The Palaver Hut of Providence Island

The settlement of what would become Liberia was spearheaded by the American Colonization Society (ACS). The organization was founded in 1816, supposedly inspired by the efforts of Black abolitionist leaders such as Paul Cuffe. The reality was, as suggested by many historians, more sinister. As Robert Murray (Reference Murray2021:2), for instance, explains, “If the early [B]lack-led emigration efforts had found cautious acceptance among the nation's burgeoning free [B]lack population, the [W]hite-led ACS, filled and governed by many slaveholders, seemed a plan designed solely to prop up American slavery by removing the most ardent opponents to distant shorts.” Following the arrival of the Nautilus in 1822, settlers, alongside liberated Africans from captured slave-trading ships (Anderson and Lovejoy Reference Anderson and Lovejoy2020; Fett Reference Fett2017) and Indigenous communities, would forge an independent republic in 1847 modeled, in part, on American constitutionality and norms of democracy (see Burrowes Reference Burrowes2019), marking it distinct from its colonial neighbor, Sierra Leone (see Agbelusi Reference Agbelusi2024, this issue). The origins of the Liberian experiment, which unfolded on Providence Island, therefore carry broader significance for national heritage and histories of Black sovereignty.

The island itself occupies a strategic position and place in Liberia and Liberian history. Known originally and in local Gola vernacular as Dozoa, Providence Island—to Indigenous inhabitants—was the “Land in the center of water.”Footnote ¹ Given the positionality of this island formation, it signified Indigenous sovereignty but also interaction in an increasingly globalizing world. However, Providence Island has been imbricated with the narrative of diasporic return in the historiography of Liberia. The traditional historical frameworks of settler colonialism centers the arrival of the African Diaspora in Liberia as the emancipatory point of departure. This is no doubt influenced by the fact that the history of Liberia has largely been defined from the outside, by returnees, and the West without much regard for Indigenes.

This special collection in American Antiquity expands archaeologies of the African Diaspora to consider struggles for being and life beyond emancipation and the shores of the United States. In articulating Black freedom from the position of Rinaldo Walcott's Long Emancipation (Reference Walcott2021; see Reilly and Stevens Reference Reilly and Stevens.2024, this issue) framework, it is important that we stage the question of Black and African emancipation together rather than that of diasporic migrants’ emancipation against or in contradiction to their African counterparts. Furthermore, to rely on older frameworks that bring Providence Island into view from the vantage point of diasporic arrival poses a risk of continuing to view Providence Island from a traditional archival position when so much about Providence Island falls outside of the traditional boundaries of the written record. To begin with, the island's location, with features such as ancient cotton trees and mangroves, highlights—as evidenced by oral histories and historical sources—the deeper historical and cultural significance of the site for its first inhabitants.

For instance, community practice and coming-of-age rituals likely featured prominently in Indigenous practices of Poro and Sande societies on Providence Island (Little Reference Little1949). Individuals from the various Indigenous groups likely used the islands to engage in a spiritual initiation process during their transition to young adulthood, something often referenced by our Liberian team members and colleagues. Scholars associate this initiation with traditional West African community-based initiation customs, a practice that led the young individual to become part of a community and that entailed multiple stages (Bledsoe Reference Bledsoe1984; d'Azevedo Reference d'Azevedo1962; Ellis Reference Ellis, Knörr and Filho2010; Leopold Reference Leopold1983). Participants typically needed spiritual guidance, frequently offered by spiritual fathers and mothers, along with a period spent in the “wilderness,” often within a forest or open field. In this way, Providence Island, with its geography and vegetation, offered an ideal space for such practices.

The island's distinct geophysical attributes that shaped the western extension of the Mesurado or Doo River also served Indigenous communities, but it would be its location approximately 500–600 m from the entrance of the Atlantic Ocean that would soon define its significant geographical position and most frequent utility at the start of the transatlantic trade. With Liberia known as the Grain and/or Pepper Coast,Footnote ² European traders racing to find new trade routes would first encounter the island. In this instance, the island provided an interface not only to the transatlantic world but also to different kinds of disciplinary interpretations that foster new conditions from which to examine the multiple uses of the island (Burrowes Reference Burrowes2016).

