Abul Kalam Azad (1888-1958)--President of the Indian National Congress from 1939 to 1946, outspoken opponent of Jinnah and Partition, symbol of the Muslim will to coexist in a secular India, and scholar and intellectual--was one of modern India's most important leaders. This first substantial biography of Azad in English charts his many contributions to the intellectual, political, and religious heritage of modern India, revealing important continuities in his life and thought.
This text explores how early American colonists used magic to protect themselves from harm in their challenging new world. Analysing evidence from different domestic spheres within Puritan society C. Riley Augé provides a trailblazing archaeological study of magical practice and its relationship to gender in the Anglo-American culture of colonial New England.
Historical and archaeological records show that racism and white supremacy defined the social fabric of the northeastern states as much as they did the Deep South. This collection of essays looks at both new sites and well-known areas to explore race, resistance, and supremacy in the region. With essays covering farm communities and cities from the early seventeenth century to the late nineteenth century, the contributors examine the marginalization of minorities and use the material culture to illustrate the significance of race in understanding daily life. Drawing on historical resources and critical race theory, they highlight the context of race at these sites, noting the different experiences of various groups, such as African American and Native American communities. This cutting-edge research turns with new focus to the dynamics of race and racism in early American life and demonstrates the coming of age of racialization studies.
Highlighting the strong relationship between New England's Nipmuc people and their land from the pre-contact period to the present day, this book helps demonstrate that the history of Native Americans did not end with the arrival of Europeans. This is the rich result of a twenty-year collaboration between Indigenous and nonindigenous authors, who use their own example to argue that Native peoples need to be integral to any research project focused on Indigenous history and culture.
The Delaware Valley is a distinct region situated within the Middle Atlantic states, encompassing portions of Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Maryland. With its cultural epicenter of Philadelphia, its surrounding bays and ports within Maryland and Delaware, and its conglomerate population of European settlers, Native Americans, and enslaved Africans, the Delaware Valley was one of the great cultural hearths of early America. The region felt the full brunt of the American Revolution, briefly served as the national capital in the post-Revolutionary period, and sheltered burgeoning industries amidst the growing pains of a young nation. Yet, despite these distinctions, the Delaware Valley has received less scholarly treatment than its colonial equals in New England and the Chesapeake region. In Historical Archaeology of the Delaware Valley, 1600–1850, Richard Veit and David Orr bring together fifteen essays that represent the wide range of cultures, experiences, and industries that make this region distinctly American in its diversity. From historic-period American Indians living in a rapidly changing world to an archaeological portrait of Benjamin Franklin, from an eighteenth-century shipwreck to the archaeology of Quakerism, this volume highlights the vast array of research being conducted throughout the region. Many of these sites discussed are the locations of ongoing excavations, and archaeologists and historians alike continue to debate the region’s multifaceted identity. The archaeological stories found within Historical Archeology of the Delaware Valley, 1600–1850 reflect the amalgamated heritage that many American regions experienced, though the Delaware Valley certainly exemplifies a richer experience than most: it even boasts the palatial home of a king (Joseph Bonaparte, elder brother of Napoleon and former King of Naples and Spain). This work, thoroughly based on careful archaeological examination, tells the stories of earlier generations in the Delaware Valley and makes the case that New England and the Chesapeake are not the only cultural centers of colonial America.
This book explores the relationship and organization of 17th Century burial landscapes within their associated settlements and the wider setting of colonial northeast British North America to provide readers with a more holistic understanding of settlers’ relationship with mortality.
Offering a rare look into the lives of enslaved peoples and slave masters in early New England, Slavery in the Age of Reason analyzes the results of extensive archaeological excavations at the Isaac Royall House and Slave Quarters, a National Historic Landmark and museum in Medford, Massachusetts. Isaac Royall (1677-1739) was the largest slave owner in Massachusetts in the mid- eighteenth century, and in this book the Royall family and their slaves become the central characters in a compelling cultural-historical narrative. The family's ties to both Massachusetts and Antigua provide a comparative perspective on the transcontinental development of modern ideologies of individualism, colonialism, slavery, and race. Alexandra A. Chan examines the critical role of material culture in the construction, mediation, and maintenance of social identities and relationships between slaves and masters at the farm. She explores landscapes and artifacts discovered at the site not just as inanimate objects or "cultural leftovers," but rather as physical embodiments of the assumptions, attitudes, and values of the people who built, shaped, or used them. These material things, she argues, provide a portal into the mind-set of people long gone-not just of the Royall family who controlled much of the material world at the farm, but also of the enslaved, who made up the majority of inhabitants at the site, and who left few other records of their experience. Using traditional archaeological techniques and analysis, as well as theoretical per- spectives and representational styles of post-processualist schools of thought, Slavery in the Age of Reason is an innovative volume that portrays the Royall family and the people they enslaved "from the inside out." It should put to rest any lingering myth that the peculiar institution was any less harsh or complex when found in the North. Alexandra A.Chan currently works in cultural resource management as an archaeolog- ical consultant and principal investigator. As assistant professor of anthropology at Vassar College, 2001-2004, she also developed numerous courses in historical archaeology, archaeological ethics, comparative colonialism, and the archaeology of early African America. She was the project director of the excavations at the Isaac Royall House and Slave Quarters in Medford, Massachusetts, 2000-2001, and continues to serve on the Academic Advisory Council of the museum.
Historical Archaeology demonstrates the potential of adopting a flexible, encompassing definition of historical archaeology which involves the study of all societies with documentary evidence. It encourages research that goes beyond the boundaries between prehistory and history. Ranging in subject matter from Roman Britain and Classical Greece, to colonial Africa, Brazil and the United States, the contributors present a much broader range of perspectives than is currently the trend.
Focusing on the city of Armidale during the period 1830 to 1930, this book investigates the relationship between the development of capitalism in a particular region (New England, Australia) and the expression of ideology within architectural style. The author analyzes how style encodes meaning and how it relates to the social contexts and relationships within capitalism, which in turn are related to the construction of ideology over time.
