Spaces and Places of Antebellum Georgia Lowcountry Landscapes: A Case Study of Wattle and Tabby Daub Slave Cabins on Sapelo Island, Georgia

Summary

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

Places within plantation settlements were created differentially based partially on the geometric organization of settlement spaces. Place-making within settlement spaces impacted how enslaved people covertly and overtly displayed materials with African and Caribbean roots. GIS and R-generated thessian tessellations quantify the geometry of ten such spaces from within five Georgia lowcountry plantations. Measurements included the total area around each slave cabin, size of the cabin, distance from potential surveillance, and number of people within each cabin. Statistical irregularity of these settlement spaces was indicative of the ability of enslaved people within those plantation settlements to negotiate the spaces around them, which in turn affected how they created and manipulated the places around them. The most prominent example of these negotiations are the five wattle and tabby daub slave cabins archaeologically identified at the Sapelo Plantation, Sapelo Island, Georgia.  

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): 492