Dr. Cameron Gokee (Appalachian State University) will lead archaeological research to study the impact of the Atlantic slave trade on village communities in West Africa. Historical sources, which are few in number, describe how these communities fought or fled slave raiders, but a key question remains unanswered - how did these strategies transform political, economic, and cultural relations among societies on the edge of the Atlantic world? Archaeology is well-placed to answer this question by examining evidence for changing social relations within and between village communities before, during, and after the rise of the Atlantic slave trade in the 17-18th centuries. Most broadly, this research will cast new light on the historical causes and consequences of a violent social rupture shared by both Africans and the African Diaspora in the Americas. More specifically, it will foster innovative research opportunities for university students and public outreach collaborations with local communities, including the installation of a museum exhibit at a UNESCO world heritage cultural center in the region. By exploring local responses to global processes over the long-term, this research can also inform forward-looking approaches to US political and economic engagement in rural Africa and other regions on the periphery of the modern world system.
Dr. Gokee and his research team will examine how the Atlantic slave trade impacted social life in a West African "hatter zone" - a region where people fought, fled, and/or joined the predatory political economies of neighboring states. Focusing on the Bandafassi region of eastern Senegal, this project will identify the social rules of of inclusion and exclusion that defined who could be enslaved by whom, and under what conditions, over the past several centuries. Researchers will identify these patterns through landscape survey and detailed mapping of past village sites, including riverside locales associated with merchants and militias and highland settlements associated with the people avoiding them. Analyses of the artifacts from these sites, including a microscopic study of pottery, will document how economic processes of production and exchange also shaped the social relations within and between different village communities. The specialized collection and luminescence dating of pottery samples will then reveal how the village societies of Bandafassi did or did not change over time, particularly in response to the Atlantic slave trade in the 17-18th centuries. These methods will generate new data for better modelling how global forces impact local communities in shatter zones past and present, while also providing novel opportunities for public outreach and student education and research in the US and Senegal.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
