Plantation Archaeology Research Articles

Old ways in new places? Experimenting with plants in the early plantation setting

ABSTRACT Plants and foodways have long been recognized for their importance to the construction of identity and culture in plantation settings. Yet despite this focus on plants and foodways in plantation archaeology, there is a need for more archaeological documentation of the types of plants and fields being cultivated in newly formed plantations in the New World. We combine historical documentation with an assemblage of recovered plant remains from the Lord Ashley site (38DR83a) to examine plant use during the formative years of a plantation economy. A renewed focus on experimental cropping in the New World plantation system at this site, along with one of the most well documented enslaved African populations before the 1690s in South Carolina, point to the influence of cross-cultural entanglements in building New World agricultural systems. The recovery of watermelon, an African cultivar, found alongside an assemblage of artifacts and other archaeobotanical remains associated with the enslaved Africans at the site, also point to the role of first-generation Africans in establishing New World foodway traditions.

Mauritian indentured labour and plantation household archaeology

ABSTRACT This paper presents a case study of an African/Indian Ocean plantation located in Mauritius, focusing on the daily lives of indentured labourers during the nineteenth century. Bras d’Eau National Park was a sugar estate that functioned from 1786 to 1868. During the 1830s, colonial landowners shifted from a reliance on enslaved labourers, who came primarily from Mozambique and Madagascar, to indentured labourers primarily originating in South Asia. Four hundred and fifty thousand men, women and children travelled to Mauritius to live and work on sugar estates. Household excavations were conducted in the detached houses and line barracks that make up the plantation domestic quarter. Domestic artefacts from these village spaces, such as South Asian smoking pipes, glass bangle fragments, buttons from second-hand British military uniforms, cowrie shells, rice bowls and traces of a diet based on pulses-and-rice suggest a persistence in South Asian cultural practices while also demonstrating a creative engagement with material culture from across the region. Grounded in comparative plantation archaeology, this study of the landscape and material culture at Bras d’Eau represents one of the first full investigations of nineteenth-century indentured men, women and children’s daily practices.

Black and White Beads in the African Diaspora

African diaspora archaeology has its roots in American plantation archaeology of the 1960s and 1970s. One of the first artifacts recovered from these contexts was the simple blue glass bead, recognized by some as signifying retentions of African belief. Simultaneously emerging in the 1970s was the field of historical mortuary archaeology, in which graves of African Americans were treated as archaeological resources for the first time. When these graves were studied scientifically, greater emphasis was placed on the skeletal biology than associated grave goods, and a very different set of questions was explored. Combining these two fields, this study documents a heretofore unrecognized pattern of not blue, but black beads and white beads—almost exclusively associated with infants and women––and ties these color choices and demographic patterns to specific West African cultures and the underlying meanings of womanhood, marriage, fertility, birth, and protection.

Marine Shell and Small-Island Slavery in the Caribbean

Caribbean slavery on plantations perched on very small islands that could be only a few dozen acres in extent was likely very different from slavery on the major islands. This article considers the results from three years of excavation and survey on the 150 ac. island of Little Jost van Dyke, British Virgin Islands, focusing on a cotton-farming plantation occupied by both free and enslaved people from about 1720 to 1790. The questions of oversight and control, as well as access to resources—frequent topics in plantation archaeology that are somewhat different here—frame the discussion of the limits and advantages of small islands and the effects of these on daily life and the structure of communities. A particular focus is given to the data provided by the study of marine-shell ecofacts recovered in the excavations and what these data can reveal about foodways, economy, and movement around the landscape. The article concludes that those enslaved on such smaller islands often had certain opportunities for movement and economic improvement denied those on larger or landlocked sites, but also serves as a reminder that these opportunities could not counter the impacts of enslavement.

Speaking the Lacuna: The Archaeology of Plantation Slavery as Testimony

This paper examines plantation archaeology as a form of material testimony and bearing witness to the historical trauma of slavery. Exploring intersections of literary and spatial analysis, and using a critical framework that combines Agamben, Weizman, and Felman, the author argues that the material testimony of plantation archaeology embodies a “lacuna” of witnessing, and may even replicate historical dynamics of violence.

Blurring Disciplinary Boundaries: The Material Culture of Improvement during the Age of Abolition in Barbados

This article uses plantation archaeology to explore white Barbadian responses to the British anti-slavery campaign during the late eighteenth century. By blurring disciplinary boundaries between history and archaeology, we examine how competing British and Caribbean images of West Indian planters were contested through material culture. Drawing on an archaeological case study at St. Nicholas Abbey sugar plantation, St. Peter, Barbados, we highlight how the landscape of slavery was transformed with the emergent, English ideal of ‘improvement’. This early Barbadian response to anti-slavery was a form of political mobilization deployed by the planter elite, allowing for the construction of new racial and cultural identities.