Indigenous chiefs hoping to establish trade relations with European passersby converted the island into a de facto palaver hut. The “palaver hut” is a traditional circular structure crafted from materials such as clay, bamboo, or wood, and it boasts a thatched roof. Within West African villages, its traditional role is to serve as a welcoming space for visitors and a space for mediation (Chereji and Wratto King Reference Chereji and Wratto King2013; Lill Reference Lill1953; Starr Reference Starr1913). The decision regarding its placement usually rests with the village elder, chief, or spiritual leader, and the construction of the hut is a community endeavor undertaken by the villagers. Inside the palaver hut, individuals participate in what is commonly referred to as “palaver”—that is, the talk or negotiation. The presence of the old cotton tree on Providence Island that provided natural covering that Indigenous communities would generally use as a natural palaver hut cemented the space as a meeting ground for such negotiations. The palaver offers a creative methodology that centers Providence Island away from the archival narratives and as a new focal point where stories and identities are transmitted, a place of exchange and negotiation, and a place of conversations that go beyond architectural features and aesthetics of a building. In rethinking Providence Island under the palaver framework, it becomes a collection of stories to be told, of feelings and senses to be shared, and of desires brought to the surface—materialized as a meeting point or a point of return in geographical space. The island palaver therefore serves as a catalyst for an architecture from within and without, where multiple visions of Black sovereignty were realized.

The site itself, however, was not always a space of mediation and negotiation. Svend Holsoe, in his work “A Study of Relations between Settlers and Indigenous Peoples in Western Liberia, 1821–1847” (Reference Holsoe1971), notes that the earliest documented reference to slave trading on Providence Island dates to January 1807. This reference similarly notes the presence of a Mr. Jump, who was residing on the island at the time. Three years later, in April 1810, Thomas Ludlam encountered a Mr. Smalley, who served as the factor on the island at that time, during his visit to Cape Mesurado. Smalley had recently taken over the position from a Joseph Dennison and had not been in that role for long. Unlike Philippi, a mixed-race woman who orchestrated slave trading from a slave site close by, the factors on Dozoa Island did not maintain their factory for an extended period. In June 1813, as part of the US/British effort to enforce the 1807 act of abolition, a detachment of 40 men from the British Royal Navy vessel H.M.S. Thais was dispatched to shut down the slave trading activities on the island. Following a brief skirmish in which one of their men lost his life, the English forces destroyed the factory. Smalley had apparently left the factory, and it was under the ownership of two British individuals named Bosstock and McQuinn. According to reports, the slave trade was purportedly revived in 1816 (Holsoe Reference Holsoe1971).

Slave trading, representing the very creation of the returning diaspora, lingered along the coastline. Legend has it that as the Elizabeth, hailed as “the Mayflower of Liberia,” off-loaded the pioneers to their new land of liberty, slave ships could be seen loading their human cargo (Akingbade Reference Akingbade1983). With the slave trade still flourishing, the emigrants had not entirely escaped its traumas, physically or psychologically. Symbolically straddling the past and future by ending up in Liberia, African Americans, West Indians, and recaptives represented the unfinished work of emancipation in the Atlantic World. At the core of Liberia's formation were desires of transforming the inhumanities of slavery and slave trading by creating a modern Black nation. As a site that brought together disparate visions into the discipline and order of a Black nation-state, Liberia embodied a significant part of the unfolding emancipation project.

From this perspective, it becomes even clearer how the geography of Providence Island came to serve as a document—of Indigenous history, slavery, Atlantic commerce, and democracy. In the early nineteenth century, when the chiefs negotiated the deal with representatives of the American Colonization Society on Providence Island to settle freed slaves, the island was a place of various transactions. Consequently, it serves as a document of those relationships. The architecture of assembly as embodied by the newly arriving migrants was theorized and formulated into practice by the nineteenth-century landscape architect and designer Frederick Law Olmsted. Robert Smithson, in his essay “Frederick Law Olmsted and the Dialectical Landscape,” argued, “We cannot take a one-sided view of the landscape. . . . [A particular place] can no longer be seen as ‘a thing-in-itself,’ but rather as a process of ongoing relationships existing in a physical region” (Reference Smithson1973:63).

