Over the Ridge and Through the Woods: Analyzing Intra-State Connections at the Buffalo Forge Iron Plantation

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.

Iron plantations played diverse economic roles in the early mid-Atlantic. While designed to refine and transport iron products along waterways to regional markets or specialty iron operations, iron plantations also served as nodes of bidirectional exchange between Virginia’s coastal and inland areas, including seasonal hiring of enslaved individuals. This paper explores connections found between the Shenandoah Valley and Chesapeake regions at the Buffalo Forge iron plantation in Glasgow, Virginia. Buffalo Forge’s advantageous position on Buffalo Creek, a tributary of the James River, facilitated connections to diverse people, places, and resources across the Chesapeake Bay watershed. In investigating the origins of oyster shell, ceramics, and other material culture recovered around two enslaved women’s and family quarters at Buffalo Forge, this paper aims to illuminate enslaved women’s and the broader the enslaved community’s active participation in intra-state exchange at and beyond the iron plantation.

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