Archaeological Perspectives on the French in the New World

Elizabeth M. Scott

• Publisher: University Press of Florida
• Year: 2017
• Topic: Social Sciences
• eBook ISBN:
  9780813052694
• Subtopic: Early American History
• Index: Social Sciences

"This book has essentially created a new field of study with a surprising range of insights on the ethnicity, class, gender, and foodways of French speakers of European and African descent adapting to life under British, Spanish, or American political regimes."--Gregory A. Waselkov, author of A Conquering Spirit: Fort Mims and the Redstick War of 1813-1814 "Significant and intriguing. Strengthens the view that French colonists and their descendants are an important part of American heritage and that the worlds they created are significant to our understanding of modern life."--John A. Walthall, editor of French Colonial Archaeology: The Illinois Country and the Western Great Lakes

Correcting the notion that French influence in the Americas was confined mostly to Québec and New Orleans, this collection reveals a wide range of vibrant French-speaking communities both during and long after the end of French colonial rule. This volume highlights the complexity of Francophone societies, the persistence of their cultural traditions, and the innovative means they employed to cope with the cultural and environmental demands of living in the New World.

Analyzing artifacts including clay pipes, colonoware, and food remains alongside a rich body of historical records, contributors focus on how French descendants impacted North America, the Caribbean, and South America even after 1763. Taken together, the essays argue that communities do not need to be located in French colonies or contain French artifacts to be considered Francophone, and they show that many Francophone groups were composed of a mix of ethnic French, Métis, Native Americans, and African Americans. The contributors emphasize the important roles that French colonists and their descendants have played in New World histories.

Elizabeth M. Scott, former associate professor of anthropology at Illinois State University, is the editor of Those of Little Note: Gender, Race, and Class in Historical Archaeology.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Archaeological Perspectives on the French in the New World
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Acknowledgments
• 1. An Introduction to the Archaeology of Francophone Communities in the Americas
• 2. Archaeological Dimensions of the Acadian Diaspora
• 3. “They Are Fit to Eat the Divel and Smoak His Mother”: Labor, Leisure, Tobacco Pipes, and Smoking Customs among French Canadian Voyageurs during the Fur Trade Era
• 4. Food and Furs at French Fort St. Joseph
• 5. Landscapes of Forgetting and the Materiality of Enslavement: Using Class, Ethnicity, and Gender to Search for the Invisible on a Postcolonial French House Lot in the Illinois Country
• 6. Access to First-Choice Foods and Settlement Failure at French Azilum
• 7. Pots Sauvage: Plantation Pottery Traditions of Northwest Louisiana at the End of the Eighteenth Century
• 8. Identity and Cultural Interaction in French Guiana during the Eighteenth Century: The Case of the Storehouse at Habitation Loyola
• 9. Sugar Plantations in the French West Indies: Archaeological Perspectives from Guadeloupe and Martinique
• 10. Uncovering the French on St. Croix: Stories of Seventeenth-Century Settlement and Abandonment on the Caribbean Frontier
• Glossary of French Terms
• List of Contributors
• Index