Book Review: Race and Affluence: An Archaeology of African America and Consumer Culture (Contributions to Global historical Archaeology) by Paul R. Mullins, 1999, Kluwer/Plenum Academic Publishers, New York. 217 pages, $59.95 (cloth)

Franklin, Maria

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Northeast Historical ArchaeologyVolume 28 Article 111999Book Review: Race and Affluence: AnArchaeology of African America and ConsumerCulture (Contributions to Global historicalArchaeology) by Paul R. MullinsMaria FranklinFollow this and additional works at: http://orb.binghamton.edu/nehaPart of the Archaeological Anthropology CommonsThis Book Review is brought to you for free and open access by The Open Repository @ Binghamton (The ORB). It has been accepted for inclusion inNortheast Historical Archaeology by an authorized editor of The Open Repository @ Binghamton (The ORB). For more information, please contactORB@binghamton.edu.Recommended CitationFranklin, Maria (1999) "Book Review: Race and Affluence: An Archaeology of African America and Consumer Culture(Contributions to Global historical Archaeology) by Paul R. Mullins," Northeast Historical Archaeology: Vol. 28 28, Article 11.https://doi.org/10.22191/neha/vol28/iss1/11 Available at: http://orb.binghamton.edu/neha/vol28/iss1/11for Culture's Clutter. Academic Press, New York. Murtagh, William J. 1977 Keeping Time: The History and Theory of Preservation in America. Rev. ed. John Wiley and Sons, New York. Pugh-Smith, John, and John Samuels 1996 Archaeology in Law. Sweet & Maxwell, London. Stipe, Robert E., and Antoinette J. Lee., eds. 1987 The American Mosaic: Preserving a Nation's Heritage. US Committee of the Interna-tional Council on Monuments and Sites. The Preservation Press, Washington, DC. Symonds, James 1995 Home Thoughts from Abroad: Some Observations on Contract Archaeology in England. Northeast Historical Archaeology 24:1-8. As Executive Director of ARCUS (the Archaeo-logical Research & Consultancy at the Univer-sity of Sheffield), Symonds oversees numerous archaeological consulting projects annually at diverse locales in the UK. Symonds lectures at the University of Sheffield in professional archaeology, heritage management, and his-torical archaeology 3!1d is a Research Fellow in the Department of Archaeology at Boston Uni-versity. His current research involves investi-gating the development of crafting culture in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland and the mate-rial effects of the Highland Clearances and emigration of Scots to Canada. James Symonds ARCUS (Archaeological Research & Consul-tancy at the University of Sheffield) Department of Archaeology & Prehistory University of Sheffield West Court 2 Mappin Street Sheffield S14DT UK J.Symonds@sheffield.ac.uk Northeast Historical ArchaeologyNol. 28, 1999 111 RACE AND AFFLUENCE: AN ARCHAEOLOGY OF AFRICAN AMERICA AND CONSUMER CULTURE (CONTRIBUTIONS TO GLOBAL HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY), by Paul R. Mullins 1999, Kluwer/Plenum Academic Publishers, New York. 217 pages, $59.95 (cloth). Reviewed by Maria Franklin Paul Mullins is the leading scholar on African-American consumerism and the mate-rial symbolism of bric-a-brac amongst histor-ical archaeologists. He is also one of a small number of historical archaeologists who grounds their research explicitly in the analysis of race and racism.· It should there-fore come as no surprise that his first book provides a definitive statement on the relation between race and materialism, and the signifi-cant role that consumer culture played within black Annapolitan society from 1850 to 1930. One of Mullins's main theses is 'that through consumerism, blacks were variously able to contest imposed racial subjectivities. More-over, despite white racism, blacks viewed con-sumer culture as a strategic means to poten-tially stake a claim on American citizenship, with all the rights and privileges that came with such a status. Throughout the book, Mullins effectively demonstrates how black Annapolitans, as a group and as individuals, both negotiated their identities and social posi-tions through material symbolism and chal-lenged societal inequalities through their con-sumption practices. In Race and Affluence: An Archaeology of African America and Consumer Culture, Mullins presents complex questions and arguments framed within a clearly articulated theoretical position that.reaches beyond the simplistic consumer studies that view material culture as a reflection of identity, or which focus on func-tion or price (as an indicator of status) in the analysis. He also refrains from homogenizing African Americans, indicating that people enacted diverse political strategies and cul-tural and consumer practices for different rea-sons and to achieve varying ends. While arguing persuasively that material consump-tion could and often did enable blacks to oppose white racism and redefine themselves 112 Book Reviews according to their own dictates, Mullins cau-tions that consumerism did not translate to all-out resistance. After all, through purchasing commodities African Americans were essen-tially supporting and working within the system, not destroying it from the outside. In eight concisely-written chapters, Mullins care-fully constructs a narrative of black life in Annapolis, revealing the desires, actions, and experiences culled from archaeological and historical sources which spoke to their resolve and resiliency in attempting to claim better and more meaningful lives for themselves. From the start, the reader becomes aware that he or she is about to embark on a thought-provoking read. In Chapter 2 Mullins goes to great lengths to define his use of the concepts of consumption and material symbolism. He states that "consumption should be viewed as a process that attempts to mediate social con-tradictions and express social and personal desires" (p. 21). Thus, consumption is a "social negotiation focused on desire" (ibid.). As an example, Mullins considers campaign-related objects excavated from the Maynard-Burgess house yard. The possession of these artifacts by a black family did not necessarily reflect their support of partisan politics, but a central desire amongst black Annapolitans to attain citizenship. Their consumption of cam-paign paraphernalia spoke to these aspira-tions, and allowed them to negotiate the social contradiction of being free from bondage, but still unable to vote because of their race (p. 24). As Mullins puts it: "This politicization of con-sumption places desire and the negotiation of social contradiction at the heart of consump-tion, rather than the satisfaction of material need" (p. 24). It is through material sym-bolism that these desires and negotiations are realized. Mullins further explores black mate-rial symbolism in the next chapter. In Chapter 3, Mullins discusses white con-sumer space and how it was structured to negate blacks' symbolic and physical