Turtles in the Tidewater: an Ecological and Social Perspective on Turtle Consumption in the Antebellum South

Summary

This presentation considers the foodways of plantation inhabitants in the antebellum costal South with reference to one particular food resource, the turtle.  Turtle remains represent a small but ubiquitous portion of faunal assemblages recovered from late 18th and early 19th century sites in the southern states, and historic documents indicate that antebellum Americans drew upon European, African, and Native American cooking traditions to create a turtle-based cuisine which played an important role in establishing social boundaries.  We compare turtle remains from Peachtree, a 19th-century plantation house along the Santee River in South Carolina, to others in the region, using the geographical, temporal, and status related patterns in their disposal to evaluate their possible use as food resources.  Moreover, we will compare these patterns with the geographic range and life cycle of particular turtle species to determine how the consumption of turtles was influenced by their availability within local environments.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• A Regional Retrospective Analysis of the Antebellum Atlantic Seaboard   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2016

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Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 375

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