Behind the Walls and Beneath the Floors: Botanical Remains from a 19th-Century Kitchen House in Charleston, South Carolina

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "New Avenues in the Study of Plant Remains from Historical Sites" , at the 2022 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

The two-story brick kitchen house at 51 Meeting Street in downtown Charleston was a central place of activity for enslaved peoples held in bondage on the Russell/Allston property from 1808 to 1864. On the first floor of the structure, they carried out cooking and laundry tasks for themselves and for the main house, while the second floor served as living quarters. Daily food preparation activities and the disposal of refuse in the cellar inadvertently attracted pests including rodents and insects. Rodents hoarded food in the hidden spaces behind walls and floors, and these caches were recently sampled and analyzed. The accumulated material included desiccated plant remains likely scavenged from kitchen cupboards, the cellar, an adjacent work yard, and nearby gardens. This paper discusses the analysis of the desiccated botanical assemblage and considers the complexities of its formation and preservation, as well as the possibilities for its archaeological interpretation.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• New Avenues in the Study of Plant Remains from Historical Sites   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2022

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology