The Archaeology of Mothering

by Laurie A. Wilkie

Using archaeological materials recovered from a housesite in Mobile, Alabama, Laurie Wilkie explores how one extended African-American family engaged with competing and conflicting mothering ideologies in the post-Emancipation South.

Genres: History, Anthropology, Archaeology, Nonfiction

270 pages, Paperback

First published August 26, 2003

Reviews

[Cherry Blossom]

I picked up this book wanting the knowledge inside, but expecting it to come from a paternalistic overview of a white woman "studying" Black people. (It's a common and sickening apprehensive thought that POC often have with these types of studies) and I was pleasantly surprised that this was not it. I had misjudged the author. True, the author herself states that at first on this homegrown American dig she had suspected that the person in question was perhaps Italian or German, but she did her due diligence, recognized that the person in question was a Black woman and then leaned into that. She didn't shy away from it, she didn't try to whitewash her, it was pure, good research and it was fascinating. It actually inspired me to go and dig up an old well in my Grandfather's front yard in Middle Georgia!

[Hillary Borders]

Read for Historical Archaeology.