Recreating forgotten sites of Jesuit enslavement at St. Inigoes

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Historical Archaeology of Chesapeake Landscapes in Transition", at the 2025 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Disturbed sites, disparate grids, and limited excavations are all-too-common in historical archaeology. But tricky archaeological projects nonetheless play a central role in the way that descendant communities reconnect with former plantation landscapes. This paper examines archaeological evidence from St. Inigoes, a Maryland plantation where enslaved persons labored to support Jesuit missionaries. St. Inigoes has seen decades of discrete excavations. We use both the curated and newly-excavated collections—including architecture, domestic material culture, and environmental evidence—in order to reconstruct the landscape of ca. 1660-1760 Old Chapel Field. In particular, we differentiate between public and private spaces, and highlight spaces where enslaved persons lived or worked. This paper explores the extent to which limited archaeological investigations can “recreate” forgotten spaces for community members.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2025   •
• Historical Archaeology of Chesapeake Landscapes in Transition

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow