Labor Landscapes of a Louisiana Sugarhouse

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Co-Producing Space: Relational Approaches to Agrarian Landscapes, Labor, Commodities, and Communities", at the 2024 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Throughout southern Louisiana, the lands were subject to intensive agricultural cultivation, be it through cotton or rice, but mainly, sugar. The sugarhouse was a central node to early industrial production in the US Southeast for the many enslaved laborers and immigrant tenant farmers. The temporality of the tasks associated with sugar production reveals distinct archaeological signatures throughout the factory–during the cutting season, the sugarhouse operates all day to maximize the quality and quantity of sugar. Drawing from regional sugarhouse architectural information and TerraXplorations’ mitigation of the Dunboyne Sugarhouse (16IV204), we pan between multiple analytical scales to better understand the nature of social practice within these factories. Here, we address how the nature of 24/7 production during the cutting season translates to high amounts of drinking vessels and food waste and the palimpsest of architectural features related to both antebellum and postbellum technological changes.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2024   •
• Co-Producing Space: Relational Approaches to Agrarian Landscapes, Labor, Commodities, and Communities

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow