Integrating Segregated Urban Landscapes of the Late-Nineteenth and Early-Twentieth Centuries

The period of legal segregation in the United States is characterized in modern thought as a system of racial separation prevalent in the South around the first half of the 20th century. Separation implies a spatiality that seems to lend itself to a landscape study. In problematizing such a study, it becomes clear that the spatial signs of segregation are markers in a complex system of identity building and maintenance relationships. The association of identity politics with cultural landscape analysis provides a picture of segregation that pushes beyond the bounds of African American neighborhood or residential sites. Examining three turn-of-the-20th-century sites in Annapolis, Maryland, provides an example of how archaeology, in examining urban contexts, has a role in how this period of segregation is perceived.