Plantation Archaeology (Other Keyword)
1-25 (43 Records)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Plantation Archaeology as Slow Archaeology" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Several decades of zooarchaeological research at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello and James Madison’s Montpelier provide an opportunity to compare the food experiences of the enslaved communities at these Virginia Piedmont plantations. These observations are key to understanding the African-American roots of American cuisine. In this...
Another Place for Thinking: A Decade of Making Connections at Wye House (2015)
In a 2005 article in World Archaeology, Dan Hicks revisits the William Paca garden in Annapolis, calling it "a place for thinking", not only in the literal sense used by Leone but also in that scholars frequently revisit it as they work out disciplinary issues in the present. As we think about "Peripheries and Boundaries", we cannot help but to think beyond them, to the connections that tie together the sites we excavate and to the people we find there both in the past and in the present. In...
An Archaeology of Redress: Freedom as Impossible Praxis (2023)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "“Folkeliv” and Black Folks’ Lives: Archaeology, History, and Contemporary Black Atlantic Communities", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Black studies critical theorizations have much to offer the field of archaeology both in theory and practice. For Saidiya Hartman (2008) redress entails confronting formations of epistemic violence that undergird the archival record; it is a praxis that is always incomplete....
Archaeology of the 18th-Century French Colonial Metoyer Land Grant Site, Natchitoches, Louisiana (2015)
Recent plans to develop a tract of land on Cane River prompted examination of a locality pivotal to understanding the colonial creole experience in northwest Louisiana. Survey work in 2011 and 2012 identified a large river front site, part of which was home to the plantations of Narcisse Prud’homme, John Plauché, and Pierre Metoyer—the latter an economically prominent colonial known for his relationship with the celebrated Marie-Thérèse Coincoin. Subsequent archival research, geophysical survey,...
At the Crossroads of Consumption: 19th Century Slave Life in Western Tennessee (2015)
In eight years of excavations on the 20,000 acre Ames land base in western Tennessee, a clearer picture of the 19th century of everyday life and the associated patterns of consumption of the antebellum south has emerged. With over twenty contiguous plantations, we are able to compare specific characteristics of the material culture from large (3,000+ acres) to small plantations (300 acres). Our current focus is on Fanny Dickins, a woman of financial means who established a small plantation after...
At the Intersection: Destabilizing White Creole Masculinity at the 18th-Century Little Bay Plantation, Montserrat, West Indies (2017)
Guided by contemporary humoral theory, 18th-century Europeans believed climate and bodily humors to be mutually influential and correlated in their effect on human temperament, appearance, and behavior. Resettlement to a new climate was understood to create humoral imbalances fundamentally affecting an individual’s character and even physical appearance including skin color. Subject to the effects of tropical climate British settlers to the West Indies thus transformed were viewed as...
Beads of Bondage: Global Displacement and Cultural Connections in Western Tennessee (2021)
This is a poster submission presented at the 2021 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Historic glass trade beads found at plantation archaeological sites have been identified as markers of African and African American culture and expression. In the southeastern United States, the presence of beads can be attributed to inter-cultural exchange with Native Americans and/or strategically obtained through the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Since 2011, Rhodes College has located and...
Beyond the Mansion: How the Archaeology Program at a Plantation Museum Changed so Many Lives (2018)
Between 1988 and 2009, the Hermitage Archaeology Program trained students of archaeology, anthropology, history, and education. Summer after summer, as the excavation units were laid, the wheelbarrows lined up, the shovels and trowels counted and distributed, we were always excited about what was to come. I learned about who I was as an archaeologist, as a scholar of slavery and the African Diaspora, and a Black Feminist Archaeologist. This short reflection paper is to share some thoughts and...
Bringing Black Chefs into the Lab: A Call for an Interdisciplinary Public Approach to Zooarchaeology (2020)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Plantation Archaeology as Slow Archaeology" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Zooarchaeology has, historically, used approaches based in fast-science to study foodways. It can often fail to provide a comprehensive understanding of the foodways of enslaved peoples, however. This is because faunal analysis is often conducted and interpreted separately from studies of the knowledge and experience of the enslaved...