Deconstructing the Myth of the “Hand Charm”: Mundane Clothing Fasteners and Their Curious Transformations into Supernatural Objects

Since the 1970s, the “hand charm” has been recognized in plantation archaeology as an early example of an “Africanism,” a perceived supernatural object within African American life, with roots in African culture and belief. The underpinnings of this interpretation are examined, and the myth of the so-called hand charm deconstructed in two parts: first, in a critical examination, the previous arguments that described these objects—which are ornate hook-and-eye clothing fasteners—as primarily supernatural, are discounted; second, a new explanatory model is offered for how and why these ornamented fasteners made their way into their plantation or African American contexts.

New Perspectives from Old Collections

Charles Fairbanks advanced the field of plantation archaeology in 1968 in his pioneering excavation in the cabins of enslaved laborers at Kingsley Plantation, Florida, with a focus on identifying "Africanisms." Failing to recognize elements of African cultures, Fairbanks and his students moved to St. Simons Island, the Couper Plantation and Cannon's Point site, and focused instead upon socio-economic status patterns. Other archaeologists would later make the case for material evidence of African cultural retentions at sites in the United States. Using new interpretative frameworks, a reanalysis of the archaeological materials recovered in the Couper Plantation excavations in the 1970s reveals elements of possible African spirituality not originally identified.

Creole Cultures of the Caribbean: Historical Archaeology in the French West Indies

Historical archaeology is a relatively recent development in the French West Indies, in contrast to the Anglophone Americas where for over 30 years, historical archaeologists have investigated the sites of plantation villages in the United States and in the Caribbean to seek insights into the ways in which enslaved Africans adapted to and survived the horrors of slavery, and created unique and vibrant Creole cultures. Although plantations have been archaeologically investigated in the former French possessions of the United States, their Caribbean counterparts, and particularly the enslaved population who labored on them, have only recently become a focus of archaeological research. Yet the historical setting and development of plantation slavery in the French colonies of the Caribbean was necessarily distinct from both the British Caribbean and from North American French colonial establishments. This paper discusses the state of historical archaeology in the French West Indies, with particular reference to plantation archaeology in Guadeloupe and Martinique. This research identifies some of the unique aspects of the economic and historical context of slavery on French Caribbean plantations.

Archaeology of the African Diaspora in Latin America

Archaeology conducted at Latin American sites in Brazil, Cuba, Florida, Hispaniola, Jamaica, and Peru has made significant contributions to our understanding of African Diaspora history. Historical archaeology of the African Diaspora in Latin America has explored technological innovations in pottery making, resistance to slavery, and everyday life. The unifying theme in these studies, like that of the Anglo colonies, has been ethnic or cultural markers of identity. Maroon studies have predominated, while plantation archaeology in Latin America is developing slowly. By placing Latin American sites within the context of theories such as ethnogenesis, focusing on intercultural interactions in Maroon and slave societies, and rediscovering the forgotten connections between Amerindians and Africans, it is possible to advance our understanding of African Diaspora social formation and culture creation.

Food and Social Relations at Nina Plantation

In this article I use animal food remains from an archaeological plantation site to discuss relations between the groups of people who lived on the plantation. First owned by a French Creole family, Nina Plantation, a sugar and cotton plantation in central Louisiana, was sold in 1857 to an Anglo‐American family from Philadelphia. Comparisons are made among French, Anglo‐American, and African American diets and between pre‐Emancipation and post‐Emancipation African American diets. The evidence demonstrates the relations of power that existed on the plantation as well as the ways in which ethnicity and economic class affected diet, [plantation archaeology, diet, ethnicity, zooarchaeology]

