NECESSARY BUT INSUFFICIENT - PLANTATION ARCHAEOLOGY REPORTS AND COMMUNITY-ACTION

From broken pots, rusted fishhooks, and scraps of bone, archaeologists bring to light aspects of African-American life on antebellum plantat ions. But it is a dim light, shared by a few through technical reports and scholarly journal articles. This paper examines the distillation of information and ideas from technical reports into publications writ ten specifically for nonarchaeologists. Historical and genealogical so ciety journals, museum newsletters, and church bulletins provide venue s through which archaeologists can convey not just what they are doing , but what they have learned. That knowledge has value in the politica l arena.