Elaine Scarry, in a recent keynote at the University of Arkansas (Reference Scarry2019) entitled “Architecture and the Right to Assembly,” connects the right of assembly to the right of free speech, given that both occur together in the First Amendment of the US Constitution. In the same way, the newly arriving migrants in Liberia landed on Providence Island as a way of resisting enslavement and social death and—as wardens of their new environment—not only symbolized the right of assembly and free speech but also established the protocol for bringing Liberia's disparate groups together in a shared dream of racial uplift and national sovereignty. Out of this experience, outlawing slave trading and slavery became one of the first provisions of the Liberian constitution that would not only be emancipatory for Indigenous peoples and returnees but also reverberate throughout the Atlantic World. The site of Providence Island is therefore significant in what it represents both globally for Black self-rule and locally for national identity and the point of cultural contact. The multifaceted nature of the site's heritage plays an important role in how our team approaches Providence Island archaeologically.

The BAHA Project and the (Un)Making of the Liberian Past

The Back-to-Africa Heritage and Archaeology project, or BAHA, was conceptualized in 2017, and it began fieldwork in 2018 in the community of Crozierville, a township settled by Caribbean migrants from the island of Barbados (see Banton and Reilly Reference Banton and Reilly2020; Reilly et al. Reference Reilly, Banton, Stevens and Gijanto2019, Reference Reilly, Banton and Stevens2023). The collapse of a sacred cotton tree later sparked salvage excavations on Providence Island during a 2019 field season, which set in motion more expansive work during seasons in May–June 2022, December 2022, and May–June 2023 (Figure 2). In addition to American-based scholars, the team includes participants from the University of Liberia (Monrovia) and Cuttington University (Phebe), who, importantly, represent some of the first Liberians ever trained in archaeological methods. In fact, prior to the launch of our project, the last excavations that took place in the country occurred in the early 1970s.

Figure 2.

Back-to-Africa Heritage and Archaeology (BAHA) team members excavate a unit on Providence Island in close proximity to the fallen cotton tree in December 2022. Front (left to right): Abraham Fokoe, Craig Stevens, and Oliver Sackey. Back (left to right): Gayflor Wesley and Chrislyn Laurie Laurore. (Photograph by Matthew C. Reilly.) (Color online)

As a colony of the United States, resulting from efforts to expel Black Americans, Liberia signaled the limits of freedom for African Americans, for whom it had been established, as well as the possibilities of a multiracial democracy in the United States. The colony's beginnings were contentious from the start. David Walker (Reference Walker1829), Frederick Douglass, (Reference Douglass1852) and, later, W. E. B Du Bois (see Robinson Reference Robinson1990), for instance, viewed the colonization movement as one poorly conceived and not altogether genuine. In general, discussions of Liberian settlement have often been driven by the idea that the Liberian colonization movement was a racist scheme put together by Southern slaveholders bent on expatriating the free Black population, which posed a problem to the institution of slavery. Consequently, many concluded that they were more motivated by racism than benevolence (Burin Reference Burin2005; Du Bois Reference Du Bois1896; Fox Reference Fox1919; Guyatt Reference Guyatt2009).

A significant problem has been the ways in which Liberian history has been dominated by changing perspectives on colonization and the stories of settlers from the United States and the Caribbean. Providence Island, in many ways, in its narrative juxtaposition to Plymouth Rock, has cemented a Western-dominated story of the West African state. This sustains the idea that African and other Indigenous histories only become visible with White colonial encounters. Additionally, in Liberian historiography, there is a conspicuous Indigenous presence, but there are no real sustained and substantive accounts. They formed an afterthought—occupying a peripheral space within the narratives rather than at their core.

Recently, Liberian scholar Patrick Burrowes discovered the original document detailing the transaction of Liberia's founding (Crawford Reference Crawford2022). This land agreement, which ceded Cape Mesurado to the American Colonization Society and therefore to arriving settlers, was signed in December 1821, leading to the establishment of the colony in 1822. The document, as interpreted by Burrowes, revises earlier ideas about how the contract was driven by White colonial intimidation at the barrel of a gun rather than being a fair agreement signed by consenting African leaders in the area. Yet, Burrowes also cautions that by relying on written records, one risks telling a one-sided story from the point of view of the US government and the American Colonization Society.

