Barbara J. Heath

Barbara J. Heath (born 1960) is a professor in the Department of Anthropology at The University of Tennessee, Knoxville who specializes in historical archaeology of eastern North America and the Caribbean. Her research and teaching focus on the archaeology of the African diaspora, colonialism, historic landscapes, material culture, public archaeology and interpretation, and Thomas Jefferson.

Background

Heath was born in Norwood, Massachusetts in 1960. She received her Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology and Spanish from the College of William and Mary in 1982, and her MA (1983) and Ph.D. (1988) in American Civilization from the University of Pennsylvania. Her dissertation research focused on low-fired, hand-built coarse earthenwares made historically by people of African descent in the Caribbean, and is entitled Afro-Caribbean Ware: A Study of Ethnicity on St. Eustatius. Heath has conducted fieldwork in Virginia, Tennessee, and in the Lesser Antilles.

Employment history

Heath is currently an associate professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Tennessee, where she has worked since 2006. Previously, she directed the archaeology program at Thomas Jefferson’s Poplar Forest (1992-2006), and worked as an archaeologist Monticello (1988-1991), the James River Institute for Archaeology(1987-1988), the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation (1985-1986), and the College of William and Mary (1983-1986).

Key excavations

Heath has led or participated in a numerous research projects, including current work at Indian Camp and at Coan Hall in Virginia, at Poplar Forest,[1][2][3] Monticello,[4] Colonial Williamsburg, and Jordan's Point. In the Caribbean she has worked at Little Bay on Montserrat; as a member of the St. Kitts-Nevis Digital Archaeology Initiative; and on a variety of colonial sites on St. Eustatius, Netherlands Antilles.[5]

Research emphases

Heath is an anthropological archaeologist specializing in historical archaeology. Her research examines institutionalized slavery and racism in the Middle Atlantic, American South and Caribbean, and colonial frontier interactions in the Middle Atlantic, during the recent past (1600-1900).[6] She examines how people, free and enslaved, created and used material culture—buildings, designed and vernacular landscapes, and handcrafted and mass-produced consumer goods—to promote and strengthen systems of inequality or to survive, challenge and reshape them.[7] Her interests extend to the dynamics of exchange, whether through formalized relationships recorded in store accounts, or barter and trade.[8] Currently, she is researching three areas: the production, exchange and use of pottery made by enslaved and free women of African descent in the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries in the Leeward Islands;[9] the enslaved communities of Thomas Jefferson in piedmont Virginia;[10] and the origins of slavery in the seventeenth-century Potomac River valley.[11]

Selected books and monographs

Selected articles

References

  1. Jefferson’s Poplar Forest: Unearthing a Virginia Plantation. (Barbara J. Heath and Jack Gary, editors). 2012.University Press of Florida, Gainesville, pp. 9-12.
  2. Heath, Barbara J., 1999. Hidden Lives: The Archaeology of Slave Life at Thomas Jefferson’s Poplar Forest.The University Press of Virginia, Charlottesville.
  3. Heath, Barbara J. 2010. Space and Place within Plantation Quarters in Virginia, 1700-1825. In Cabin, Quarter, Plantation: Architecture and Landscapes of North American Slavery, edited by Clifton Ellis and Rebecca Ginsburg, pp. 156-176. Yale University Press.
  4. Heath, Barbara J. 1999. “Your Humble Servant”: Free Artisans in the Monticello Community. In I, too, am America: Archaeological Studies of African-American Life, edited by Theresa A. Singleton, pp. 193–217. University Press of Virginia, Charlottesville.
  5. Heath, Barbara J. 1999. Yabbas, Monkeys, Jugs and Jars: Local Pottery Production and Its Meaning. In African Sites: Archaeology in the Caribbean, edited by Jay B. Haviser, pp. 196-220. Markus Wiener Publishers, Princeton, New Jersey.
  6. Assessing Variability among Quartering Sites in Virginia. (Heath, Barbara J. and Eleanor Breen). 2012. Northeast Historical Archaeology 38:1-28 (2009).
  7. Heath, Barbara J. 1999. Buttons, Beads and Buckles: Self-Definition within the Bounds of Slavery. In Historical Archaeology, Identity Formation and the Interpretation of Ethnicity, edited by Maria Franklin and Garrett R. Fesler, pp. 47-69. Colonial Williamsburg Research Publications, Dietz Press, Richmond.
  8. Heath, Barbara J. 2004. Engendering Choice: Slavery and Consumerism in Central Virginia. In Engendering African American Archaeology, edited by Amy Young and Jillian Galle, pp. 19-38. University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville.
  9. Heath, Barbara J. 1999. Yabbas, Monkeys, Jugs and Jars: Local Pottery Production and Its Meaning. In African Sites: Archaeology in the Caribbean, edited by Jay B. Haviser, pp. 196-220. Markus Wiener Publishers, Princeton, New Jersey.
  10. Heath, Barbara J. 2012. Slave Housing, Household Formation and Community Dynamics at Poplar Forest, 1760s-1810s. In Jefferson's Poplar Forest: Unearthing a Virginia Plantation, edited by Barbara J. Heath and Jack Gary, pp. 105-128. University Press of Florida, Gainesville.
  11. Heath, Barbara J. and Eleanor Breen. 2012. Assessing Variability among Quartering Sites in Virginia. Northeast Historical Archaeology 38:1-28 (2009).

External links

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Saturday, December 05, 2015. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.