Rediscovering the Landscapes of Wingos and Indian Camp: An Archaeological Perspective

Summary

This paper discusses methodologies for tracing the development of domestic and work spaces associated with enslaved people at Poplar Forest and Indian Camp, two plantations located in the Virginia piedmont. The rediscovery of these ephemeral landscapes has been accomplished through a multilayered approach to diverse types of evidence including soil chemistry, artifact distributions, ethnobotanical remains, features, remote sensing and the documentary record. Together, these sources reveal aspects of the layout and function of spaces on plantation peripheries, such as the Wingos Quarter at Poplar Forest, and help to document landscapes that many scholars do not  commonly associate with plantations, such as the tavern-store-plantation complex that developed at Indian Camp in the early 19th-century.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2015   •
• "The task of making improvements on the earth:" Perspectives on plantation landscape archaeology.

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Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 472