264 Culture, Identity, and Community: From Slavery to the Presentbaskets command great prices as works of art. Th e knowl-
edge of fi nding and preparing the sweetgrass—as well as
the technique of making baskets—is still mainly passed
down through families. Basket styles range from the tra-
ditional utilitarian types during the plantation era to new,
elaborately decorative forms created by the artistic. Sweet-
grass baskets can still be purchased at private stands along
Highway 17 above Mt. Pleasant and from vendors in the
market or on street corners of the main tourist areas of
Charleston.
See also: Black Folk Culture; Carolinas; Gullah; Rice Culti-
vation; Sierra Leone; Task SystemJane M. AldrichBibliography
Cross, Wilbur. Gullah Culture in America. Westport, CT:
Praeger, 2008.
Rosengarten, Dale. Row upon Row: Sea Grass Baskets of the South
Carolina Lowcountry. Columbia: University of South Caro-
lina Press, 1994.
Rosengarten, Dale, Th eodore Rosengarten, and Enid Schildkrout.
Grass Roots: African Origins of an American Art. New York:
Museum for African Art, 2008.Syncretism
Anthropologists, folklorists, and cultural historians use the
term “syncretism” to explain the merging of cultural forms
or practices from diff erent cultures to produce a new cul-
tural product. Th is process of cultural blending involves
both retention and reinterpretation—that is, the mainte-
nance of preexisting traits distinct to one’s own culture as
well as the synthesis of those traits with new ones encoun-
tered through the experience of cultural contact. Cultural
encounters can occur in a relationship of either domination
and subordination or willing coexistence. Yet syncretism re-
fl ects the ability of individuals to consciously mix, borrow,
or modify seemingly irreconcilable or incongruent cultural
practices in order to create a new product meaningful to
and functional in their lives.
Syncretism as a concept for understanding cultural
formation is closely related to the terms “creolization” and
“hybridity.” Somewhat synonymous, the three terms con-
tain slight variations in meaning. Th us, taken collectively,
syncretism, creolization, and hybridity allow scholars toas split palmetto leaves, raffi a, or even pine needles, to form
an “eye” in the middle of the basket and wound outward
to form the desired size and shape of the basket being cre-
ated. Baskets of similar design, but of varying materials, are
made throughout the Lowcountry with bulrushes or other
local grasses used in place of the sweetgrass.
Utilitarian baskets of this style were brought from
the rice coast of West Africa to the rice-growing regions
of the colonies as early as the 17th century. Th ese sewn
baskets were strong yet fl exible and made in a variety of
shapes and sizes depending on the task for which the bas-
ket was intended. One specifi c basket style was the fanner
basket, which played an important role in the processing
of rice on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. Once the rice
had been pounded to loosen the husk from the kernel, the
rice was placed in the large, fl at fanner basket, and work-
ers would repeatedly toss the pounded rice into the air. Th e
wind would blow away the chaff while the worker caught
the cleaned rice back in the basket. Th ese fanner baskets, as
well as other functional baskets, were vital tools on the rice
plantations, and planters’ records from the antebellum pe-
riod reveal that collecting materials for and making sweet-
grass baskets was an important activity performed by the
enslaved population, typically the men.
As rice production came to an end due to labor changes
aft er the Civil War and natural disasters that altered the sa-
line content of the former rice paddocks, the creation and
use of sweetgrass baskets in Charleston declined dramati-
cally. However, within many African American households,
the craft continued, oft en with women taking over the col-
lecting of materials and the sewing of baskets. Th e craft was
most oft en passed from mother or grandmother to daugh-
ters and granddaughters. Although sweetgrass basket mak-
ing almost disappeared to a great extent throughout the
Lowcountry, a small group of women in the Mt. Pleasant
area kept the skill alive and passed it down through the gen-
erations. Many of them descended from the enslaved popu-
lations on Boone Hall Plantation or Snee Farm and were
able to make an income from producing these baskets in
the 20th century and selling them to tourists in small stalls
along the Ocean Highway (Route 17) or in the market and
street corners of historic downtown Charleston.
Mt. Pleasant, formerly a small town just up the coast
from Charleston, is still the hub of the sweetgrass basket
makers—many of whom have placed baskets in the Smith-
sonian Institution or other prominent museums and whose