Glossary

Agency An analytical concept used widely in the social sciences to examine how people either act individually or collectively to influence the social conditions within which they are enmeshed. colonoware Term used to describe a broad category of hand-produced earthenware found on eighteenth-century sites in

Southeastern United States. The term is inappropriate for similar pottery recovered from Caribbean sites.

Diaspora The scattering or dispersal of a people. African diaspora usually refers to the forced dispersal of Africans from Africa to other places in the world, including the Americas, Asia, and Europe.

Ethnogenesis Often defined as the making of an authentic culture. It refers to a process in which a new cultural group emerges from the mixture of two or more, displaced cultural groups.

Panopticon An observation tower or other device used for surveillance. The ideal panopticon is designed so that those being observed never know when or by whom they are being observed. Some panopticons were subtly built into a landscape by placing an owner or manager’s house on an elevated area making it possible to observe field or factory workers in both their living and working areas. Panopticons emerged during the industrial revolution, and emanated from capitalism. They were placed in a variety of institutions, including prisons, factories, even schools.

Archaeologists have conducted investigations of plantations in North America since the 1930s. Early studies, however, were primarily undertaken either to recover archaeological data used in the architectural restoration of plantation buildings or to determine whether or not extant ruins dated to the plantation era. The systematic study of plantations as agricultural factories or settlements that could provide insights into understanding the living conditions and cultural lives of plantation residents began in earnest in the 1970s. Although archaeological studies of plantations were first undertaken in the United States, plantation archaeology is no longer limited to or primarily undertaken within the United States. Archaeologists are studying plantations throughout the world. In the Americas, the Caribbean ranks second to the United States in the number of investigations, and is now a major region for new and innovative studies of plantation archaeology. Increasingly, studies are being undertaken in South America, particularly in Brazil, and preliminary work has begun on haciendas (a type of plantation) in Peru and Argentina.

A plantation is typically defined as an agricultural enterprise in which some form of bound labor produces a crop for someone else that is sold in a market, usually an international one. Philip Curtin uses the term ‘plantation complex’ to include the economic, political, and social order that emanated from the development of plantations. He places the origin of the plantation complex following the Crusades when sugar produced on plantations in the Eastern Mediterranean was sold for consumption in Europe. Plantation archaeology seeks to understand the cultural, economic, political, and social dimensions of the plantation complex through the study of material culture.

In North America, archaeologists have studied numerous, plantations, primarily in the southern United

States and dating from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries, that were engaged in the production of various staple crops: cotton, tobacco, rice, indigo, sugar, and hemp. Despite the diversity in plantations investigated, the work is still uneven as some areas have received a great deal of more attention than others. For example, more plantation sites have been studied in Virginia than any other state while some states like Texas, Alabama, or Mississippi have had very few studies. Although the vast majority of plantations in North America were in the southern United States, archaeologists have begun to study northern plantations in New York and Rhode Island, once a part of the northeastern breadbasket. These plantations produced grains and other food crops often earmarked for provisioning Caribbean plantations.

Most plantation archaeology focuses on the workers, usually enslaved laborers, or tenant-and-wage laborers of post-emancipation plantations. While archaeologists utilize diverse theoretical perspectives, two general ways of conceptualizing plantations predominate. The first framework approaches the plantation as a birthplace of African diaspora cultures. These studies examine identity formation, cultural interaction, and exchange among enslaved people, and with other ethnic and racial groups. A major emphasis of these studies is to interpret the cultural traditions and practices of African diaspora communities; therefore, these studies are more often thought to be studies of the African diaspora rather than strictly of plantations.

The second framework approaches the plantation as a capitalist mode of production, and seeks to untangle the complex social and political relations characteristic of plantation production. These studies analyze the ways in which plantation laborers whether slave or free, were subjugated into subordinate social positions. Some studies highlight power struggles between plantation owners and laborers, as seen in slave/worker resistance to planter hegemony. Most studies of plantation archaeology consider both conceptions of a plantation to some degree, because plantations were at once a capitalist enterprise as well as a setting for the ethnogenesis of African diaspora cultures (see Americas, North: Historical Archaeology in the United States; Americas, South: Historical Archaeology).