Changing Times, Changing Tastes: A Comparison of 18th and 19th Century Consumption Patterns at James Madison's Montpelier (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Zooarchaeology, Faunal, and Foodways Studies" session, at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. The 18th century has often taken a back seat when it comes to the interpretation of James Madison’s Montpelier. Two sites near the mansion, however, offer a unique window into the lives of the Madison family in the transition from the 18th to early 19th century. The South Kitchen, one of six structures within the South Yard complex, is an...
Colonial Foodways in Barbados: A Diachronic Study of Faunal Remains and Stable Isotopes from Trent’s Plantation, 17th-19th centuries (2018)
The origins of modern cuisine in the Caribbean lie in the complex interactions that occurred during the colonial period. Studying foodways on plantations offers insight into the social relationships, power structures, economic practices and cultural transformations during this time. Here, we integrate and compare the results from zooarchaeological analysis with stable isotope (δ18O, δ13C, δ15N, δ88Sr) analysis of human and faunal remains from Trent’s Plantation in Barbados. Trent’s Plantation...
Confronting Confederate Narratives: Archaeology at the Judah P. Benjamin Confederate Memorial at Gamble Plantation Historic State Park (2018)
In recent years, the southern United States has experienced a growing movement to remove confederate memorials from public spaces. These efforts have initiated a dialogue about representations of heritage, and the ethics of memorialization. Arguments for the removal of these memorials and monuments maintain that they misrepresent the past, and minimize the suffering of enslaved people and their descendants. Gamble Plantation was one of several sugar plantations established along the Manatee...
Contextualizing the Exceptional: Understanding "Small Find" Abundance at The Hermitage (2018)
The archaeological program at The Hermitage was exceptional in many ways, from the breadth and depth of its archaeological education programs and the square footage excavated across the plantation to the range of domestic slave housing types and diversity of artifacts found within and around these dwellings. The richness and diversity of "small finds" across Hermitage sites is particularly striking. Previous studies of Hermitage small finds have focused on individual artifacts as representations...
"Coon, possum, rabbit, squirrel en aw dat": A zooarchaeological investigation of foodways at Witherspoon Plantation, South Carolina (2015)
This paper examines the results of zooarchaeological analysis completed on faunal remains from Witherspoon Island, a 19th century cotton plantation in South Carolina. This research contributes to a larger ongoing historical archaeological project exploring the lives of enslaved African-Americans and their descendants on the remote absentee plantation. To examine shifting food practices at the site, we present the results of the analysis of faunal remains recovered from two house and adjacent...
The Cotton King(dom): Reevaluating the Economic Capital of Cedar Grove Plantation in Western Tennessee (2021)
This is a poster submission presented at the 2021 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. This poster will contextualize the socio-economic role of Cedar Grove Plantation in western Tennessee. This type of economic-based, historical investigation has not been conducted within this transition zone of the Lower Mississippi Delta and the Upland South. We focus on the life story of John Walker Jones before, during and after the rapid growth of Cedar Grove Plantation (1825-1865),...
Field of Dreams: Archaeology and Education Hermitage Style (2018)
The Hermitage archaeology program fulfilled the dreams of many, from the children enrolled in the education program and the Earthwatch volunteers to the dozens of summer archaeology interns, many who now professional archaeologists working across the country. The archaeological research program at The Hermitage was critical to understanding the social and working lives of enslaved individuals, their interaction with the Jacksons, and The Hermitage landscape. Yet, one of the true legacies of...
Hermitage Archaeology, The Early Years (2018)
In 1969 the author, then a graduate student at the University of Florida, participated in the excavation of a slave cabin site on Cumberland Island, just off the Georgia coast. This work (reported in the SHA journal for 1971) was directed by the late Charles H. Fairbanks and is generally considered one of the first two undertakings relevant to the development of what came to be know as "Plantation Archaeology." In 1974 the author carried this experience forward to begin archaeological...
