Entangled roots. Heritage and identity in the African ‘mesa-diasporas’: community case studies for the 2020s

Abstract

The archaeology and heritage of the African Atlantic diaspora is a topic that has been extensively covered in academic literature. The experience of enslaved and freed Africans in the Americas (primarily) has been well studied through examination of plantation villages, urban settings, burial sites and freed communities. It is a mistake, however, to see this framework as an overarching and monolithic ‘meta-diaspora’, for within this process of forced and violent migration a more nuanced picture emerges of many hidden heritages, movements and re-movements of diasporic communities in the late colonial and post-colonial periods. We argue that the hidden heritages of these ‘mesa- (meaning inside) diasporas’ demands attention. Drawing upon primary, diasporic-focused community heritage work, this paper considers two distinctive case studies: the intra-American context (the Garifuna ‘Black Carib’ communities of St Vincent, Belize and New York) and returned African communities in West Africa (the Krio of Sierra Leone). These two case studies have much to offer in terms of thinking through the survival and remaking of African diasporic identities and emphasising the role of heritage-focused community tourism in the post-Covid world of the 2020s.