"I, Too, Am America": Archaeological Studies of African-American Life

I, Too, Am America: Archaeological Studies of Life. Edited by Theresa A. Singleton. (Charlottesville and London: University Press of Virginia, c. 1999. Pp. xiv, 368. Paper, $19.50, ISBN 0-8139-1843-X; cloth, $59.50, ISBN 0-8139-1842-1.) The fifteen essays in this volume represent the latest theoretical and methodological approaches to the historical archaeology of Americans. The opening premise of the book is that one fully understand the European colonial experience in the Americas without understanding that of the African (p. 1). Major themes of the collection include the relationship between material culture and cultural identity; the role of heritage in culture; the nature of and power struggles over cultural transformation; and the role of racism, not only in the creation of the material record, but also in the study and practice of American archaeology. Together, the essays emphasize the complexity of colonial race, class, and gender relations and the fluidity of the cultural and political alliances that defined colonial identities. This volume will be stimulating and valuable for both archaeologists and historians of the American experience. The collection begins in the right place--Africa. Merrick Posnansky's and Christopher DeCorse's essays demonstrate the importance of understanding the archaeology from West and Central Africa, where the millions of Africans brought to the Americas originated. Their essays reflect a new and necessary priority in the field, that African-American archaeology should be rooted in the study of archaeology and ethnology (p. 21). Historians and archaeologists have long sought examples of Africanisms in American slave societies. Posnansky and DeCorse effectively argue that American scholars cannot know what they seek without knowing more about the temporal and geographic specifics of culture. As most American archaeology has done, the majority of the subsequent essays focus on plantation archaeology. These essays describe cultural transformation as an active rather than a passive response to the social, historical, and environmental conditions that gave rise to American communities (p. 13). James Deetz, Matthew Emerson, Daniel Mouer, and Leland Ferguson engage one another in an older debate over the manufacture, decoration, meaning, and use of colonoware and early Chesapeake clay pipes. Together these scholars attempt to understand the ways in which ethnicity and heritage are reflected in the archaeological record. They also demonstrate how difficult it can be to assign ownership to any one ethnic group in a creole society like seventeenth-century Virginia. Terrence Epperson, Douglas Armstrong, Larry McKee, and Barbara Heath analyze relations of power, domination, and resistance in their essays. Epperson investigates the social construction of racial difference in the plantation landscape and finds that both whites and blacks attempted to manipulate plantation space. …

Brutality or Benevolence in Plantation Archaeology

Archaeologists working on plantation sites have typically ignored the role that violence played in the lives of enslaved African-Americans. By drawing together examples from archaeological publications in which violence has been mentioned, the commentary illustrates not only both the types and scale of violence endured by African-Americans, but also how archaeologists have effectively sanitized their publications on plantation life. In order to understand the African-American experience on the plantation, archaeologists must recognize that violence played a significant role in plantation society, and integrate it explicitly into all our models and interpretations of plantation life.

Necessary but insufficient: Plantation archaeology reports and community action

From broken pots, rusted fishhooks, and scraps of bone, archaeologists bring to light aspects of African-American life on antebellum plantations. But it is a dim light, shared by a few through technical reports and scholarly journal articles. This paper examines the distillation of information and ideas from technical reports into publications written specifically for nonarchaeologists. Historical and genealogical society journals, museum newsletters, and church bulletins provide venues through which archaeologists can convey not just what they are doing, but what they have learned. That knowledge has value in the political arena.

“What is the use of plantation archaeology?” no use at all, if no one else is listening!

This essay is a brief response to the commentary by Parker Potter, Jr. (1991) addressing the lack of self-reflection in plantation archaeology. While plantation archaeologists should seriously consider much of Potter’s discussion, it is argued here that Potter is wrong in assuming that African Americans are the main audience for plantation archaeology and that the only way information from plantation archaeology reaches the general public is through direct communication, such as public presentations and museum exhibits. The audience for plantation archaeology divides not along racial lines but intellectual lines. The primary audience is scholars, who then pass on the results of scholarly research to the general public through their teaching activities at universities, colleges, and museums. Therefore, the question that needs to be addressed is, Has plantation archaeology made any contribution to wider scholarship? It is argued here that scholars in other disciplines have found nothing of use to them in plantation archaeology and have, by and large, ignored this research. Plantation archaeologists can make a significant contribution to broader scholarship, but to do this, they need to make their research relevant to other scholars, incorporate the theoretical and substantive developments in other disciplines, and address the questions that no other discipline can answer. Only then will the full potential of plantation archaeology be realized.

Bibliography of slave and plantation archaeology (as of December 31, 1991)

Bibliography of slave and plantation archaeology (as of December 31, 1991)

What is the use of plantation archaeology?

This essay is a commentary on plantation archaeology inspired by a recent article by William H. Adams and Sarah Jane Boling (1989). By asking what is the use of plantation archaeology, this author does not mean to reject this increasingly popular archaeological enterprise. Rather, the purpose is to provoke serious reflection on two issues: (1) the reasons for doing plantation archaeology and (2) the audiences for such studies. The essay has three main parts: a general discussion of the status of self-reflection in plantation archaeology; a specific critique of Adams and Boling’s piece; and a set of four suggestions for improving on Adams and Boling’s work, not by changing their analysis but by paying greater attention to the contexts in which slave-owned ceramics existed in the past and the contexts in which these same objects exist today, as archaeological finds. This commentary is based on critical theory, and on the proposition that, whether it is explicitly interpreted for the public or not, any archaeological project is a public performance. Whenever archaeologists go about their archaeological work, they perform, at the very least, their own training and biases, their sources of funding and support, and the history of their research subjects, a history to which they may have only the most tenuous connections.

