 So people of African descent have made considerable contributions to the culture and society of the United States. Yet their achievements are often downplayed, if not entirely hidden from popular memory. In some cases, this has been done deliberately for economic or political reasons, such as when vibrant African-American communities were maligned as dangerous or unsavory so they could be cleared for urban renewal. And a recent manifestation of deliberate disenfranchisement disenfranchisement from history was seen just last year when a United States congressman stated on a national broadcast that, quote, non-whites, unquote, had contributed nothing to civilization. So of course, this isn't true, and there are numerous examples of African and African-American contributions to non-African societies. Nevertheless, stereotypes about African-American activities, behaviors and contributions to the U.S. are persistent and persistently negative. So, sorry. Oh, that one, okay. Thank you. So in this paper, I suggest that archeology can provide modern African-American communities with information about the activities of their ancestors as well as ammunition to counter stereotypes. Although archeology is not essential for this, it can provide tangible examples to local and regional communities of their various accomplishments and their time depth. Whereas Christopher Fennell put it recently, archeology can reveal evidence of past vitalities that aid heritage claims of present communities, quote, unquote. I'm gonna discuss two examples of African-American life in the southeastern United States where archeology can help descending communities see and understand the place and history. Both examples come from the coastal plantation regions of the Carolinas and Georgia. During the 18th century, this region became one of the richest British colonial areas and it continued to prosper after the American Revolution. The agricultural success was founded on tidal rice cultivation along the region's largest river systems. River rice gave rise to the plantation societies that dominated this district during most of the 18th and 19th centuries and established social and economic conditions that had lasting impacts after the end of slavery and into the present. Rice requires periods of inundation while it grows and in the Carolinas and Georgia, plantations using tidal irrigation relied on systems of canals and dikes to control water flow in and out of the fields. They harnessed tidal action to flood the fields through special gates or trunks, as they were called, that were activated when the tide flowed into the rivers, raising freshwater levels high enough to enter the trunks. When it was time to flood the fields, the gate at the river side was raised in the open position to allow water to flow into the field. The gate on the field side swung open from the water pressure and then closed automatically and was held in place by the pressure in the opposite direction when the water reached the desired level. To drain the fields, the trunks were opened at the field side at low tide and the process worked in reverse. Tidal rice cultivation required extensive earthworks, canals, subcanals, and other alterations of the lower river terraces and floodplains. The labor for this work from clearing the extensive marshes and cypress swamps that initially dominated the river valleys to building the entire infrastructure that produced rice was performed by hand by enslaved people of African descent. So what needs to be emphasized is that the construction and operation of productive rice fields took more than hard physical labor. It involved considerable knowledge, skill, and technical expertise. Furthermore, tidal rice cultivation techniques in the southeastern North America were evidently adapted from African precedents as Judith Carney has shown and modified for the large scale production and processing that was characteristic of plantations. West Africans were familiar with the cultivation of numerous varieties of rice and this experience made African laborers from the rice growing regions attractive to planters in the Carolinas and Georgia. In fact, the gates used to flood and drain the fields were called trunks because of the African practice of using hollowed out trees for this purpose. Rice cultivation in the region never recovered after the American Civil War and generally faded around the turn of the 20th century. Despite the passage of time, the signs of rice agriculture remain on the landscape, a detailed study of tidal rice landscapes in the Winnah Bay region of South Carolina demonstrated that former rice growing regions still convey a sense of their function in historic associations. Low country rice landscapes included a mixture of tidal swamp converted for cultivation and adjacent high ground where the plantation and rice handling areas were established. These complexes contain the facilities necessary for processing, packing, and shipping rice, planters, houses, slave quarters, and general farm buildings. The housing and rice processing facilities tended to be concentrated within the individual plantations in locations that overlooked the extensive rice fields that dominated the river terraces and flood plains. The most prominent remains of these fields, which are still common in the landscape are the networks of channels, canals, levees, and embankments reflecting the old irrigation systems that cross cut most of the wetlands along the major rivers. The prevalence of these features contributes to distinct quality of the region that is clear in modern maps and aerial photographs. In some cases, the embankments along the main river channel have been maintained along with the field side ditches so that the flood plains remain useful for cultivation. It doesn't look like my normal computer. Thank you. So the flood plains are still in use for cultivation, often for wetlands and wildlife preserves. Where the canals have been retained for irrigation and drainage, water is emitted inside the embankments with trunks built in the traditional style and these are all modern examples, but they look exactly like the traditional ones. Although they're not in pristine condition, the region's rice fields reflect historical techniques and land use patterns to maintain them and keep them operating. They also reflect a clear human creation and permanent alteration of the physical environment as their construction involved the removal of the natural cypress gum forests and interruption of plant succession so that now these areas remain as grassy marshes. The present day, low country landscapes thus reflect the expertise, knowledge, skill and labor of people of African descent. It can be stated categorically that this community produced distinctive and significant landscapes which have had lasting effects on the appearance and character of the region. The second topic I wanna cover relates to the economic activities of enslaved African-Americans in this region. Research into this area indicates that the slaves were skilled in energetic entrepreneurs, despite the restrictions of slavery, they created a vigorous internal economy apart from the