Invesitgating Yard Spaces and Landscape at Liberty Hall

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Paper / Report Submission (General Sessions)", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

In the 1970s, archaeologists located many of the lost buildings at the site of Liberty Hall Academy, which operated from 1782 until 1803. Their interpretation focused exclusively on the Academy Period, which left many questions remaining about a site occupied continuously from the 1740s until today in an area with indigenous settlement going back thousands of years. After the spring of 1803, the landscape became the site of a slave plantation where generations of people descended from Africa lived and labored. Recent work at buildings discovered in the 1970s has focused on disentangling the material remains of their lives from those of other inhabitants. This paper presents the ongoing historical research on their presence at Liberty Hall and continued excavations of the yard spaces around their homes, the aim of which is to use spatial and temporal patterning in artifacts to distinguish different use of space at the site.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Paper / Report Submission (General Sessions)   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2023

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow