Looking East: Muslim Identity in the Archaeological Record of American Enslavement

A significant number of those Africans enslaved in the Americas were Muslim. Archaeological investigation has yet to be made concerning their stories. This article explores the archaeology of Islam to provide a foundation for understanding the materiality of Muslim identity as it appears in the context of American enslavement, and the historical circumstances which resulted in significant numbers of African Muslims becoming enslaved in the Americas. Drawing on the documentary record, it relates a selection of the life stories of enslaved African American Muslims. In pursuit of a critical, explanatory, and emancipatory archaeology, I undertake an examination of artifacts recovered from contexts of African and African American enslavement in North America. A model of Diaspora analysis is applied to a case in Long Island, New York, which weighs Islam as a potential cultural influence for a particular set of artifacts. It is evident that distinctly Muslim expressions are visible in the archaeological record at sites of African enslavement in the Americas. Moreover, future African Diaspora studies should consider the influence of the traditions of Islam as those projects attempt to recover meaning from the archaeological record. * Kacie Allen completed this study in May 2009 as her senior honors thesis as a requirement for her degree in Anthropology/Religion at the New College of Florida with the thesis supervision of Prof. Uzi Baram. This article presents an edited version of her study. The figures in this study are reproduced here with permission. 1 Allen: Looking East: Muslim Identity in the Archaeological Record of Ame Published by ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst, 2014 2 Table of