Anna S. Agbe-Davies

Concepts of community in the pursuit of an inclusive archaeology

Community is a key concept that shapes how we approach our relationships with other individuals and groups. In this article, the author reviews how scholars and laypeople alike use the concept of ‘community’ in both theoretical and applied contexts. What do heritage professionals expect from the communities with whom they work? How do these communities define and constitute themselves? The answers to such questions have broad implications for the way that scholars interact and collaborate with stakeholders. Examples are presented from the author’s archaeological projects at sites associated with communities in the African diaspora that illustrate the importance of an explicit and critical approach to the idea of ‘community’. The discussion concludes with preliminary findings from an investigation of the meanings of community among black Chicagoans in the twentieth and twenty‐first centuries.

Alternatives to Traditional Models for the Classification and Analysis of Pipes of the Early Colonial Chesapeake

The clay tobacco pipes known by such names as “Chesapeake,” “terra cotta,” or “Colonoware” (among others), have steadfastly resisted attempts by archaeologists of the early colonial Chesapeake to pin them down. There is no commonly agreed upon nomenclature, classification system, or interpretation for these intriguing artifacts, yet most efforts follow a predictable model centered on a traditional concept of typology. Here, the author discusses alternative analytical and classificatory strategies and their application to the problem of pipe production and distribution networks in and around Virginia’s seventeenth-century capital at Jamestown.