, labor, whaling, Nantucket]

Aspirational architecture and AK‐47s: Fragmented violence in Liberia from settlement to the contemporary

“…The violence of settler colonialism has long been a topic of archaeological interest, and archaeologies of freedom-making and Black sovereignty bring into stark relief how ideologies of white supremacy and structural racism have stifled advances of free peoples. Building on a robust tradition of African Diasporic studies, archaeologies of freedom-making are now blossoming in their own right-illuminating battles for belonging alongside processes of displacement, dispossession, and violence (Barnes, 2011;Fennell, 2010;Gray, 2019;Lee 2019Lee , 2020Matthews and McGovern, 2015;Shackel, 2011;Wall, Rothschild, and Copeland, 2008;Weik 2019). These are poignant new avenues of archaeological inquiry, though it remains to be seen how similar emancipatory projects manifest themselves outside the American racial state or instances of marronage.…”

Chapter 2 Diversity is Not Enough: Advocating and Organizing for Inclusion in Archaeology

“…Students in the graduate program participate in collaborative community field projects with the Eastern Pequot Tribal Nation, the Nipmuc Nation, the Museum of African American History, and the Plimoth Pawtuxet Museum. The curriculum is heavily focused on decolonization and indigeneity (e.g., Mrozowski and Rae Gould 2019; Silliman and Sebastian Dring 2008; Trigg 2020; Woods 2019), diasporic studies (e.g., Balanzátegui Moreno 2018; Landon 2018; Lee 2019), and community‐centered practice. The larger Anthropology Department is notably active in inclusive and community‐based approaches to research of racial minorities and immigrants, economic status, and human‐environment interaction (e.g., Addo 2017; Fung 2000; Martínez‐Reyes 2016; Negrón 2011; Sieber 2016).…”

3 All‐Black Towns in Oklahoma: Forgotten Archaeologies and The Power of Membered Storytelling

“…Whitney Battle‐Baptiste (2011) expands the ways in which a Black Feminist Archaeology can “enhance the overall understanding of the African‐American past which includes the Black household and the ways in which they were maintained by women” (72). Nedra Lee (2019, 92–93) positions women's economic earning ability by detailing the ways in which women contributed to the home, built beneficial social networks, and strengthened the community. As we've discussed above, the foremothers in archaeology form the groundwork for our research and cultivates our conceptions of feminist archaeology.…”