Current Research on Virginia Plantations: Reexamining Historic Landscapes
Part of: Society for Historical Archaeology 2022
This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Current Research on Virginia Plantations: Reexamining Historic Landscapes," at the 2022 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.
Virginia was one of the earliest proving grounds for Historical Archaeology as an academic discipline and research on Virginia plantations produced foundational studies of material culture, social status, slavery, and landscape. Building on this rich tradition, archaeologists in Virginia continue to the push the discipline forward through plantation studies, adding nuance and fresh insights to interpretations of historical places thought to be fully understood. The papers in this symposium present current research focused on plantation landscapes in Virginia and how they interact with broader historical and cultural changes from the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries. Topics covered include race and status, ecology, ornamental grounds, and agriculture, with a focus on maintaining a critical eye to how we consider plantation spaces.
Other Keywords
Plantation •
Feature •
Sheep •
Slavery •
Plantations •
Social Landscape •
landscapes •
Landscape •
Colonial •
decolonization
Geographic Keywords
Virginia •
Mid-Atlantic •
The Great Valley of Virginia
Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-5 of 5)
- Documents (5)
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Living Plants and Animals as an Archaeological Resource (2022)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Current Research on Virginia Plantations: Reexamining Historic Landscapes" , at the 2022 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Living things have much to tell archaeologists. This paper will discuss ongoing research on the ways living things can be approached archaeologically, with case studies drawn from historic landscapes in Virginia. Living plants and animals can be considered as individual artifacts, as landscape-scale...
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"Of Use and Ornament": Completing the First Phase of Landscape Restoration at Thomas Jefferson’s Poplar Forest (2022)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Current Research on Virginia Plantations: Reexamining Historic Landscapes" , at the 2022 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. A key focus of the long-term archaeological work that has taken place at Poplar Forest has included developing a highly-detailed contextual understanding of Jefferson’s retreat home and plantation. Over the past decade, research and restoration efforts associated with the carriage circle, ornamental...
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Recent Research into an Antebellum Brick Slave Cabin at Poplar Forest Plantation (2022)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Current Research on Virginia Plantations: Reexamining Historic Landscapes" , at the 2022 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Located only 200 feet east of Thomas Jefferson’s retreat house lay two unassuming brick structures constructed in the 1850s. Based on oral history, one initially housed black enslaved laborers, while the other housed a white overseer and his family. While Jefferson’s architectural showpiece often...
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"Saying Their Names": Decolonizing Interpretation of the Liberty Hall Academic and Plantation Landscape (2022)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Current Research on Virginia Plantations: Reexamining Historic Landscapes" , at the 2022 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. In 2021, Washington and Lee University opted to continue under the names of two slaveholders while pledging support for increased racial diversity. An earlier name of the institution was “Liberty Hall,” the ruins of which remain a cherished icon of collective identity rooted in the 18th-century...
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Uncovering an Unusual Feature: Contextualizing Coan Hall’s Site 3 (2022)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Current Research on Virginia Plantations: Reexamining Historic Landscapes" , at the 2022 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Coan Hall is a 17th-century multicomponent site along the Coan River in Northumberland County, Virginia. John Mottrom and members of his household were the first English colonists in the area, moving into the homelands of the Sekakawon. By the time of Mottrom’s death in 1655, a manor house, plantation...