Integrating pollen and macrobotanical evidence to understand change in African-American lifeways at Monticello

Summary

The transition from tobacco to wheat cultivation in the late-18th century at Monticello radically altered agricultural ecology, as swidden plots gave way to permanent fields.  We use macrobotanical remains and pollen as complementary evidence to assess how this shift affected plants use strategies employed by enslaved field hands and the botanical environments they maintained adjacent to their houses.  The identified shift in pollen taxa does not match the pattern we previously identified for agricultural fields, indicating the vegetative distinctiveness of yard space. Macrobotanical assemblages reveal surprisingly strong patterns of inter-household variation. The increased importance of domesticated taxa may signal a greater reliance on gardening relative to foraging.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2018   •
• Landscapes of Chesapeake Slavery

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Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 818