at The University of Southern Mississippi

Dr. Amy Young is a historical archaeologist interested in African-American archaeology on sites dating from slavery into freedom. She has worked at a variety of sites in Tennessee, Kentuckey, Alabama, and Mississippi. In 1997 students in the USM summer field school conducted test excavations under her direction at a variety of locations at Old Augusta including the old courthouse where slaves were said to have been auctioned; slave quarter sites at McCallum farm, and at the location of slave houses at Saragossa Plantation near Natchez, Mississippi. With the help of USM student volunteers she led test excavations in Mound Bayou, the first all-black incorporated town in Mississippi founded by former slaves Isaiah T. Montgomery and Benjamin Green. In 1998 the USM summer field school began testing in the location of slave houses at Mount Locust Plantation on the Natchez Trace in Jefferson Co., Mississippi and returned to one of the slave house locations at Saragossa. In 2000 she returned to Mount Locust with the USM summer field school and uncovered a small root cellar beneath one of the slave houses at Mount Locust. In 2002, the USM summer field school focused on testing two post-bellum homes of African-American midwifes. In 2004 the Southern Miss field school excavated at the Oaks, and 1850s urban farmstead in Jackson, Mississippi.

Dr. Young is faculty advisor for the Southern Skeptic Society.

Screening during excavations at Saragossa Plantation

Recent publications

Amy Young

2007 My Old Kentucky Home: The Effect of the Interstate Slave Trade on Families and Communities in Kentucky. Manuscript to submitted to The Kentucky Register.

2006 Modernization in Mound Bayou, Mississippi, 1887-1940. Manuscript submitted to Southeastern Archaeology. (currently under review)

2005 Sad Song in the Delta: The Potential for Historical Archaeology in the I69 Corridor. Submitted to Time’s River edited by Evan Peacock and Janet Rafferty (coming in 2008).

2004 Risk and Women’s Roles in the Slave Family: Data from Oxmoor and Locust Grove Plantations in Kentucky. In Engendering African American Archaeology: A Southern Perspective, edited by Jillian E. Galle and Amy L. Young, pp. 133-150. University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville.

2004 The Beginning and Future of African-American Archaeology in Mississippi. In Transcending Boundaries, Transforming the Discipline: African Diaspora Archaeology into the New Millenium, edited by Larry McKee and Maria Franklin, Historical Archaeology 38(1)66-78.

2003 Gender and Landscape: A View from the Plantation Slave Community. In Shared Spaces and Divided Places: Exploring the Material and Spatial Dimensions of Gender Relations and the American Historical Landscape, edited by Deborah L. Rotman and Ellen-Rose Savulis, pp. 103-134. University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville.

Young, Amy L., Michael Tuma, and Cliff Jenkins
2001 The Role of Hunting to Cope with Risk at Saragossa Plantation, Natchez. American Anthropologist 103(3):692-704.

2000 Developing Town Life in the South: Archaeological Investigations at Blount Mansion, In The Archaeology of the Southern Urban Landscazpe, edited by Amy L. Young, pp. 150-169. the University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa.

ANT 101. Introduction to Anthropology
ANT 333. Archaeology of North America
ANT 335. Biblical Archaeology
ANT 334. Archaeology of the Old South
ANT 434/534. Historic Archaeology
ANT 435/535. Urban Archaeology
ANT 436/536. Archaeology Field Methods
ANT 439/539. Topics in Archaeology: Architectural Archaeology

Office: LAB 432
Phone: (601) 266-6180
Fax: (601) 266-6373
E-mail: amy.young@usm.edu



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