audiobook Subfloor Pits and the Archaeology of Slavery in Colonial Virginia by Patricia Samford in History

Review

0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. boring title; fascinating bookBy Bojo PayneIf you ever wondered; "How do historians know that?" about slave culture or the colonial period; or want to know more about how much of African culture survived in American slave culture; this book is for you!In the tradition of dozens of scholars who stress the agency of colonial slaves in shaping their new American identity; Samford uses profusely interdisciplinary analysis; including "archaeology; history; anthropology; religious studies; and art history" of pits under slaves' quarters (mostly in lower tidewater Virginia) as particular evidence of the general continuity between the cultures of free Africans and enslaved Americans (p. 189). She argues that the development of African-American culture was more a gradual "creolization" than a total rupture with African identity; more a process of adaptation and accommodation than building a culture from scratch; and rejects as "implausible and offensive" the notion that colonial slavery in Virginia stripped Africans of their former culture - e.g.; the "spiritual holocaust" claim of Jon Butler is an exaggeration (p. 13; 11).The author argues persuasively that subfloor pits in slave quarters arose primarily in Virginia after 1780 due to the arrival of Igbo people from Africa; and much of the book examines links between the findings in the pits and Igbo culture of that time; including religious ritual; personal storage; and family ties. Any book drawing major conclusions from items in subfloor pits is bound to be somewhat speculative; and the author indulges in several imagined vignettes from slave life. Yet even the author's flights of fancy are grounded in solid evidence; superb interdisciplinary methodology; rigorous argumentation; and pleasant writing; and are more than justified as means to connect the reader with the implications of otherwise abstruse data.