“Offers a richly detailed and carefully analyzed picture of the lives of people who simply ‘weren’t there’ according to the usual stories we tell ourselves about the American past. In this counternarrative, archaeology not only extends the existing archive, but also provides the basis for a penetrating critique of that archive and its gaps. A compelling illustration of what it might look like if archaeologists, and others interested in understanding the past, thought of preservation as a tool to protect communities.”—Anna S. Agbe-Davies, author of Tobacco, Pipes, and Race in Colonial Virginia
Based on ten years of collaborative, community-based research, A Struggle for Heritage: Archaeology and Civil Rights in a Long Island Community examines the history of race and racism in a mixed-heritage Native American and African American community on Long Island’s North Shore, demonstrating how archaeology can be an activist voice for a vulnerable population’s civil rights.
Christopher N. Matthews, professor of anthropology at Montclair State University, is the author of The Archaeology of American Capitalism and coeditor of The Archaeology of Race in the Northeast.
Publication of the paperback edition made possible by a Sustaining the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
The Florida Bookshelf 