Date: May 14, 2007

Hofstra team to excavate slave quarter at historic Joseph Lloyd Manor

Summer dig is part of college course that will look at "Slavery and Freedom in Early New York"

Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY – A team headed by Hofstra anthropology Prof. Chris Matthews, Ph.D., and including students from Hofstra and other colleges, this summer will begin excavating a Lloyd Harbor site believed to be an 18th century slave quarter.

The site is located at Joseph Lloyd Manor, a historic museum house built in 1767 and owned by the Society for the Preservation of Long Island Antiquities, which invited Dr. Matthews and his team to conduct the dig. The site of the likely slave quarter lies just west of the manor house and is believed to have housed as many as 10 slaves. This excavation will be one of the first archeological studies of a slave quarter in New York State, according to Dr. Matthews.

Lloyd Manor is already well known as the residence of Jupiter Hammon, the first published black poet, who was born a Lloyd family slave in 1711 and died about 1800. Hammond’s writings drew on Christian theology to challenge the injustices of slavery. "The archeology of Lloyd Manor will provide a comparison between the remains of everyday life at the slave quarter and the poetry of Jupiter Hammon," Dr. Matthews said.

The dig, which received a grant from the NY Council for the Humanities, is part of a summer course, “Slavery and Freedom in Early New York” that will also look at such things as the diversity of the enslaved African Americans, resistance to slavery and definitions of “community” both historically and in the present day. The interdisciplinary course will combine methodologies of archaeology, comparative literature, history, cultural studies and community outreach.

For more information or to sign up for the July 2-August 3, 2007 course, contact Dr. Matthews at (516) 463-4093 or anthlab@hofstra.edu.

Hofstra University is a dynamic private institution where students find their edge to succeed in more than 140 undergraduate and 155 graduate programs in liberal arts and sciences, business, communication, education and allied human services, and honors studies, as well as a School of Law. With a student-faculty ratio of 14-to-1, our professors teach small classes averaging 23 students that emphasize interaction, critical thinking and analysis.