This web page sets forth bibliographic lists that were compiled by conducting "keyword" searches in October 2005 using the Reports Module of the National Archaeological Database (NADB), which was last updated in August 2004. According to the NPS, this database provides "an expanded bibliographic inventory of over 350,000 reports on archeological investigation and planning, mostly of limited circulation. This 'gray literature' represents a large portion of the primary information available on archeological sites in the U.S. . . . This database benefits from the bibliographic records contributed by many partners, particularly State Historic Preservation Offices and federal agencies." These records include numerous reports by CRM firms, as well as some publications by journals and academic presses.
This online database describes the keyword search capabilities as follows: "Categories of keyword types used . . . include research emphases, archeological site names, project names, types of archeological field resources and features, map names, and geographical names (i.e., lakes, rivers, mountains, regions). No thesaurus of controlled vocabulary was used to develop the archeological keywords found in this field, although guidance on potentially useful terms was provided to data providers who used the NADB-R database software provided by NPS."
The search results set forth below include reports that were recorded in the database with the keywords of African American (118 entries), African-American (18 entries), Afro-American (16 entries), slavery (74 entries), slave (32 entries), plantation (270 entries), and Freedmen (1 entry), for a total of 529 entries. There is very little overlap in the entries listed in each of these categories of search results. This database does not provide abstracts for each entry, so it is difficult to ascertain the degree of relevance and focus of each report reflected in a database entry. Other potential keyword searches related to the subject of African-American archaeology (e.g., "diaspora") yielded no results from this database.
You can search within the database results displayed here by using the "search on page" or "find" functions of your internet browser. For example, if you are interested in any reports from within the area of a particular State, you can search this list by that State's name and postal abbreviation (e.g., "Alabama" and "AL").
Please send any comments, suggestions, or questions about this web page to Chris Fennell. I am currently attempting to collect additional information on such reports from CRM firms and related organizations. I hope to make information on such reports related to African-American archaeology more accessible for researchers -- particularly academic researchers who often find this "gray literature" inaccessible -- by creating consolidated bibliographies. I have also posted on this web site an initial bibliography of report listings sent to me by some of those CRM organizations. At a later stage, I will consolidate these working bibliographies to create one list of relevant reports.