Water:Abundance, Scarcity, and Security in the Age of Humanity

history accounts and public testimony to understand why some plantations and the communities they created are significant for the identities of today’s descendants, but others are not. Jackson’s book remains an essential source for scholars of African American cultural history and contemporary heritage management, as well as for undergraduate courses or graduate seminars on those topics. The foreword by Paul Shackel (University of Maryland professor of archaeology) and the author’s preface are useful. Jackson introduces herself as a research anthropologist of African descent at the University of South Florida, an active participant in the Gullah/Geechee Corridor Commission, and a former member of the National Park Service—all key roles in her analysis. The book has seven chapters, four of which analyze specific plantations on the US National Register of Historic Places (NRHP). All these cases illustrate contemporary heritage tourism destinations and activities focused on former slave plantations in “The Gullah/Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor” along the Atlantic coasts of North and South Carolina, Georgia, and north Florida. The opening chapter discusses basic concepts: heritage, tradition, identity, and memory. Chapter 2 addresses of cultural heritage, tourism, management, and preservation. Chapter 7, following the four above-mentioned chapters on NRHP sites, is a conclusion. The book is well-illustrated with black and white photographs and maps. A substantial bibliography and valuable index round its laudable scholarly contributions. Managers of slave plantation heritage sites could give descendants of a plantation’s African ancestry workers a voice about their past, and what it means to them and their communities today. By doing so, Jackson argues, managers would help African ancestry descendants publicize a much different perspective than the perspectives of local, regional, and state historical societies, or families descended from plantationand slave-owners. On the one hand, formal designations of heritage plantation sites focus on the plantations’ roles in economic stimulation (regional or national) and promoting the social/political influence of plantation owners. African ancestry descendants, on the other hand, emphasize the many skills of their ancestors and the diversity of knowledge among them. Members of dominant social and politicaleconomic classes tend to view people of African descent as having had little to contribute to society other than labor. So, plantation heritage site interpretations, including interpretations of identity issues today, become more complex when it is documented and celebrated that traditional knowledge or skills from Africa and lessons learned in the Americas were essential to the success of Southern plantations, especially those growing rice in the coastal wetlands. The federal government has established four Criteria for Evaluation of NARP nominations. Criterion B requires that the property must be associated with the life of a significant person or the lives of significant persons in our past. For example, Friendfield Plantation, still a prosperous South Carolina estate in the late-1800s, officially became a NRHP heritage site due to its owners’ economic prominence in the state’s and the South’s history. Nominators did not consider including a significant person from the plantation’s African ancestry work force in the nomination. Then, in October 2008, the heritage site became world famous when it was shown to be the ancestral home of Michelle Obama’s direct ancestors. Now, the preservation and interpretation of the Friendfield Plantation slave cabins of Michelle Obama’s great-grandparents have become more important to tourists, historians, and American society than the slave-owners’ big house. Overlooking the contributions of plantation laborers—first, as slaves, then as “free” but oppressed workers—is a persistent form of racial bias in history and social science. Correcting this bias, Jackson argues, reveals critical human issues for scholars to analyze, and the results of fresh analyses will reshape heritage site interpretation and preservation.