formal and official economy of the region. The existence of the internal economy contradicts stereotypes about their initiative, knowledge, and abilities and shows that where there were opportunities open to them, African-Americans were fully capable of prospering and building lives for themselves. The slaves' economic life was partly a byproduct of the task labor system. Task labor was an arrangement where the labor of the slaves was an arrangement where implanters of their agents assigned slaves a particular work objective to accomplish each day. And once it was finished, slaves could use their time as they wished. This system allowed them opportunities for gardening and other food procurement like fishing or hunting, animal husbandry, craft work or other activities. Historians have indicated that slaves worked in a tremendous range of areas and were quite savvy about acquiring wealth and currency or property. In fact, when federal troops began to occupy the low country during the Civil War, Northern administrators started dealing with the newly emancipated African-Americans. They expected to have to teach them economic basics among other knowledge or among other elements of citizenship, but were surprised to find that they were already extremely experienced and knowledgeable in these matters. The range of enterprises that slaves are known to or could have engaged into earning comes was extensive. These included selling produce, domestic animal products, wild foods, skins, operating ferries, trucking and hauling, pottery making and other craft works such as basket making, collecting and selling firewood, collecting Spanish moss for stuffing furniture and many other things. Slaves sold their products through various outlets. Planters often purchased produce from their own slaves either to use on their own plantation or to sell on their behalf. Slaves also sold merchandise directly at the region's urban and town markets which was a method that planters never could stop even though they tried. Another practice was to sell to neighboring planters and farmers directly or to passing travelers who needed provisions and horse feed. While historians have documented the internal economy, archeological interpretations of this network might underestimate the economic lives of enslaved African-Americans. This may be partly a result of the ephemeral quality of relevant archeological remains. For example, evidence of collecting and selling firewood would be difficult to see archeologically. So where this issue's been received the most attention, it tends to focus on tangible materials such as Kelownaware ceramics, which leave traces in the archeological assemblages in which archeologists have explored in some detail with respect to their commercial context. Another reason a slave's economic activities might be underrepresented in archeological studies is because the relevant artifacts are interpreted from the standpoint of trying to fit them into quote traditional views of the hardship of slavery or put another way, it could be that artifacts are interpreted from the perspective that they function primarily in a context of near impoverishment, bare survival, and hard-scrabble self-sufficiency. So for example, an animal trap recovered from a slave settlement on St. Simon's Island, Georgia was interpreted as subsistence related, an expression and an expression of slaves trying to make up deficiencies in the rations that planters gave them. If you put this artifact in another context, however, it can be viewed as a tool for catching game meat and skins for sale. In this scenario, the trap reflects a broader economic system, and the same can be said for artifacts associated with fishing and other types of hunting. Similarly, many of the items related to clothing and sewing that may be found as slave settlements can be seen as components of their internal economy. African-American women were accomplished in needle arts like white women at this time. In fact, while planters gave male slaves rations of clothes, they gave female slaves a cloth ration and an annual allocation of needles and expected them to manufacture their own clothes. They use these skills not just to dress themselves in their families, but also to make a variety of other items, including sheets, pillowcases, quilts, which African-American women became renowned for, and possibly other housewares, and obviously these kinds of products could be made for sale as well as home use. Other artifacts would be more difficult to interpret without reference to the slave's internal economy. These include possible curry comb and horse bridle that were recovered from a site near Savannah, Georgia. When considering slaves' economic activities, these kinds of artifacts have clear functions in the context of a slave. They don't actually have clear functions in the context of a slave household, but as historian Dylan Penningroth studied property among low-country slaves, he discovered an extensive ownership in trade in horses. Further, slaves could earn income as draymen and carters, which would require possession of at least one draft animal. So in this context, in this other context of looking in the economy of their internal economy, the discovery of horse tack, along with various utilitarian buckles that could reflect harnesses, saddles, and other equipment, illustrate an aspect of slaves and freed people's economic activities that might be overlooked if you were just looking at them from a standpoint of domestic activities. The history of African-Americans is increasingly well understood, but as I noted at the beginning of this paper, there's a perception that their contributions to the history of this region was mainly in their labor. Examination of the rice landscapes and the small finds of their residential sites emphasizes the skilled knowledge, effort, and talent that people of African descent brought to the United States. In the case of the rice fields, it can be said that the low-country landscape was literally created by African-Americans, and not only by their physical labor, but also by the technical knowledge and skills they brought to the cultivation of this particular crop. The landscape can still be seen and understood. With respect to the slave's internal economy, looking at artifacts in this broader context provides tangible evidence of what northern educators discovered when they arrived in the low country, that the local communities already had expertise in the market economy, and were quite sophisticated about operating in it. So therefore, archeology has a strong potential to show the contributions of African-Americans to the creation and growth of the United States. Archeology provides tangible examples of these people's lives, and their work, and their skills and experiences, while African-Americans have frequently been disenfranchised in discussions of United States history. The examples I discussed here demonstrate that they have always been dynamic and active players in the growth of the country, and their contributions entitle them to participate in narratives of the country's history and heritage as equal partners. Thank you. Thank you.