An Investigation of the Spatial Arrangements of Early Enslavement: A Case Study from Flowerdew Hundred

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.

Flowerdew Hundred, a 1000-acre plantation tract located on the south side of the James River in Virginia was the focus of decades of excavations by the College of William and Mary and University of California, Berkley. Three sites – 44PG64, 64/65 and 65 – represent one of the earliest 17th century settlements occupied by enslaved and indentured laborers and landowning elites. Over the last three years the Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery (www.DAACS.org) has worked to reunite and digitize field records and catalog artifacts from these sites. This case study, for the first time, comprehensively examines artifact distributions from all three sites to investigate whether it is possible to determine if space was arranged according to social status, resident ethnicity, or by functional distinctions. We argue that understanding the longer trajectory of occupation and spatial arrangements provides important insights into the multicultural dynamics behind the emergence and establishment of race-based slavery in Virginia.

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