Poaching Pots and Making Places: Slavery and Ceramic Consumption in the Shenandoah Valley

Summary

The Shenandoah Valley, with its German / Scots-Irish heritage and its focus on small-scale mixed farming, formed a distinctive region within early 19th century Virginia. Here, unique ways of interacting with global markets emerged as residents profited off the sale of agricultural products while simultaneously choosing to purchase locally made earthenwares over imported wares, practices which reproduced local ethnic identities. However, many of the region’s White residents owed Black Virginians, which forces us to address other consumers in the region. Ongoing excavations at Belle Grove Plantation (Frederick County) have made clear that the Valley’s enslaved residents also purchased these same locally produced earthenwares. This paper explores how these ceramics allowed novel forms of placemaking to emerge as Black consumers ‘poached’ off of and wove themselves into the materiality of local White identities.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

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

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 632