Bulow Plantation and Fort Bulowville: Considering the Pompeii Premise in Plantation and Conflict Archaeology

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Archaeologies of Enslavement" session, at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Over the course of five summer field schools, University of Florida researchers have explored the Bulow Plantation, a large sugar plantation in East Florida, founded in 1821 and destroyed by fire in 1836 during the Second Seminole War, after it was briefly transformed into a makeshift military installation called Fort Bulowville.  Two slave cabins and associated yards were excavated, revealing several differences in artifact assemblage and post destruction disturbances.  Since the plantation’s Africans and the U.S. Army and militia hurriedly evacuated the plantation in the course of a single day, it was initially presumed that entire contents of cabins, with intact furnishings and personal possessions, would be discoverable, but this was only partially true for one cabin.  Given the unusual history of Bulow Plantation’s demise, the Pompeii Premise and its interpretive pitfalls, as it is reflected in both domestic and conflict archaeologies, will be examined.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2019   •
• Archaeologies of Enslavement

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Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 270