Carving out Niches for Rest and Resistance: Landscape Adaptation Writ Small at the Slave Cabins of Kingsley Plantation

Summary

Historians and archaeologists alike have noted the structural repression imposed by the plantation landscape. The organization of spaces and various structures on plantations allowed for optimal surveillance through the establishment of clearly delineated areas suggesting prescribed labor or activity. Personal spaces associated with enslaved Africans or African Americans were often easily visible from parts of the plantation that were typically occupied by white authority figures. Archaeological evidence at Kingsley Plantation in Jacksonville Florida, occupied between 1814 and 1839, suggests that enslaved Africans not only honed a keen awareness of the landscape of control, but that they also acted to mitigate the reach of surveillance in the areas around the slave cabins that they occupied. Examination of the yards surrounding three tabby slave cabins at Kingsley Plantation suggests agency and resistance in the ways that enslaved Africans created spaces for domestic labor, community, and perhaps, to find respite.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Placemaking Within (the) Diaspora: Creating and Living Novel Landscapes and Places   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2018

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Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 352