This research highlights the ways in which new archaeological evidence can expand on prior narratives and create new, more inclusive ones. The land agreement of December 1821 granted roughly 56.7 ha (140 acres) of Cape Mesurado to the settlers who would soon arrive on Providence Island. Burrowes, following his discovery of the original document, argued that the agreement offers unequivocal proof that Indigenous peoples, fully aware of the concept of selling land, entered into the agreement willingly rather than by force, which has been previously suggested (and in keeping with US settler-colonial practice). Additionally, the document includes important material details related to coastal trade prior to the 1822 arrival of settlers. The agreement makes clear that Indigenous groups desired Euro-American trade goods. In addition, reference is made in the agreement (below) to the “Pacific and just views” of the arriving settlers, implying that Indigenous parties sympathized with the plight of migrants fleeing racial violence in the United States and were eager to make a home along West African shores.

The archival record and, subsequently, the material record allow for multiple readings of this significant moment of settlement. For the 88 passengers on the Nautilus ship and future migrants, this agreement was crucial in forging bonds with Indigenous West Africans and providing a landscape onto which they could materialize their vision for a free Black nation. This has been the perspective through which Liberian history has traditionally been documented, analyzed, critiqued, and debated (Bell Reference Bell1962; Blackett Reference Blackett1977; Clegg Reference Clegg2004; Murray Reference Murray2021). The agreement speaks to the fact that Indigenous populations had been living in the area for decades (if not centuries), though they may not have been entirely certain of what would unfold as the nation-state took shape. In focusing on the narrative that privileges settlers, we are careful not to romanticize what could be argued to be an instance of settler colonialism while simultaneously recognizing the significance of freedom dreams and anticipated emancipatory futures. Complementing the archival with the material record also allows us to shape narratives that prioritize Indigenous narratives and perspectives. In closing, we suggest that this settler or Indigenous dualism is a false binary, precluding more inclusive readings of the Liberian past that can be mobilized in the post-conflict present.

As we turn to the archaeological record of Providence Island, it is fitting to quote, at length, this treaty, entitled “Agreement for the Session and Purchase of Lands, Entered into between the Agents of the American Colonization Society, and the King and Head-Men of Cape Mesurado,” as printed in George Brown's The Economic History of Liberia (Reference Brown1941:259–260). The parties involved, language utilized, and lengthy treatment of trade goods make this an ideal document to explore the process of settlement and the significance of Providence Island without privileging only the narrative of arriving migrants:

An Archaeology of Liberian Settlement

Archaeological work on Providence Island commenced in 2019. Preliminary salvage excavations were undertaken in that year at the invitation of the Ministry of Information, Culture, and Tourism of Liberia following the fall of a cotton tree and the exposure of a midden likely dating to the mid-nineteenth century (Allen et al. Reference Allen, Banton and Reilly2023). The tree, an inosculation of a male and female cotton tree, was—according to guides who provide tours of the site—the oldest on the island, serving as the site of negotiations between settlers and the Indigenous people in 1822. Cotton trees are sacred in Liberia, and more broadly across Africa (Anyinam Reference Anyinam1999; Fraser et al. Reference Fraser, Diabaté, Narmah, Beavogui, Guilavogui, de Foresta and Junqueria2016; Juhé-Beaulaton and Salpeteur Reference Juhé-Beaulaton, Salpeteur, Woudstra and Roth2017; Ntiamoa-Baidu Reference Ntiamoa-Baidu2008; Reid Reference Reid2016) and the Diaspora (Brown Reference Brown2003; Saunders Reference Saunders2015), as markers of settlements, villages, burials, and sacred groves. This tree, in particular, symbolized the birth of the nation, representing cooperation and solidarity between Indigenous populations and arriving Black American settlers.

Despite being a national landmark and one of the African Diaspora's most significant heritage sites, Providence Island has not received systematic study. In December 2022, our team, assisted by geophysical expert Joseph Durrant, completed intensive electromagnetometry surveys of the entire island. We also completed an aerial survey, using drone imagery to render three-dimensional models of the island. For the former, electromagnetometer surveying (Figure 3) proved successful in determining the original extent of the island, which was much smaller than it is now. Data collected by Joe Durrant and Liberian team members indicate a smaller, teardrop-shaped island prior to the development of a larger island with infrastructure for ferry service and cultural activities in the mid-twentieth century. These conclusions were supported by a grid of shovel test pits excavated in the northeastern quadrant of the island in May and June 2022. Sixteen test pits were—with the exception of minimal twentieth-century glass—sterile, reaching sandy fill within 5–10 cm of excavation. The geophysical surveys also suggested the presence of unexcavated historic structures within the boundaries of the original island, though subsequent ground truthing in May and June 2023 determined the anomaly to be a metal-heavy trash deposit along the outer reaches of the original island.

Figure 3.

Back-to-Africa Heritage and Archaeology (BAHA) team member Abraham Fokoe gathers geophysical data on Providence Island in December 2022. (Photograph by Matthew C. Reilly.) (Color online)

Excavations proved most fruitful in areas at the base of the rocky outcrop at the center of the original island. Building on salvage work in 2019, excavation units in 2022 and 2023 expanded beyond the fallen cotton tree and on the southeastern side of the outcrop, where electromagnetometry recorded encroaching saline content from the river. Excavation units were 1 × 1 m², 2 × 1 m², and 3 × 1 m² in size (Figure 4). All excavated units included imported material culture brought to the West African coast along with locally made Indigenous wares—including vessels predating the arrival of 1822 settlers and earlier, Atlantic-era traders. Although we discuss recovered locally made artifacts below, the majority of the assemblage consists of thousands of artifacts imported to the West African coast from Europe and the United States prior to, during, and after the moment of 1822 settlement. For materials dating to 1822 settlement and the decades afterward, the archaeological record reveals some of the more intimate details about the settlement process for those seeking freedom and an opportunity to build a Black republic.

Figure 4.

Satellite image of the southeastern zone of Providence Island with mapped locations of 2022 shovel test pits (STPs) and excavation units. (Map by Thomas Blaber.) (Color online)

The midden underneath the cotton tree and units surrounding the rocky outcrop of the original island are dominated by decorated and undecorated whiteware vessels, many of them chamber pots and plates (for an overview of such wares, see Majewski and O'Brien Reference Majewski and O'Brien1987). An abundance of undecorated and selected decorated whiteware, largely from hollow vessels such as bowls and chamber pots, appears in the imported ceramic assemblage recovered on the island. Of the 1,450 sherds of imported ceramics, 576 (or roughly 40%) were identified as belonging to whiteware vessels. During analysis, a slight cream/bluish hue to undecorated wares suggested they may be creamware or whiteware. However, closer examination of decoration, vessel shape, and vessel function instead indicated the transitional variety of whiteware produced in the early decades of the nineteenth century (Chenoweth and Farahani Reference Chenoweth and Farahani2015; Greer et al. Reference Greer, MacDonald and Stalla2021:2–3). Two base sherds from undecorated plates include a maker's marks of “DAVENPORT” with an anchor, likely dating from 1815 to 1835 (Figure 5). Dr. Lindsay Bloch (Tempered Archaeology Consultants) led analysis efforts in the summer of 2023. When utilizing a ceramic production range of 1815–1850 for this early whiteware, the entire ceramic assemblage from Providence Island carries a Mean Ceramic Date of 1826.516, strikingly close to 1822. This perhaps suggests that vessels were transported by Back-to-Africa settlers eager to establish a routine of day-to-day civility. As discussed below, however, alternative interpretations exist.

Figure 5.

Three whiteware bases of plates excavated from salvage trenches underneath the fallen cotton tree. The two on the right feature the molded Davenport maker's mark with an anchor. These vessels, along with many others, date to the period surrounding the 1822 settlement of Providence Island by Black Americans sponsored by the American Colonization Society. (Photograph by Matthew C. Reilly.) (Color online)

Stoneware jugs from Germany and schnapps glass bottles from the Netherlands provide evidence for early trading partnerships that proved crucial to the subsequent nineteenth-century Liberian economy, especially as foreign debt mounted and threats of invasion from neighboring French and English colonies pushed Liberian elites to prioritize domestic economic growth. In total, 95 sherds or nearly complete vessels of German stoneware were recovered, representing roughly 6.5% of the total imported ceramic assemblage. Two larger sherds of German stoneware mineral water bottles include maker's marks reading “Ober-Selter/Nassau” and “HEILBRUNNEN/TONNISSTEINb.BROKL A/Rh” (Figure 6). The Nassau bottle, produced in the western German province of Hesse, dates to the latter half of the nineteenth century, when they were first exported beyond Germany and England (Lockhart Reference Lockhart2010:97). The abundance of mineral water jugs may also reflect the challenges arriving settlers faced in acquiring clean drinking water. Settlers passed away in large numbers due to malaria and yellow fever, but other water-borne illnesses posed a major threat. These bottles were excavated roughly 100 m from a historic well on the island, which Providence Island staff and historians describe as being dug by the first Black American settlers who arrived in 1822. Accessible and clean water was clearly of the utmost importance in the early years of the colony.

