Animal Landscapes of the Lowcountry: Evidence from Drayton Hall

Summary

Studying Lowcountry plantations as landscapes allows for an understanding of people’’s interactions with and negotiations of both cultural and natural elements in daily life. Animals in the Lowcountry, both wild and domesticated, contributed to this daily life and blurred the distinction between those elements which were natural and those which were cultural. Ongoing zooarchaeological analyses of the faunal remains from Drayton Hall, South Carolina, reveal the incorporation of vast local resources alongside locally-raised livestock, especially cattle and hogs, into the cuisine and daily life of Drayton’’s residents. Constructed by John Drayton beginning in 1738, Drayton Hall produced provision crops and rice but was considered the business hub of the Drayton family’s many holdings. Despite the possible differences in the main function of Drayton Hall, the faunal remains from the late-eighteenth-century well fill indicate that animals and human-animal interactions were an integral part of the Lowcountry plantation landscape.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Rags to Riches: the Creation and Legacy of the Carolina Colony   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2014

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): SYM-63,07