Tobacco Houses of the Early Colonial Chesapeake

Author(s): Mark Kostro

Year: 2015

Summary

Tobacco houses and barns – specialized agricultural buildings for curing and storing tobacco -- were common features upon the Chesapeake region’s landscape throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.  Each plantation or farm had at least one, and depending on its size, potentially more than one.  Today, colonial-era tobacco houses are all but extinct in the region, leaving the archaeological record as a principal source on these one-time ubiquitous structures.  Drawing upon excavation data from throughout the region, this paper explores tobacco house construction, use, and their unique spatial dynamics as components of a landscape made distinctive by the cultivation of tobacco.

Cite this Record

Tobacco Houses of the Early Colonial Chesapeake. Mark Kostro. Presented at Society for Historical Archaeology, Seattle, Washington. 2015 ( tDAR id: 434101)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

min long: -129.199; min lat: 24.495 ; max long: -66.973; max lat: 49.359 ;

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 559