African American Plantation Life

African American Plantation Life

Thematic Issues in Plantation Archaeology

• Atlantic African Diaspora• Differences between lives of the enslaved vs. lives of free blacks• African-American identity• The effects of racism• Segregation & separate institutions• Accommodation & resistance• Routes to obtaining full US citizenship• Consumption & consumer Choice

Archaeology of Slavery

• in the US southern colonies & Caribbean, slavery closely linked to the phenomenon of the plantation

• earliest work on slave sites in North American historical archaeology initiated by Charles Fairbanks in 1968, with the following themes:

• Evidence of daily life & survival (diet, housing, etc.)• Search for cultural retentions = Africanisms?

Plantation archaeology: a few key published sites

• Kingsley Plantation, Florida • Cannon’s Point, Simon’s Island, Georgia • Butler Island, Georgia • Carter’s Grove, Virginia• Kingsmill Plantations, Virginia• Rich Neck, Virginia• Monticello, Virginia• Andrew Jackson’s Hermitage, Tennessee

Chronological development - 1970s and 80s

• Charles Fairbanks – Pioneering work on plantation sites in coastal Georgia (and Florida) from late 1960s (Fairbanks was at University of Florida)

• South Carolina contract archaeology from mid-1970s developed new approaches and applied pattern recognition to plantation sites.

• In addition, Leyland Ferguson’s study of locally made (S Carolina) colono earthen-wares very influential (1977)

• Virginia lots of work done on early colonial sites and the big houses of planters.

• deposits of enslaved men and women were looked at to interpret their lives behind the ‘big house’ (Ivor Noel Hume - Colonial Williamsburg )

• from mid 1970s studies specifically looked at slavery (Bill Kelso’s work in Kingsmill, Virginia, etc)

Slavery and Plantation Archaeology

Plantation archaeology laid the foundations of African-American archaeology and continues to give it direction; most understandings of African-American life are still derived from plantation studies

The initial intentional studies had two purposes:

1.to provide information on the daily lives or living conditions of enslaved African Americans missing from histories

2.to examine how African heritage influenced African-American culture

Frameworks for Plantation ArchaeologyGenerally one of two approaches:

1. How did the economic function of the plantation organize plantation work?

- how did cash crop requirements or labour arrangements structure the lives of slaves ?

- how did slaves have access to material possessions and provide food and other items for themselves? (see Singleton, Orser)

2. How did economic structure of plantation shape social structures and class relations ?

Frameworks for Plantation Archaeology

A third approach more may be termed the Culturalist framework.

This attempts to looks at plantation social relations beyond purely economic considerations.

Plantation life is defined as a complex of shared experiences formed from the forced interactions of planters and labourers from different cultural traditions looking at interplay of planter domination and resistance

Some researchers focus on perceived African continuities – house forms, ceramic forms and use, ritual

Others study the process of creolization – a process of multicultural exchange and interaction

The Myth of the Negro Past

Melville J. Herskovits (1895 – 1963)

Herskovits was a pioneer in Black studies who with his 1941 work, The Myth of the Negro Past (1990), almost single-handedly dismantled the long-standing belief that people of African descent did not retain any remnants of African culture or beliefs. These cultural retentions were termed by Herskovits to be "Africanisms.”

Kingsley Plantation, Florida, 1814-1900

Charles Fairbanks excavated at the Kingsley Plantation in Duval County, Florida

in 1968. This had been a slave training centre; he hoped to find “Africanisms”

but was not sure what to expect

Kingsley Plantation, Florida

Kingsley Plantation, Florida

Recent work, 2006-07

Charles Fairbanks (1984:2):

"Kingsley had been a slave importer, with perhaps an unusually permissive attitude towards his charges. I had done what appeared to be an adequate amount of research to establish a number of things that I hoped to demonstrate. Among these were the search for Africanisms among the material artifacts of those newly arrived slaves, evidence of adaptation in housing, dress, behavior to the new situation, and data on lifestyle......No evidence of Africanisms was found, even though we were digging in the structures of an unusually permissive slave owner, dealing with newly imported slaves. Belatedly realizing that the slaves came naked and in chains, I still could not understand why they did not recreate some African artifacts."

Cannon’s Point Plantation, Georgia

Cannon’s Point Plantation (1794-1860) St Simon’s Island, Georgia

Cannon’s Point Plantation, Georgia

John Otto (a Fairbanks PhD student) excavated at Cannon’s Point• Instead of looking for residual ‘Africanisms’ he looked for

evidence of status differences• ceramics found at sites associated with slave, overseer, &

master

Millwood Plantation, Abbeville, South Carolina

Charles Orser used a Marxian framework to look at post-bellum tenant occupation at, where he identified five classes of plantation occupants :

landlord, millwright, tenant, servant, and wage labourer.

Orser concluded that material differences between tenure groups were not based entirely upon ethnicity or race but upon one’s position in the plantation hierarchy

Colono WareLeland G. Ferguson

Originally defined by Ivor Noel Hume (1962) as Colono-Indian wares; now believed to have been produced by enslaved Africans

“one of the most visible aspects of African American culture in Colonial America” (Joseph 1993)

Some colono-ware was made into European-styled forms including cups, chamber pots, pitchers, porringers, and pipkins; Ivor Noel Hume suggested that Indians made them to be traded with English settlers.

Another category may be similar to forms important in West Africa. The social meaning of colonowares was investigated by Ferguson (Ferguson, 1989 1991)

Crosses found on pots related to Kongo religion and the making of minkisi or sacred medicines – Congo-Angolan peoples also associated the pots with water; many have been found in water.

