TIME, DATE, PLACE: 5:00 p.m., Thursday, Dec. 3, Hawkins-Carlson Reading Room, Rush Rhees Library, University of Rochester River Campus.
WHAT: Syracuse University anthropologist Christopher R. DeCorse will present “Slave Castles and Forts of West Africa: West Africa, Europeans, and the Atlantic World.”
ABOUT: Commercial forts known as “slave castles” on the West African coast were the trade centers of the Atlantic World. For more than four centuries the Atlantic trade, which included slaves, led to dramatic societal changes in Africa and the Americas.
DeCorse will discuss the influence of Africans within the Atlantic World, and how trade affected and transformed West African societies. He will also explain how archaeology has shown that African cultures were both transformed and maintained throughout the Atlantic World.
WHO: Christopher R. DeCorse is professor and past chair of the Department of Anthropology in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University.
DeCourse has written a number of books on African archaeology including: An Archaeology of Elmina: Africans and Europeans on the Gold Coast, 1400-1900 (Smithsonian Press, 2001), and West Africa during the Atlantic Slave Trade (Continuum Press, 2001). DeCorse’s textbooks include the four-field book Anthropology: A Global Perspective (Pearson, 2016); Anthropology: The Basics (Pearson, 2016).
ADMISSION: The talk is free and open to the public.
SPONSORS: The University of Rochester’s Program of Archaeology, Technology, and Historical Structures, Frederick Douglass Institute, and the Department of Anthropology.
FOR MORE INFORMATION: Contact Prof. Renato Perucchio, director of the Program of Archaeology, Technology, and Historical Structures at (585) 275-4069.
