Making the Invisible Visible: LiDAR and the hidden sites of Plantation labor

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Roads, Rivers, Rails and Trails (and more): The Archaeology of Linear Historic Properties" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

LiDAR at President Madison’s Virginia plantation has highlighted fields, ditches, and even plow furrows in areas that have been overgrown or wooded since abandonment in the 1840s. In these same areas, metal detector surveys have revealed work sites (barns, sheds, and fence areas) that contain low densities of nails and tools that would be missed by standard archaeological testing techniques. In addition, vegetation surveys have allowed for the identification of trees that were either open-field grown in the late 18th century or succession pine where dendrochronology can date when fields were abandoned. Combined, LiDAR, metal detector surveys, and ecological research have allowed archaeologists to reconstruct the more invisible sites of labor. This paper will discuss the use of LiDAR in bearing witness to the lives of enslaved laborers and beginning to define these otherwise “wooded nature” areas as cultural landscapes of labor.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Roads, Rivers, Rails and Trails (and more): The Archaeology of Linear Historic Properties   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2020

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Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 961