Enslaved Landscapes within Lewis Burwell II’s Fairfield Plantation at the End of the Seventeenth Century

Summary

Virginia’s elite experimented with dramatic changes to their plantations at the end of the seventeenth century, a period coinciding with increasing reliance on enslaved labor, the use of architecture and landscape design books, and increasing racialization of Africans in the colony. The enslaved African population operated within and largely built this new world, creating what Dell Upton and others refer to as a Black Landscape. Archaeological evidence of these landscapes reflects the intersection of these worlds within the fluid plantation setting, which involved not only the home quarter and the manor house, but also the roads, fields, mills, churches, and peripheral places that comprised the larger landscape. This paper examines these intersecting landscapes, their relationship with changes to the natural environment of a quickly evolving plantation, and resistance towards Lewis Burwell II and his design, which was intended to control and manipulate the world around him in Gloucester County.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2014   •
• The Intersecting Plantation Landscape II

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): SYM-65,02