Social Responsibility and the American History Museum

Previous articleNext article No AccessForumSocial Responsibility and the American History MuseumEdward A. ChappellEdward A. Chappell Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Winterthur Portfolio Volume 24, Number 4Winter, 1989 Published for the Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum, Inc. Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/496438 Views: 19Total views on this site Citations: 20Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1989 The Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum, Inc.PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article: Object Lesson : James Anderson Blacksmith Shop, 1986–2011: An Appreciation, Buildings & Landscapes: Journal of the Vernacular Architecture Forum 22, no.11 (Apr 2015): 1–9.https://doi.org/10.5749/buildland.22.1.0001David A. Gadsby, Robert C. Chidester Heritage and “Those People”: Representing Working-Class Interests through Hampden’s Archaeology, Historical Archaeology 45, no.11 (Oct 2016): 101–113.https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03376823Barbara J. Little Family Resemblances: A Brief Overview of History, Anthropology, and Historical Archaeology in the United States, (May 2009): 363–381.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-72071-5_21Catherine Kelly, Caitríona Ní Laoire Representing multiple Irish heritage(s): A case study of the Ulster‐American Folk Park, Irish Geography 38, no.11 (Jan 2005): 72–83.https://doi.org/10.1080/00750770509555850Alison K. Hoagland Architecture and Interpretation at Forts Laramie and Bridger, The Public Historian 23, no.11 (Feb 2001): 27–54.https://doi.org/10.1525/tph.2001.23.1.27Eric Gable Making a "Public" to Remake the Past at an American Heritage Site, Museum Anthropology 21, no.11 (Mar 1997): 57–68.https://doi.org/10.1525/mua.1997.21.1.57 The New History in an Old Museum, (Jan 1997): 3–27.https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822398523-001 Imag[in]ing Colonial Williamsburg, (Jan 1997): 28–49.https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822398523-002 Why History Changes, or, Two Theories of History Making, (Jan 1997): 50–77.https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822398523-003 Just the Facts, (Jan 1997): 78–101.https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822398523-004 Social History on the Ground, (Jan 1997): 102–124.https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822398523-005 The Company Line, (Jan 1997): 125–169.https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822398523-006 The Front Line, (Jan 1997): 170–207.https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822398523-007 Picket Lines, (Jan 1997): 208–219.https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822398523-008 The Bottom Line, (Jan 1997): 220–235.https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822398523-009 Notes, (Jan 1997): 237–247.https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822398523-010 Works Cited, (Jan 1997): 249–257.https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822398523-011ERIC GABLE, RICHARD HANDLER After Authenticity at an American Heritage Site, American Anthropologist 98, no.33 (Oct 2009): 568–578.https://doi.org/10.1525/aa.1996.98.3.02a00100Patrick Baty The Role of Paint Analysis in the Historic Interior, Journal of Architectural Conservation 1, no.11 (Jan 1995): 27–37.https://doi.org/10.1080/13556207.1995.10785124Parker B. Potter What is the use of plantation archaeology?, Historical Archaeology 25, no.33 (Sep 2016): 94–107.https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03374153

On plantations and patterns

South’s pattern concept has acquired prominence in archaeological research since its explanation in the late 1970s. Nowhere has this prominence been greater than in plantation archaeology. Unfortunately, the pattern concept is inappropriate for the analysis of plantation remains because its scope is too large and its perspective is mainly synchronic.

Pattern and process in the plantation archaeology of the lowcountry of Georgia and South Carolina

Considerable archaeological research has been conducted on plantations in Georgia and South Carolina’s lowcountry since James Ford’s (1937) pioneering efforts in the 1930s. This work offers perhaps the most comprehensive body of data related to a particular cultural entity yet to be developed in historical archaeology and hence the opportunity to address problems in archaeological method and theory. This paper presents an interpretation of the problems and potential of artifact patterning (South 1977), as it applies to plantation archaeology. It is argued that patterning is determined by a number of factors, including excavation strategy and cultural processes, and that a more critical application of patterning is called for if the concept is to be successfully employed. The variation between the Georgia and Carolina Slave Artifact patterns is discussed in terms of architecture, ethnicity and status, and technological innovations, all of which are considered as potentially influencing the appearance of distinctive Georgia and Carolina slave patterns. Patterning is viewed as a useful organizational tool but one which requires a more critical application if its comparative research value is to be accurately assessed and positively employed.