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The
International Masonry Institute, a part of the International
Bricklayers’ Union, owns Brice House. It is also
under the stewardship of Historic Annapolis Foundation,
which provides strong care for one of the preeminent 18th
century houses in the city.
Members of Archaeology in Annapolis have excavated all around the building perimeter as well as many places inside this great building. In the east wing of this house, the servants, both enslaved and free, worked in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. The east wing was the kitchen and laundry. Beneath the floors we found evidence of the survival of African religion, attuned to American use. We came to call our discovery a cosmogram which is currently on display at the Banneker-Douglass Museum.
To the right is an image of the east wing of the Brice House. The circles mark locations where caches were found. The dashed line is a representation of the invisible cosmogram which defined a sacred space within the house.
The Brice house artifacts represent the physical remains
of African American spiritual practices that emerged in
the 19th and 20th centuries, commonly known as Hoodoo.
Hoodoo, like other diasporic African spiritual beliefs
such as Vodun or Santeria, combined African ethnic beliefs
with elements of Christianity and Islam. In the late 19th
century, Hoodoo spread across the United States wherever
African Americans moved after emancipation. Early to mid-20th
century descriptions of African American Hoodoo are similar
across the South. These descriptions refer consistently
to the use of doll parts, pins, pierced coins, and bottles
placed beneath steps, to guarantee healing, safeguarding,
or bewitching. |
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Brice House has clusters of artifacts beneath the floors
of the east wing that are the physical remains of African
American religious activity. The cosmogram was built and
maintained over 40 years, probably by one person. The
clusters mark sacred, protected, and magical spaces. Tracing
images on the ground has a long history within BaKongo
tradition, from West Africa. The material in the Brice
House created an interior landscape with spiritual significance
in an African tradition.
With this material, we see evidence that Brice has an
African heritage as well as a European heritage, in
one place, like most of Annapolis.
Artifacts
from the Brice House
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This carved tortoise shell was found in a cache located at the base of a lightning rod in the yard of the Brice House. This cache, like the cosmogram found in the East Wing of the Brice House, is also related to West African spiritual practices.
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Pierced
one cent coin recovered from one of the five
separate caches found in the East Wing of
the Brice House. The use of pierced coins
is possibly the most-documented of all Hoodoo
charms. This charm, which is often worn around
the ankle or neck, is meant to bring luck
or cure a number of maladies. The burial of
a pierced coin is not documented as widely,
but the coin does lend veracity to the claims
of these items being intentionally buried
caches.
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