NATCHEZ – Dr. Shawn Lambert, associate professor and undergraduate coordinator at Mississippi State University, is inviting the public to his presentation on the Prospect Hill Plantation.

Lambert’s talk will focus on the archaeology of his enslavement project at Prospect Hill. His topic is, “Before They were Settlers: Material Culture and Spaces of Enslavement at the Prospect Hill Plantation.”

Lambert will deliver his hour-long presentation at 12:30 p.m., Thursday, October 24, 2024, at Dumas Hall, Room 107, Alcorn State University, Lorman Campus. He will also share his presentation at 1 p.m. Friday, October 25, 2024, at the Natchez Museum of African American History and Culture, 301 Main St., Natchez.

The programs are sponsored by the Southwest Mississippi Center for Culture and learning at Alcorn. They are free and open to the public.

“Dr. Lambert’s work is significant in many ways,” said Teresa Busby, executive director of the Southwest MS Center for Culture and Learning. “I especially appreciate that he developed the work at Prospect Hill as a multidisciplinary project that involved diverse scholars from several areas of academia to help us better understand the history of enslavement in the South. We will all benefit from Dr. Lambert sharing their findings with us.”

According to Lambert, the research at Prospect Hill has global significance. “It is research that represents the collaboration with diverse communities and descendent communities as well as researchers from other disciplines such as archaeologists, cultural anthropologists, historians, and biological anthropologists,” he said.

Lambert noted the “research is a multivocal and multi-perspective attempt to not only understand the history and archaeology of enslavement at Prospect Hill in Mississippi, but also trace this reverse African Diaspora to Liberia where hundreds of enslaved individuals from Prospect Hill were resettled.”

Prospect Hill is located in Jefferson County. Lambert described it as “an early-to-mid 19th century plantation site that, until recently, has had very little anthropological research.”

The site played a significant role with early plantation life in the South and with the American — and Mississippi Colonization Societies — that relocated hundreds of enslaved people to Greenville, Liberia, Lambert said.

“In this spirit, Prospect Hill is globally connected to the history and development of West Africa and to local communities in Mississippi,” he added.

Lambert works in the department of Anthropology and Middle Eastern Cultures at his university.

According to his bio, his research interests include protohistoric and historic decolonial and community-engaged archaeology in the U.S. South with specific focuses in pre-European Contact Native American communities, and the archaeology of enslavement in the American South.

Lambert is recognized as an expert in remote sensing technologies, ceramic analysis, ancient iconography, organic residue analyses, and elemental analyses of artifacts.

Lambert said he is “committed to working with diverse descendant communities and the public to further decolonize archaeological practice, strengthening relationships with underrepresented communities, and making field work more inclusive and supportive for student experiential learning.”

For more information, send email to tbusby@alcorn.edu