The Cultural Landscape As Shaped by African Americans: A View from Francis Marion National Forest

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "A Tribute to the Legacy of Leland Ferguson: A Journey From Uncommon Ground to God's Fields", at the 2024 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

During the last quarter of the twentieth century, the South Carolina Lowcountry became a focus of archaeological research into the lives of enslaved African Americans toiling on plantations. Dr. Leland Ferguson was a primary leader in this field of study and used his observations from the East Branch of the Cooper River as well as excavations in the South Carolina Lowcountry and elsewhere to enhance our understanding of marginalized lives and underscore the importance of enslaved African American culture in the Colonial and Antebellum South. Intensive excavations have been a valuable tool for interpreting African American culture and lifeways. Now, our review of survey level and remote-sensing data from Francis Marion National Forest is providing an opportunity to clearly demonstrate enslaved laborers as primary authors of the South Carolina Lowcountry built landscape on a large scale.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2024   •
• A Tribute to the Legacy of Leland Ferguson: A Journey From Uncommon Ground to God's Fields

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow