Crossroads and cosmologies [electronic resource] : diasporas and ethnogenesis in the new world / Christopher C. Fennell ; foreword by Robert Farris Thompson ; editor's foreword by Paul A. Shackel.

Cover image for Crossroads and cosmologies [electronic resource] : diasporas and ethnogenesis in the new world / Christopher C. Fennell ; foreword by Robert Farris Thompson ; editor's foreword by Paul A. Shackel.

ISBN:

9780813037714

Title:

Crossroads and cosmologies [electronic resource] : diasporas and ethnogenesis in the new world / Christopher C. Fennell ; foreword by Robert Farris Thompson ; editor's foreword by Paul A. Shackel.

Author:

Fennell, Christopher.

Personal Author:

Fennell, Christopher.

Publication Information:

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xxii, 168 pages) : illustrations, maps.

Series:

Cultural heritage studies

Contents:

Introduction: Diasporas, histories, and heritage -- From the diminutive to the transatlantic -- Shared meanings and culture dynamics -- Core symbols across a continuum -- A core symbol of the BaKongo culture -- Marking social group contours -- Expressions of group identity and individual purpose -- A model for diaspora analysis -- Interpreting cultural expressions through ethnohistorical analogy -- BaKongo culture in West Central Africa -- Predicting facets of symbolic expression in new settings -- African diasporas and symbolism in the New World -- Private rituals in North America -- Yoruba and BaKongo dynamics in Cuba -- Innovation of new emblems in Haiti and Brazil -- Afro-Christian dynamics in North America -- European diasporas and the persistence of magic -- From the Palatinate to Virginia -- Hexerei practices among German-Americans -- Social networks and interpersonal conflicts -- Expressions instrumental and emblematic -- Creolization, hybridity, and ethnogenic bricolage.

Local Note:

eBooks on EBSCOhost

Subject Term:

Blacks -- America -- Social life and customs.

Africans -- America -- Social life and customs.

Blacks -- America -- Ethnic identity.

Africans -- America -- Ethnic identity.

African diaspora.

Ethnicity -- America -- History.

Ethnohistory -- America.

Cosmology -- History.

Geographic Term:

America -- Social life and customs.

America -- Ethnic relations.

Format:

Electronic Resources

Electronic Access:

Click here to view

Publication Date:

2007

Publication Information:

Available:*

Shelf Number	Material Type	Copy	Shelf Location	Status
973.0496073 22	1:E-BOOK	1	1:ONLINE	Searching... Unknown

Bound With These Titles

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Summary

Christopher Fennell offers a fresh perspective on ways that the earliest enslaved Africans preserved vital aspects of their traditions and identities in the New World. He also explores similar developments among European immigrants and the interactions of both groups with Native Americans. Focusing on extant artifacts left by displaced Africans, Fennell finds that material culture and religious ritual contributed to a variety of modes of survival in mainland North America as well as in the Caribbean and Brazil. Over time, new symbols of culture led to further changes in individual customs and beliefs as well as the creation of new social groups and new expressions of identity. Presenting insights from archaeology, history, and symbolic anthropology, this book traces the dynamic legacy of the trans-Atlantic diasporas over four centuries, and it challenges existing concepts of creolization and cultural retention. In the process, it examines some of the major cultural belief systems of west and west central Africa, specific symbols of the BaKongo and Yoruba cosmologies, development of prominent African-American religious expressions in the Americas, and the Christian and non-Christian spiritual traditions of German-speaking immigrants from central Europe.

Reviews (1)

Choice Review

In 1997, archaeologist Fennell (Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) was asked to investigate an abandoned 18th-century house on a newly purchased property near Harper's Ferry, Virginia. Might the place be historically significant? Fennell's shovel test pits inside the ruins turned up a tiny clay model of a human skull incised with an X holding letters within its interstices. So begins the compelling detective story in this readable little book that is thick with engaging detail and rich in bibliography. Was the skull a conjuring device of an enslaved African American who worked on the property? In particular, might the X-shape be a potent "crossroads" symbol or a "cosmogram" associated with central African religion? Or could it be a manifestation of magical practices called "hexerei," derived from German American folk religion as practiced by the house's owners? As he pursues such questions, Fennell turns to historical archaeology and folklore studies as well as local archives and other historical sources. The author's innovation, though, is his proposition of a processual social model that he calls "ethnogenic bricolage," which combines cultural continuities with invention and the melange of artifacts from cultures merging in the Americas. Summing Up: Recommended. Most levels/libraries. A. F. Roberts University of California, Los Angeles