Slaves and planters in western Brazil: Material culture, identity and power

This dissertation analyzes historic documents and the archaeological record in an attempt to reveal the processes of formation of differentiated groups of slaves, segmented along African-derived ethnic lines, on the plantations of Chapada dos Guimaraes, in western Brazil. The two major data sets used in this analysis are demographic data regarding the composition of slaveholdings in Chapada dos Guimaraes between 1780 and 1880, extracted from slaveholdings lists present in planters' probate-inventories, and the locally-made pottery exhumed from 18th and 19th century sites of the region. The correlations between the changes in the African composition of the slaveholdings and the rise and fall of specific decorative techniques and designs on the locally-made pottery over time demonstrate that groups from different regions of Africa exerted specific influences over this material. Thus, it is affirmed that these more discrete groups used pottery as a vehicle of expression of their differentiated African regional identities. The evidence presented challenges the established models of creolization in the anthropology and history of the African diaspora, which holds that the process of cultural homogenization of the African slaves in the Americas, particularly on plantations, was a very fast paced process. Rather, the cases discussed in this study demonstrate that this process of cultural homogenization was segmented, rather than linear, and occurred at a much slower pace than traditionally assumed.