Jordan E. Davis, M.A.

The Kincheonville Archaeological and Heritage Landscape Project (KAHLP) aims to document and help steward the historical and living heritage landscapes of Kincheonville – a rural freedom community founded by formerly enslaved African Americans seven miles south of Austin, Texas, shortly after the U.S. Civil War. This multidisciplinary project combines archaeological investigations; archival research; geospatial analysis; and oral history narratives to explore the material traces, memories, and legacies of everyday life in Kincheonville from the immediate post-Emancipation period through the present.

Our archaeological investigations will begin at Stephenson Nature Preserve and Outdoor Education Center, a nature preserve owned and managed by the City of Austin Parks and Recreation Department. Located immediately north of Zion Rest Missionary Baptist Church, this 147-acre preserve contains material traces of several centuries of natural and cultural history. Based on deeds, census records, and other archival and oral history materials, several African American families with ties to Kincheonville owned, cultivated, and lived on this landscape in the years after Emancipation through the early 1940s.

This project is sponsored by the City of Austin Parks and Recreation Department’s Historic Preservation and Tourism Program (HPT) and the Texas Historical Commission, with additional support from the Austin History Center, the local history division of the Austin Public Library; the Travis County Historical Commission; the Center for Advanced Spatial Technologies at the University of Arkansas; the Texas Archaeological Research Laboratory and the Department of Anthropology at the University of Texas at Austin; and by several descendants and community members invested in sharing Kincheonville’s rich story.