The House-Yard Revisited: Domestic Landscapes of Enslaved People in Plantation Jamaica (2016)
Across the sugar-producing islands of the Caribbean, the "slave village" has remained both a significant object and context for archaeological study of plantation slavery. Recent landscape perspectives have fostered new methods for seeing the material lives of enslaved people at the household and community scales. In recent years, however, little attention has been given the household infrastructure that extended beyond the house itself and articulated quarters into a village complex. The swept...
"I Swore I’d Never Step Foot in that House": Public Archaeology and the University as a Site of Former Enslavement (2019)
This is an abstract from the "The Public and Our Communities: How to Present Engaging Archaeology" session, at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. In Summer 2018, Clemson University began excavations at Fort Hill Plantation, the former home of statesman John C. Calhoun and university namesake Thomas Clemson, situated in the heart of the university campus. The expressed purposes of this excavation were to train students in field archaeology while locating the...
Identifying the South Yard: Interrogating Landscapes of Home and Work Yards Enslaved African Americans at Montpelier (2018)
Landscape analysis of slave plantations typically approaches the plantation scale, analyzing the distribution of the built environment across the plantation itself. This paper will focus on the analysis of the domestic slave quarter of James Madison's Montpelier, and how the yards, structures, and features were organized and used by the Madisons and enslaved community. Over the course of multiple field seasons , archaeologists have conducted extensive field excavations uncovering three...
If a Picture is Worth a 1,000 words, How Much are GIS Coordinates Worth? The Use of Visual History, Oral History, and GIS Data to Define the McAdoo Plantation Home (2013)
In the mid- 19th century, General John David McAdoo operated a plantation in Washington County Texas. Dismantled in the 1960s, all that remains of the house are the stone pier foundations. During the summer of 2012, Texas Tech University excavated and mapped the stone piers using Geographic Information Systems (GIS). The primary goal of these investigations was to document the layout and extent of the structure’s remains. Information about the house comes from both an oral interview and visual...
Interactions Across the Landscape: Interpreting Social Relationships within Montpelier’s Black Community (2015)
Social relationships structure daily life in a variety of ways. However, when considering the social world that existed inside slave quarters across Virginia, archaeologists have not been able to come to a consensus on how to approach the study of social networks; with some researchers focusing on social standing, seen most often through the role of material wealth to create connections and others focusing on how interactions can be meaningfully interpreted from the archaeological record. This...
Intersectionality and Plantation Archaeology: Intertwining the Past, Present and Future (2018)
Intersectionality is a useful framework to employ when reconstructing the everyday lives of enslaved individuals during the Antebellum. Often, archaeologists find it difficult to create narratives that connect the material culture of the individuals we excavate with their dynamic experiences, especially impacts of sexual and economic exploitation, human rights and the rule of law. This paper focuses on the overlapping of multiple identities (in this case enslaved and free women and men on the...
Landscape Legacies of Sugarcane Monoculture at Betty’s Hope Plantation, Antigua, West Indies (2016)
The historic sugarcane industry transformed Caribbean societies, economies, and environments. This research explores the landscape legacies left by long-term sugarcane monoculture at Betty’s Hope Plantation on the eastern Caribbean island of Antigua, which was dedicated to sugarcane monoculture from the mid-1600s until independence in 1981. The study creates a simulation of crop yields using the USDA’s Erosion Productivity Impact Calculator, which is then evaluated using records of historical...
The Life Cycle of a Slave Cabin: Results of the 2014 and 2015 University of Florida Historical Archaeological Field Schools at Bulow Plantation, Flagler County, Florida (2016)
Bulow Plantation (8FL7) in Flagler County, Florida, occupied for only fourteen years, provides a narrow window into the life of enslaved African Americans living and working on an East Florida sugar plantation. In the 2014 and 2015 field seasons, the University of Florida conducted excavations focusing on a single domestic slave cabin and the surrounding yard. Results from these excavations will be presented with a particular focus on the life cycle of the cabin, from its construction in 1821...