Using archaeological materials recovered from a housesite in Mobile, Alabama, Laurie Wilkie explores how one extended African-American family engaged with competing and conflicting mothering ideologies in the post-Emancipation South.

Laurie Wilkie is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of Creating Freedom (Louisana State University Press 2000) and Ethnicity, Community and Power(University of South Carolina Press 1994).

List of Figures List of Tables Acknowledgements Prologue 1. Why an Archaeology of Mothering? 2. The Perryman Family of Mobile Narrative Interlude I 3. African-American Mothering and Enslavement Narrative Interlude II 4. Mothering and Domesticity in Freedom: Ideology and Practice Narrative Interlude III 5. Midwifery as Mother's Work Narrative Interlude IV 6. To Mother or not to Mother Narrative Interlude V 7. Midwifery and Scientific Mothering Narrative Interlude VI 8. Conclusions: The Many Ideologies of African-American Motherhood Bibliography