Using Archaeobotany and Historical Archaeology to Identify the Influence of Early English Science on Southeastern Plantation Development

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The First Earl of Shaftesbury (1621-1683) was the prime motivator and mastermind behind the settlement and success of the English colony Carolina in 1670. John Locke, Secretary to the Lords Proprietors of Carolina, was also Shaftesbury's friend and colleague in many affairs, one being their Fellowship in the Royal Society of London. The uniquely English concept of "Improvement" was the foundation for both the Royal Society and early English science as they developed in the 1660s. When Locke wrote his "labor theory of property" he utilized Improvement as a basis for private property. I argue that when Shaftesbury planned and launched his 12,000-acre Carolinian estate in 1674, he did so to ground-truth Locke's property theory by anchoring it to a scientifically experimental agricultural regime to improve land into property through modernized enslaved labor—a process that turned the enslaved into scientific technicians. I use Historical Political Ecology and Landscape Archaeology to pair the archaeobotanical record with artifacts from Shaftesbury's estate to identify elements of English Improvement and Royal Society influences that point out how the enslaved Africans at Shaftesbury's estate were coerced into converting English colonial estates into Carolina's first true plantations—plantations based on monocrop surplus agriculture and slavery.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 40025.0