During Black History Month 2023, the Department of Archaeology will be regularly releasing a news item relating to the life and work of a Black archaeologist. Watch this space for more articles as they are released.
Ayana Omilade Flewellen (they/she) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Stanford University, USA, where they teach anthropology of dress, and the archaeology of Africa and the African Diaspora History and Culture. Her research combines Black feminist theory, historical archaeology, memory, maritime heritage conservation, public and community-engaged archaeology, processes of identity formations, and representations of slavery and its afterlives, and she is currently working on a book project: 'The Will to Adorn: Black Women and Sartorial Choice After Enslavement'. Also an artist and story-teller, she has created installations and more recently performance art pieces that have a connection to her archaeological interests.
Image of National Geographic documentary featuring the group Diving with a Purpose - watch the documentary here.
Flewellen is the co-PI of the Estate Little Princess Archaeology Project on the island of St. Croix, US Virgin Islands, where she and her collaborators are leading in developing community archaeology practices and theory. She is the co-founder and current President of the Society of Black Archaeologists and sits on the Board of the award-winning Diving With A Purpose.
Whitney Battle-Baptiste is one of the Durham Archaeology Department’s International Advisory Board members. She is a Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where she specialises in historical archaeology and the intersection of race, class and gender, into which her book 'Black Feminist Archaeology' gives a good insight. She has worked on the archaeology of enslaved people’s domestic spaces at plantation sites, including the plantation of Andrew Jackson in Nashville, Tennessee; Rich Neck Plantation in Williamsburg, Virginia; the boyhood homesite of W.E.B. Du Bois and currently the Millars Plantation in the Bahamas.
Part of Millars Plantation, from the UMass Amherst Heritage Archaeology Programme's Facebook page
Professor Battle-Baptiste is the director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Center at UMass Amhurst. A former student of Maria Franklin, her work combines scholarship and activism, and she is part of a generation of Black archaeologists who formed the Society of Black Archaeologists and are leading lights in community archaeology theory and practice.
