Photo courtesy of Jordan Davis
The October speaker is
Jordan Davis, M.A.
PhD Candidate, Department of Anthropology, University of Texas at Austin
presenting:
The Kincheonville Archaeological and Heritage Landscape Project (KAHLP)
Between 1865 and 1930, formerly enslaved African Americans and their descendants founded over 500 freedom colonies in Texas. This presentation will discuss the preliminary results of ongoing investigations at Kincheonville – a rural and multi-racial freedom community founded in what is now south Austin, Travis County, shortly after Emancipation. Although much of Kincheonville's rural landscape has been transformed by development and the rewilding of agricultural lands into public green space, traces of the community's former agrarian landscape persist today. After discussing efforts to identify the diverse set of Black, White, and Mexican descendant families who created and lived in Kincheonville during the 19th and early 20th century, the presentation will turn to our ongoing archaeological investigations at Stephenson Nature Preserve & Outdoor Education Center, a 147-acre natural area owned and managed by the Austin Parks and Recreation Department which shares a property boundary with one of Kincheonville's historically Black churches. While our research has drawn increasing attention to many of the challenges involved in documenting, preserving, and interpreting cultural heritage in a re-naturalized space, exploring Kincheonville 's landscape has also provided a critical opportunity to better understand the environmental afterlives of slavery in Texas.
Jordan E. Davis (M.A.) is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Texas at Austin working at the intersections of Historical, African Diaspora, and Black Feminist Archaeology. Before beginning his doctoral studies, Jordan received his M.A. in Anthropology from the University of South Carolina and has conducted fieldwork on African Diasporan sites in the Caribbean, West Africa, and the United States. With support from the Texas Historical Commission and the Austin Parks and Recreation Department, Jordan is currently directing the Kincheonville Archaeological and Heritage Landscape Project (KAHLP), a multidisciplinary archival, oral historical, geospatial, and archaeological investigation of the rural freedom community of Kincheonville in what is now south Austin, Travis County, Texas. In addition to his doctoral studies, Jordan is a former elected official and active member of the Society of Black Archaeologists (SBA).
The next regular meeting will be held on our usual schedule, the third Tuesday of the month at 7pm at Casa Chapala's Austin location, 9041 Research Blvd., Suite 100 (Hwy 183 and Burnet Rd.) Meetings are held on the third Tuesday of each month, except June and December. They are free and open to the public. For those who wish to come early, we gather around 5:45 PM for dinner, drinks, and fellowship. The short business meeting starts at 7:00 PM, followed by the guest speaker's presentation.
Tuesdays 10am, ongoing Labwork for Joyful Horse materials. Sort and label pre-contact artifacts (lots of lithics!) to create teaching kits available for loan to area educators. THC Wheless Lab, 2801 Wheless Lane, Austin 78723. Send us a message from the Contact page for more details or to RSVP.
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Wondering what our programs are like? View the list of speakers and topics we've had since 2006. Or watch a few of our pandemic-era programs on our YouTube channel.
