Interactions Across the Landscape: Interpreting Social Relationships within Montpelier’s Black Community

Summary

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 paper demonstrates a way to bridge these two theoretical stances, by seeing if wealth mattered in the social relationships within the Black community at Virginia’s Montpelier plantation.  Through assessing the amount of costly consumer goods recovered from three sites to the various indications of social interaction their occupants participated in, it appears as if the amount of wealth a household displayed did not affect the social relationships with the slave community. 

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Bringing back the Community: Archaeology of an Early 19th Century Enslaved Community at James Madison’s Montpelier in Orange County Virginia   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2015

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Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 104