Figure 6.

German mineral water/soda stoneware bottles dating to the second half of the nineteenth century. Each of these vessels was recovered from beneath the base of the fallen cotton tree on Providence Island in May 2019. (Photograph by Matthew C. Reilly.) (Color online)

Based on the analysis of these imported goods, the archaeological record of Providence Island reflects the founding myths of the Liberian nation that herald long-standing cultural and diplomatic ties with the United States. Such ties extend beyond the vectors of diaspora and settlement to the domain of freedom making. For many settlers, Liberian sovereignty meant the formal establishment of the three Cs: commerce, Christianity, and civilization on the West African coast (Everill Reference Everill2013; Mosher Reference Mosher2018). The surplus of trade items could be interpreted as Liberia's arrival on the scene of global capitalism. As a heritage site, this narrative is often privileged—demarcating Liberia's Plymouth-Rock-like origin story and a shining example of Black aristocracy against a backdrop of Indigenous Africans who would soon be brought under the domain of the state and Western norms of daily life. In this regard, the plethora of imported artifacts is significant.

On the other side of the Atlantic, historical archaeologists have long explored the process of settler colonialism, the emergence of American capitalism, and a unique possessive individualism that took root in the fledgling nation, including with regard to consumption under racial capitalism (e.g., Barton Reference Barton2022; Leone Reference Leone2005; Matthews Reference Matthews2010; Mullins Reference Mullins1999). The assemblage recovered from Providence Island warrants similar consideration, especially given what is known from the historical record regarding the mindset of settlers and the civilizing mission that many espoused. This use of objects to develop politics of respectability is a central component of nineteenth-century Liberian nation building, which is intimately entangled within preexisting Black emancipation struggles. It is not, however, the only story. Commingled with the detritus of this civilizing mission, which has so deeply affected the production of Liberian history, are material signatures of Liberian pasts that do not align neatly with this settler-centric narrative.

Providence Island beyond 1822

Much of the material culture unearthed on Providence Island reflects broader trading patterns across the Atlantic World. Historical accounts dating to the seventeenth century confirm the passing of Dutch, Portuguese, and, later, English traders. Reports and impressions of passing traders (see Burrowes Reference Burrowes2016) make clear that the 1822 arrival of Black American Back-to-Africa migrants was only possible due to the preexisting relationships between Indigenous populations and the outside, circum-Atlantic World. As mentioned above, Providence Island was utilized prior to 1822 for the purposes of trade, including the trade of human beings. It is certainly plausible that some of the whiteware discussed earlier had been handled by previous inhabitants such as Mr. Jump or Mr. Smalley. Indeed, the initial treaty that ceded Cape Mesurado, a stone's throw away from Providence Island, to the American Colonization Society indicates an Indigenous population well versed in the material worlds of a globalizing economy. There is a remarkable overlap between the materials listed in the Cape Mesurado treaty (previously mentioned) and the archaeological record emerging from Providence Island. BAHA excavations at the site have recovered plates, bowls, tobacco smoking pipes, gun flints, metal utensils, cooking vessels, beads, alcohol bottles, and glass tableware.

For disturbed contexts such as the root matting below the fallen cotton tree, it is difficult—if not impossible—to reliably associate specific items with manufacturing dates in the early decades of the nineteenth century with arriving settlers or Indigenous peoples who actively used the island prior to 1822. Importantly, disturbed layers of soil mixed beneath the cotton tree's root matting revealed select examples of locally made ceramic vessels. For our Liberian colleagues, the presence of locally made earthenware was the necessary tangible evidence to mark Providence Island as not only the site of settlement but also—perhaps more importantly—an Indigenous space. Initial excavations of intact deposits during our 2022 field seasons revealed distinct stratigraphic layers representing more direct and extensive Indigenous use. These layers were uncovered below Atlantic-era materials, indicating that they predate 1822 and earlier years of trade with Europeans.