Butler Plantation, Georgia

• Theresa Singleton’s undertook PhD research on Butler Plantation

• Examined treatment of slaves at plantation infirmary

• Found evidence for self-medication, and care

Theresa Singleton

• Current research in Ghana and Cuba• Advocates Afro-centric perspective on

the archaeology of the African Diaspora• Notes that Fairbanks’ early efforts

constituted a “moral mission” to remedy gaps in our knowledge

• Observes that contemporary archaeologists of the African Diaspora are more interested in social action• Concern for descendant groups• Interested in getting more African-

Americans involved in historical archaeology

Carter’s Grove, Williamsburg, Virginia

Carter's Grove is a 750 acre site located on the north shore of the James River. The plantation was built for Carter Burwell and was completed in 1755.

Carter’s Grove, Williamsburg, Virginia

Social contestation – reflecting desire to control people and or landscapes. House near the fields and overseerers houses to watch over slave quarters

Carter’s Grove, Williamsburg, Virginia

Carter’s Grove, Williamsburg, Virginia

Carter’s Grove, slaves converted back windows into doors, providing access to common enclosed area within, shielded from view by the cabins (Epperson 1990a:34)

Kingsmill Plantation, Virginia

Kingsmill Plantation

The Utopia Quarter at Kingsmill

Root cellars of storage pits have interested many scholars

Especially prevalent in Virginia (Carter’s Grove, and Kingsmill, and Monticello) Usually 2 x 3ft to 5 x 8ft and 2-4 ft deep.

Not found in Georgia (with 1 possible exception) and South Carolina

Is this African derived – or slaves making their own spaces – or hiding things?

Not a mark of ethnicity, but of status within plantation, with a variety of uses

Sub-floor pits

Kingsmill Plantation

Kingsmill Plantation

Rich Neck Plantation

Interested in development of Afro-Virginian culture. Particular interest in gender issues, women, children, foodways, spiritual beliefs. Advocates an African feminist perspective

Maria Franklin

Rich Neck Plantation

Brick-built houses

Rich Neck was one of the founding plantations of Middle Plantation, preceding Williamsburg. Rich Neck’s architectural sophistication set it apart from nearly all of its colonial neighbours.

Started in 1636 by Richard Kemp, the Secretary of the Colony, the plantation grew to over 4,000 acres in size by the mid-seventeenth century.

Richard Kemp and his wife Elizabeth built two structures entirely in brick, a rarity in 1640s Virginia.

Rich Neck PlantationSlave quarters

Biomass measures reveal that over 3/4 of the potential meat at the site would have come from cattle, pigs, sheep/goat, and unidentifiable large and medium mammals, with cattle forming the largest share. Similar rankings were suggested by the meat weight calculations.

Rich Neck Plantation near Williamsburg

Monticello,Virginia "My opinion has ever been that, until more can be done for them, we should endeavor, with those whom fortune has thrown on our hands, to feed and clothe them well, protect them from ill usage, require such reasonable labor only as is performed voluntarily by freemen, and be led by no repugnancies to abdicate them, and our duties to them."

--Thomas Jefferson, 1814

Monticello, Virginia

Monticello

Monticello

Monticello

Slave dwellings – Mulberry Row

Five log dwellings for slaves were located on Mulberry Row in 1796. The Mulberry Row cabins were occupied mainly by household servants -- women who did the cooking, washing, house cleaning, sewing, and child tending.

The log cabins range in size from 12'x14' to 12'x20 1/2', with earth floors and wooden chimneys.

Archaeological excavations at these sites uncovered the cabin foundations, small brick-lined root cellars (in which slaves stored food and kept personal possessions), and thousands of discarded artifacts.

Monticello

Evidence for four or more architectural phases, spanning the 18th -19th centuries. Two of these phases clearly date to Jefferson's tenure. They are represented by the remains of the "Negro Quarter," built in the 1770s and by the traces of Buildings r, s, and t, dating to the 1790s.

Monticello

Andrew Jackson’s Hermitage

Jackson built a Federal- style, two-story brick dwelling for his family between 1819 to 1821, and lived there from 1837, after retiring from the U.S. Presidency.

Andrew Jackson’s Hermitage

Slave cabins at The Hermitage were a standard 20-foot square cabin for each family unit. Most were constructed of brick, but some were log.

Andrew Jackson’s Hermitage

Andrew Jackson’s Hermitage

Archaeology of African Slavery - trends• Move away from the archaeology of the “Great House of the Big Man” • To the exploration of the lives of the “Big Man’s” slaves• archaeologists see evidence humane treatment by masters• Evidence commonly found:

catted chimneysroot cellars (sub-floor pits)Colono ware

Emerging themes

Atlantic African diasporaAtlantic African diasporaResistanceResistanceCultural resiliency/creolizationCultural resiliency/creolization

• Expressed through Expressed through syncretismsyncretism::• in dressin dress

incorporate symbolism w/dress provided by slave mastersincorporate symbolism w/dress provided by slave masters

• religious syncretismreligious syncretism• recognizing elements of African foodways & food preparation recognizing elements of African foodways & food preparation

techniquestechniques• examining traditional medical practice & hygieneexamining traditional medical practice & hygiene• oral discourse - tales, songs, etc.oral discourse - tales, songs, etc.

Key points

• Fairbanks initiated a new area of research interest when he began excavating slave sites

• Initial interest in “filling in gaps” and answering “what” questions have shifted to “why” and “how” questions and towards social action

• African-American archaeology now one of the most vibrant areas of research in historical archaeology & now includes many archaeologists of African descent