Plantations studies in the United States that give primacy to understanding African diaspora interpret a variety of archaeological materials as evidence indicative of African-American identity or cultural practices. Clay-walled housing, handcrafted pottery and pipes, and other objects have been interpreted as exhibiting African influences. Studies of colono-ware (a category of pottery made during the colonial period) have been of paramount importance in developing this line of inquiry. These undecorated earthenwares are found on plantation sites in South Carolina and Virginia. It appears that both Native Americans and African-Americans made colonoware, and those associated with African-Americans were formed into globular shapes that were used for cooking, preparing, and serving food. The use of these wares suggests that enslaved Africans and their descendants influenced some culinary practices on plantations.

Another group of artifacts - pierced coins (possibly worn as amulets), cowries, cosmograms on pottery, even the contents in some below-ground storage pits found in slave houses - have been interpreted as African-influenced religious practices. These objects recovered from slave houses and trash deposits singularly may not have been important, but when combined with the oral testimony left by those who were formerly enslaved, these kinds of objects were used in a variety of African-American conjuring and healing practices that were a part of African-American folk religions.

Some studies of the African diaspora are less concerned with analyzing continuities and changes to African heritages in the Americas, but more in interpreting the everyday lives of Africans and African-American on plantations. While all studies of slave quarters ultimately contribute to the study of slave living conditions, some studies are specifically directed toward the examination of living conditions and enslaved people’s access to personal and household possessions. One goal of these studies is to understand the lived experiences of enslaved people by evaluating slave agency, defined here as the capability of enslaved people to take some control of their situations on their own terms. Examples of slave agency inferred from archaeological findings are seen in efforts of enslaved people to shape their material lives beyond the meager plantation rations and other items provisioned to them. These efforts include: cultivating gardens, hunting, and fishing; recycling broken or discarded objects to make other kinds of tools and implements; crafting objects for sale or for their own use; and purchasing household and personal objects.

In studies of plantation archaeology framed to analyze social relations associated with capitalist production, the layout of plantations and the use of plantation space has been a major focus. This research has shown that social inequalities and hierarchies of plantation societies were incorporated into plantation design. Plantations were designed to maximize productivity and control laborers and, at the same time, appeal to the esthetic sensibilities of the planter class. On some plantations, slave/worker quarters were removed or screened from commanding views of the planter house, gardens, and administrative buildings. Whereas in other cases, a panopticon - a watchtower or some other device - was built into the landscape to observe areas where enslaved people lived and worked at any time. Linear arrangements of slave houses permitted easy access and inspection of premises, and became the standard layout for most antebellum (1830-60) plantations.

Enslaved people responded to slaveholder control of slave living spaces by creating their own sense of space, both inside and outside their dwellings. On many plantations in the Upper South (Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky), enslaved people dug storage pits below earthen floors or floorboards within their dwellings to store food and valuables. On occasion, these storage pits became a source of conflict between slaveholders and enslaved people because slaveholders were concerned that these storage areas were being used to hide pilfered goods. The ubiquitous presence of storage areas, however, particularly in eighteenth-century slave houses in Virginia, suggests that slaveholders accommodated slave laborers’ desire to make and use these pits. Enslaved laborers also designated outdoor places for social gatherings away from the watchful eye of slaveholders and overseers, whenever possible. Archaeologists are just beginning to investigate such places which could be located in or near slave cemeteries, places of worship, or wooded areas not far from slave houses or agricultural fields.

Plantation archaeology continues to grow and provide new and important information on many aspects of plantation life, organization, and production. Current studies are analyzing slave household formation and gender, among other themes. Perhaps the greatest contribution this research has made is to document the lives of enslaved and other bound laborers who left too few written records of their own so that their stories could be told.

See also: Americas, Central: Historical Archaeology in Mexico; Americas, North: Historical Archaeology in the United States; Americas, South: Historical Archaeology.