Unlike other regions in West Africa (see, for example, Gijanto Reference Gijanto2011; Hauser and DeCorse Reference Hauser and DeCorse2003; Monroe and Janzen Reference Monroe and Janzen2014; Ogundiran Reference Ogundiran2001; Ogundiran and Saunders Reference Ogundiran and Saunders2011; Pizarro et al. Reference Pizarro, Sáenz-González, Rodríguez-Tecedor and González-Sáiz2012; Stahl et al. Reference Stahl, das Dores Cruz, Neff, Glascock, Speakman, Giles and Smith2008), only preliminary ceramic typologies exist for Liberia (Corkran Reference Corkran1973; Orr Reference Orr1971–1972), meaning that we are unable to conclusively associate the production, use, or discard of these poorly understood wares with any specific Liberian communities. For example, Kenneth Orr served as a community development advisor to the government of Liberia from 1960 to 1965. During this time, his archaeological training inspired the collection of ceramic sherds from various disturbed archaeological contexts as he traveled the Liberian countryside (Orr Reference Orr1971–1972). His notes indicate surface collection finds from muddy roadsides and construction fill. He also amassed a select ethnographic collection of ceramic vessels. Preliminary analysis indicates a diversity of clay sources, vessel shapes, and decoration, suggesting that ceramic vessels were likely being traded across the West African region that would become Liberia (Orr Reference Orr1971–1972). Importantly, in speaking with local residents at specific sites, Orr (Reference Orr1971–1972) documented that some of the former occupation sites had only recently been abandoned, indicating the persistence of local ceramic production and use well into the twentieth century. Based on our own ethnographic research or oral tradition recovery associated with the BAHA project, it is evident that ceramic production has largely ceased in most regions of the country.

For the assemblage collected from discrete archaeological contexts on Providence Island, ongoing thermoluminescence analyses on ceramic samples and associated soils will provide a temporal range for these deposits, productively expanding the chronology of Providence Island and potentially revealing where these ceramics—vessels that are locally referred to as “Country Pots”—were produced. Although the specific function of some vessels remains unclear, some of the smaller vessels may have been used for ceremonial or healing purposes. Smaller vessels such as the one pictured in Figure 7 were identified by BAHA team members and National Museum of Liberia staff as being used for traditional medicines and for certain rituals associated with the Poro or Sande, giving further credence to the former use of the island for secret society activities.

Figure 7.

Cross-mended rim sherds of a small, hollowware vessel. These vessels were locally made, although it is unclear when they were produced. These sherds were found alongside imported ceramics at the base of the fallen cotton tree on Providence Island in May 2022. (Photograph by Matthew C. Reilly.) (Color online)

The archaeology of Providence Island provides material evidence of active use well beyond the confines of the 1822 episode of settlement. Importantly, these multiple pasts are not neatly bifurcated into pre-1822 Indigenous use and post-1822 settler activities. Instead, imported goods and locally made materials permeate the temporal divide, suggesting that the settler-Indigenous binary may not be entirely useful in understanding the complex pasts of this space. Like other regions of the West African coast at this time, change and continuity were ongoing and overlapping processes (DeCorse Reference DeCorse1992), but the prioritization of some of those processes over others in how the past is remembered is particularly important in the post-conflict Liberian present. The excavated deposits associated with pre-1822 Indigenous site use were deeply meaningful to Liberian team members, including former students at the University of Liberia, groundskeepers at Providence Island, and staff at the National Museum. Although our team members acknowledge the importance of Providence Island as it relates to the 1822 formation of the colony and later nation, many felt that the discovery of Indigenous materials opened the potential for new narratives that uplift previously silenced Indigenous histories and perspectives of the past. We believe that such narratives will be consequential in future articulations of Liberian heritage at the site and within cultural and educational institutions across the nation.

