Seeking Stories of Family and Community: Resituating Antebellum and Postbellum Narratives at Clover Bottom

Author(s): Kathryn L Sikes

Year: 2016

Summary

During the summer of 2015, Middle Tennessee State University's Public History Program conducted an inaugural field school in historical archaeology at Clover Bottom plantation, assisting the Tennessee Historical Commission in its efforts to resolve lingering questions about the property's historic landscape and the experiences of African American families within it. This paper introduces the research design and longterm goals informing a multidisciplinary study of Clover Bottom's African American community's journey through enslavement to emancipation and beyond from the 1790s to the 1910s. With a geneaological focus guiding archaeological and vernacular architectural research, the project's public collaborations aim to provide descendant families with assistance in tracing their ancestral ties to and from the plantation.

Cite this Record

Seeking Stories of Family and Community: Resituating Antebellum and Postbellum Narratives at Clover Bottom. Kathryn L Sikes. Presented at Society for Historical Archaeology, Washington, D.C. 2016 ( tDAR id: 434931)

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): 978