Preparing for the Future or Investing in the Present? Assemblages from an Overseer’s Site and an Enslaved Laborers’ Quarter

Summary

This paper analyzes and compares ceramic diversity and small domestic artifacts from two domestic sites located at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello plantation. During the first quarter of the nineteenth century, one site was the home of white overseer Edmund Bacon while the other was the location of at least one quarter for enslaved African Americans. Analysis of artifacts recovered from plowzone enhances our understanding of how one of Monticello’s white overseers’ personal items differed from the belongings of those he oversaw. In the early nineteenth century, both Bacon and enslaved workers sought to negotiate and communicate their places within their greater social contexts by exercising choice in the variety of ceramics and personal items they purchased. Bacon’s relatively small and unfashionable assemblage suggests that he was saving for his purchase of a farm in Kentucky, while the assemblage from enslaved African Americans suggests they invested in their present reality.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Paper / Report Submission (General Sessions) 2017   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2017

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 484