Plants, People, And Pottery: Looking At The Personal Agriculture Of The Enslaved In South Carolina.

Nicole M. Isenbarger

Plants, People, And Pottery: Looking At The Personal Agriculture Of The Enslaved In South Carolina.

Year: 2016

Summary

The wealth of the Southern states was built upon the free labor of enslaved Africans toiling in the agricultural fields of their masters’ staple crops. In the Lowcountry of South Carolina the enslaved worked within the task system, which allotted them "free time" to then work to supplement the meager rations they were given. Research into the diets and spirituality of enslaved Africans can lend insight into the foods they purchased, grew, and foraged – personal agriculture in the face of plantation crop production. It is within these supplemental foods that they gained sustenance and possibly even some solace from their daily drudgery. This paper will discuss the evidence of these foods using historical documents, as well as lipid, pollen, and ethnobotanical evidence from African-American contexts in South Carolina. A focus on these non-industrial agricultural endeavors lends another facet to their daily struggles and personal preferences.

Cite this Record

Plants, People, And Pottery: Looking At The Personal Agriculture Of The Enslaved In South Carolina.. Nicole M. Isenbarger. Presented at Society for Historical Archaeology, Washington, D.C. 2016 ( tDAR id: 434366)