«where my father and mother are buried»: Landscape and the Moral Orders of Emplacement throughout the Plantation Chesapeake

Summary

As Williamsburg became a prosperous urban center, African Americans built dynamic rural plantation neighborhoods that enveloped the town and came to dominate the landscapes and waterways of antebellum Virginia. Neighbors free and enslaved laid deep ancestral and communal roots within mosaics of local places as they shared in common labors and experiences, trials and exploits on grounds that reverberated with the comings and goings of successive generations. Drawing upon historical accounts as well as recent findings from excavations adjacent to Colonial Williamsburg’’s Historic Area, this paper examines a set of landscape practices common across plantation communities throughout the lower Chesapeake that may reflect a series of shared moral orientations intended to emphasize reciprocal social bonds and to prompt a degree of self-reflection. It further asserts that archaeologically unpacking processes of emplacement may hold great promise in opening new avenues of inquiry in archaeological research and interpretation.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Discovering what Counts in Archaeology and Reconstruction: Lessons from Colonial Williamsburg   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2014

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): SYM-9,10