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The Role of Memory and Tradition in the Construction of Identity in the Nineteenth-Century Bahamas



Author(s)

Paul Farnsworth

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DOI:10.17265/2328-2177/2016.07.001

Temple University, Philadelphia, USA

Tradition has been defined as practices brought forward from the past into the present. In the context of enslavement and the cultural dislocation that accompanied it, memory became critical in the recreation of tradition. Individual memory contributed to the practices that created new traditions to be carried forward by subsequent generations. Archaeological evidence from Clifton Plantation, Bahamas, illustrates how memory and tradition shaped the identities of both enslaver and enslaved, and influenced the construction of an African Bahamian identity in the early nineteenth-century. In their consumer selections, the enslaved people of Clifton were constructing artifact assemblages that reflected their memories of their traditional cultural background. In the process they were creating an Afro-Bahamian aesthetic that would become a tradition for future generations of Bahamians. While the goods were not of their own manufacture, the choices were theirs from the selection available to them. At the same time, those of British heritage were signaling their British identity through their consumer choices. However, Clifton was unusual in being owned by a reformer who sought to ameliorate the conditions of slavery. The paper also briefly discusses whether these concepts are useful in understanding the material culture of enslaved Africans at other sites.

African Diaspora, African-Bahamian identity, memory and tradition, historical archaeology, consumer choices