TIMBER! Industry, Movement, and Changing Spaces in Late 19th-Century Sapelo Sound, GA

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Port of Call: Archaeologies of Labor and Movement through Ports", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

During the late 19th Century, communities around Sapelo Sound in coastal Georgia, USA, reconfigured the social and physical landscapes to participate in the international timber economy. During this period, those living at the North End Site (9MC81) on Creighton Island, GA, reconfigured the former plantation into a small port. Though, documentary evidence suggests the dwellings became a place of impermanence—where boarding houses occupy the frames of the former dwellings of enslaved laborers. Combining archaeological survey data and historical documentation, we explore both the demographics and reconfiguration of plantation spaces for boarding houses during the growth of the transnational timber industry in Sapelo Sound. Through our research, we argue for the need to investigate inter- and intra-island movement to understand the histories of life and labor in the Sapelo Sound.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2023   •
• Port of Call: Archaeologies of Labor and Movement through Ports

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow