# Work and technology  
This last subsection examines the African diaspora labour and technical know-how not limited to domestic chores and plantation work. Africans and Afrodescendants were involved in almost all activities in the societies in which they lived, working under the authority of others as well as with intellectual and technical autonomy. Not much is known about this subject; however, the books by Edda L. Fields-Black (2008) and Judith A. Carney (2001) are exceptional sources of information. They show how plants, food, techniques and technologies were transplanted by Africans to both the New and the Old Worlds.  
Mariana P. Candido's chapter opens this subsection. In it, Candido discusses the role of gender, taking into account that the social division of labour is a historical construct, as are the perceptions of gender, masculinity and femininity. She observes that, although only a limited number of records are available, there are enough to show that women in Africa and the diasporas performed different functions. In the Americas, they worked in mining and in the fields; they also worked in urban settings as maids, seamstresses, street vendors, cooks, nurses, healers, midwives, nannies and such. In addition, Candido indicates that, although they experienced great seignorial violence, Africans and Afrodescendent women also played an important role in resistance against enslavement, participating in the planning of collective flights, conspiracies and other forms of disruptive activity.  
Judith A. Carney demonstrates in her chapter that, as have the Americas and Asia, Africa has played a central role in domesticating food sources, despite Africa's marginalization in archaeobotanical research until recently. Using significant written and pictorial sources, she investigates which African foods were introduced in the Americas by enslaved Africans. Carney highlights the agency of Africans in the selection and cultivation of new tropical crops in the New World, for both their own subsistence and that of other inhabitants.