access to consumer goods through racist advertise-ments, arrests of black window shoppers, and other means. He also addresses how blacks responded to white symbolism through con-sumerism by transforming the meaning and use of consumer goods intended for exclu-sively white racial cultural practices. Mullins turns to African-American medicinal practices as an example, using mass-produced patent medicine bottles discovered at the Maynard-Burgess house as evidence. Mullins argues that although black Annapolitans clearly relied on mass-produced antidotes, it did not necessarily follow that they fully participated in white healthcare practices. Nor did this mean that blacks only used patent medicines in African-influenced healing traditions passed down through generations. Mullins states, "African American material symbolism constantly mediates the contradictions between cultural traditions, structural rela-tions, and innovation" (p. 51). Embedding his interpretation of the use of patent medicines within racialized power relations, Mullins rea-sons that African Americans reconfigured their use within the context of alternative, African-American beliefs regarding wellness and the relationship between body and spirit, and the black medicinal practices sustained by these beliefs. In doing so, they demonstrated self-determination in participating in and transforming black healthcare despite the den-igration of black healing practices common amongst whites at that time. Mullins is quick to point out, however, that the use of patent medicines suggests that the white medical system still had a definite impact on black medicinal practices. With Chapter 5, Mullins tackles the issue of moralizing labor and consumption prac-tices, a process driven by the perceptions of racial difference. In the section that deals specifically with archaeological evidence, Mullins explores how "the racialized moral critique of consumption patterns" by whites critically impacted those patterns amongst black Annapolitans as they sought to establish themselves as "genteel consumers" (p. 118). Historical sources indicate that fishing and fish consumption became stigmatized as whites criticized this largely African-American subsistence and marketing strategy as "the archetypal diversion of lazy and content Black people" (p. 118). By studying the fish remains from the Maynard-Burgess house and com-paring these with other Annapolis fish assem-blages, he found that fish, once a significant portion of household diet, declined in con-sumption amongst black Annapolitans after 1870. Mullins argues that this dietary shift was one way in which African Americans who aspired to gentility struggled to attain the status and privileges of whites presumed to be exclusive to them. In the end, Mullins argues that by partici-pating in consumer culture blacks weren't attempting to emulate whites, but were instead seeking self-determination and the subjugation of racism. As the tactics to do so varied, so too did the potential to dismantle structural inequalities. Mullins makes it clear that it was never simply a matter of black "resistance" to white dominance. In fact, a number of consumption practices. empowered black Annapolitans, while at the same time served to undermine their efforts to combat imposed racial subjectivities and racial oppres-sion. He succeeds in presenting the complexi-ties of lived experiences, underscoring the need for more archaeological scholarship to consider how individuals were able to influ-ence larger societal change through localized political action. Mullins's book is richly historical, and dili-gently researched. Some readers may bemoan the fact that the archaeological evidence does not play as central a role as the historical record here. This reader did not, for this book delivers on a number of important points. One is that Mullins successfully manages to soundly critique some of historical archaeolo-gy's most flawed theoretical baggage by showing us a far more productive and mean-ingful way to approach consumerism and material culture. More importantly, Mullins has demonstrated how archaeological and eth-nohistorical scholarship can help to demystify the social construction of race and the role of racial ideology in American society. Maria Franklin holds joint appointments in the Department of Anthropology and the Center for African and African-American Studies at the University of Texas-Austin. She is also a Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Archaeological Research with The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Virginia. Her cur-Northeast Historical Archaeology/Vol. 28, 1999 113 rent book project considers the intersection of race, gender, and culture in the emergence and transformation of Afro-Virginian identity during the 18th century. Maria Franklin Department of Anthropology E.P.S. 1.130 University of Texas Austin, TX 78712-1086 mfranklin@mail.utexas.edu HIDDEN LIVES: THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF SLAVE LIFE AT THOMAS }EFFERSON'S POPLAR FOREST, by Barbara J. Heath 1999, University Press of Virginia, Charlottesville. 81 pages, ill us., $12.50 (paper). Poplar Forest was one of Thomas Jeffer-son's secondary holdings in central Virginia, located in Bedford County approximately 90 miles southwest of his main seat at Monticello, near Charlottesville. Throughout the heart of his active public life he grew tobacco and, later, com on the property, making use of the labor of 50 or so African-Americans enslaved by him at the site. In 1806, looking toward his retirement years, he designed and began con-struction of a fine brick mansion on the prop-erty. The house was intended for use as a country retreat or vacation home for himself when, for whatever reason, he needed a respite from Monticello. The property is now a private museum dedicated to presenting Jef-ferson's years of ownership and occasional residence. The museum's administration has made use of archaeology as a tool of research, preservation, and interpretation since 1989. The author of Hidden Lives, Barbara Heath, has had a long commitment to the archaeology of slave life in Virginia. In her decade or so of service as the Director of Archaeology at Poplar Forest, she has developed a strong pro-gram of research and public presentation of her results. Her success is especially admirable given that this is a fairly small and certainly out-of-the-way site, where funding concerns have no doubt always been a large part of the struggle. Heath and other members of her 

Book Review: Race and Affluence: An Archaeology of African America and Consumer Culture (Contributions to Global historical Archaeology) by Paul R. Mullins

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Book Review: Race and Affluence: An Archaeology of African America and Consumer Culture (Contributions to Global historical Archaeology) by Paul R. Mullins

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