Liberian Heritage and the Long Emancipation

Heritage, as the BAHA team approaches it in Liberia, encompasses everything from material objects (such as artifacts), landscapes, buildings, and monuments to intangible beliefs, customs, and traditions that help mediate our relationship to the past. Stories about these are a large part of how groups—as small as individual families or as large as entire nations—define themselves as a people in the present. Providence Island was added to the tentative list of UNESCO World Heritage sites in 2017. The justification of outstanding universal value highlights the site's significance as the birthplace of the Liberian nation-state as well as a reversal of the “point of no return.” Listed under selection criterion four of the World Heritage Convention (UNESCO 2017, 2021), the following description positions Providence Island as “an outstanding example of a type of building, architectural or technological ensemble or landscape which illustrates (a) significant stage(s) in human history”:

Reanimated by recent bicentennial celebrations, these triumphant accounts represent a teleological approach to the project of Black sovereignty in which the creation of an independent state constitutes a meaningful corrective to the (globally) entrenched problem of Black unfreedom. Since racial equality was impossible to attain in New World societies that prospered from the commodification of people of African descent, proponents of the Back-to-Africa Movement—such as Reverend Alexander Crummell (Reference Crummell1861), an early settler—advocated for a return to the “Fatherland” as the only way to reclaim a sense of self lost to the dehumanizing experience of slavery. Liberia was envisioned as a Pan-African haven where free people of color could become masters over their own destinies. Ongoing tensions between Native and Americo-Liberians, which contributed to the Civil War, exposed the limits of Black nationalist approaches to freedom making, however. The figure of the “freed slave”—a curious phrase often repeated by tour guides, caretaker staff, and visitors on Providence Island—may function as a narrative device that communicates arriving settlers’ ascendance from a previously diminished status in the Americas. In the present post-conflict context, it is also indicative of a struggle for Black sovereignty that is very much still in process. As Walcott (Reference Walcott2021:106) cautions, there is a “substantive difference between the legislative nature of emancipation and the problem of a freedom that is yet to come.”

Although Providence Island in the year 1822 represents a catalytic place/moment in Black Atlantic history, there is much that remains unsaid about Indigenous African life beyond the confines of this encounter. It is likely that Providence Island was part of long-distance exchange networks prior to the colonial period; however, focusing solely on trade and early commerce diminishes the importance of other uses of the space. Oral history and ethnography offer additional examples of site use that are significant to nonsettler populations. During one such interview, Momulu K. Passaway (Reference Passaway2022), long-time groundskeeper at Providence Island, describes how he used to perform at the site as a member of the Liberian Cultural Ambassadors Dance Troupe before the war. “During the ’80s, every day, programs were here, generating funds. But now the Island is nothing like that. . . . The way it was looking during those days, people come, they stayed here all day, and enjoyed.”

As Michel-Rolph Trouillot (Reference Trouillot2015) argues throughout Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History, creating historical knowledge is never a neutral or objective endeavor: “Inequalities experienced by the actors lead to uneven historical power in the inscription of traces” (Reference Trouillot2015:48). The BAHA project is addressing this uneven historical power by training University of Liberia and Cuttington University graduates in archaeological research methods that will enable Liberians to lead future excavations and knowledge production. After a 50-year gap of archaeology in the country, the first trained Liberian archaeologists are recognizing how it can be a tool for generating a more inclusive sense of Liberian belonging and claims to heritage. One of the members of our team, Abraham Fokoe (personal communication 2022), remarked: “This project is not actually the BAHA project. It's Liberia's project. It's our own project. It's my own history, and contributing to it is very important. I want it to be in history that in 2022, Abraham Fokoe worked and dug to make Liberian history straight.”

Although further study is needed to make the artifacts uncovered on Providence Island speak, BAHA's focus on materiality, oral history, and community-based research can help address archival silences with respect to Liberian history and heritage beyond 1822. In that spirit, the BAHA team curated a new exhibition on our work at the National Museum of Liberia (see Clayeh Reference Clayeh2022). Cases include artifacts excavated by the team, the museum's first collection with provenance since mass looting during the Civil War. Additionally, text written by Liberians emphasizes that this is a project by and for Liberians to develop a sense of national heritage on their own terms and in their own words—just a few years after a Liberian newspaper noted that cultural heritage was in the midst of an “extinction crisis” (Dopoe Reference Dopoe2018). The bicentennial was an important moment for Liberians to reflect on their nation's founding; however, more inclusive narratives of the Liberian past can highlight the unresolved nature of the project of emancipation and make it an attainable goal.