Dissolution of the American Enclave in Samaná, Dominican Republic " (2013). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. Paper 752. African Americans from "Back Yonder": The Historical Archaeology of the Formation, Maintenance, and Dissolution of the American

By the end of 1825, 6,000 African Americans had left the United States to settle in the free black Republic of Haiti. After arriving on the island, 200 immigrants formed an enclave in what is now Samaná, Dominican Republic. The Americans in Samanà ¡ continued to speak English, remained Protestant (in a country of devout Catholics), and retained American cultural practices for over 150 years. Relying on historical archaeological methods, this dissertation explores the processes of community formation, maintenance, and dissolution, while paying particular attention to intersections of race and nation. Fieldwork took place in the Spring and Summer of 2010 and involved local archival research, oral history interviews, and an aboveground survey of the cemetery in Samaná. Oral histories stemming from linguistic research conducted in the 1980s were also incorporated into this study. Analyses show that the geopolitical isolation of the Samanà ¡ Peninsula, in addition to the immigrants ' status as a large minority within a small but diverse population, allowed for the relatively unhindered formation of the American community. The immigrants and their descendants define