So, this entry is about a recent shift in the way I think about the archaeology that I do, the methods I employ to engage with multiple stakeholders, and the ability to compare my experiences across time and space. This all started when I began to notice that many of the archaeologists around me were starting to talk about this thing called heritage.  I presented a paper at an annual conference sponsored by the UMass Amherst Center for Heritage and Society (CHS) about the recent trends in African Diaspora archaeology. I had incredible exchanges with heritage professionals, archaeologists from around the globe who were using unfamiliar language like tangible and intangible heritage, polylogues (as opposed to monologues), and concepts like sites as extensions of public value. I was shocked to learn how different this new heritage differed from my archaic understanding of what heritage was. It was no longer simply the idea of preservation, the built environment, or a tool for nation building, it was about all people, even those who were often marginalized, neglected and underrepresented.

My formal relationship with CHS began when I became a part of a larger project on Eleuthera, an outer island in the Bahamas. Initiated by a local organization, One Eleuthera Foundation (http://oneeleuthera.org/), CHS became a partner in an effort to identify projects and opportunities to “strengthen Eleuthera’s communities and further the economic, environmental and social development of the island” (http://oneeleuthera.org/). This partnership, already going on for a year, involved community engagement, focus groups with a variety of stakeholders, and historical research. There were several viable components to the project, one of which was the possibility for some archaeology of an abandoned 500 acre plantation on the southern tip of the island. I was drawn by the lure of plantation archaeology outside of the Southern United States. However, I quickly discovered that this trip was not about me initiating excavations at Millars plantation, this thing I now know as critical heritage opened my eyes to see realities of lived experience that had to be addressed before a single shovel or trowel ever touched the dirt.

What I found was an island that did not benefit from constantly docking cruise ships or “all inclusive” resorts scattered across the landscape. I found an island impacted by severe un/underemployment, the invisibility of a Haitian labor class, the negative imprint of failed tourism, steady outward migration, and the political and social involvement of second-home owners. I arrived thinking I was there to help the “community,” without knowing what that really meant. Eleutherans were easy to talk to, I learned a great deal about history, family, connection, in many ways I felt like I was returning to a home I had longed for, but never knew existed. The people looked like me, I could relate to the frustrations of the empty promise of tourism and how it fostered apathy in the minds of young people. I was not the archaeological expert, standing in the center of town as an empty vessel to be used to recuperate the buried past. My role was seeing myself as a facilitator between the elder and the youth, the Eleutheran and the Haitian laborer, the community organizer and the second-home owner. The fading history of the island was held close by those who stayed, those who looked to heritage as the means for a sustainable collective memory. Archaeology could tell a story that chronicles the history of an abandoned plantation, the experiences of post-emancipation life, and possibly provide a narrative that can be powerful enough to reclaim a fading Eleutheran identity, but this project was more about dialogue, about reaching a larger audience on and off of the island. As one informant said plainly, “we need you to help remind us all that we have, because we are sitting on it and take it for granted” (Roderick Pindar, personal communication, 2012). And then I went back home, to Western Massachusetts.

On my return I was invigorated and confused. I had to process the trip, knowing that Eleuthera was forever in my system. I had just scratched the surface on my first trip and I continued to delve, very slowly, into this thing called heritage. It was some months later as we were conceptualizing the 2012 UMass Amherst Heritage Archaeology Field School (http://umassheritagearchaeology.com/), that it struck me. I was starting to see my current site, the W. E. B. Du Bois Homesite, differently. I began to think critically about how I had been defining “community” in Great Barrington. Who were we trying to reach through our interpretation and archaeology? I wanted to employ the idea of local and associated stakeholders, mark the contrast and follow where it took us. I was reminded of how Anna Agbe-Davies articulated the reality that many historical archaeologists enter into engagement with very weak theoretical understandings of community (Agbe-Davies, 2010). And then I had one conversation that would again shift the very foundation of my thinking.

That “local” community I was searching for was not as distant as I had imagined. They were witnesses to a transformed landscape that no longer reflected their generational memories. There was a sense of disconnect from what Great Barrington had become and there was a sense of loss and apathy. Although, it does not involve an African descendant community, in the traditional sense, the Du Bois Homesite is surrounded by a rural, descendant group of people that are not invested in the site that occupies a space in their neighborhood. This local community has experienced a steady outward migration of young people, a politically and socially active second-home owner community, the effects of New England seasonal tourism, and massive un/underemployment. The needs of this local community are different than I initially expected or even considered. This community did not look like me, we didn’t share a collective past, but there is a need for their voices to be a part of the dialogue of how we understand the Du Bois Homesite. Therefore, I am beginning to see the possibility of facilitating a conversation, developing a longer relationship to the site and its surroundings and expanding the story/narrative of life in Great Barrington, in the past, present and future.

From critical heritage I have learned that I am no longer just the expert. I have learned that I can serve as a facilitator for the needs of local and associated communities, use an archaeology that includes dialogues that exposes students to the complications of human interaction and conflict. And how these messy situations can become teaching moments, the means to create sustainable relationships between communities and sites, and how, for the first time in my career, my ability to put those lofty theoretical ideas I have about engagement into practice. Whether it is on an outer island in the Bahamas or a small, plot of land on the South Egremont Plain in rural Western Massachusetts, critical heritage has opened my eyes wide enough to see a lasting value in the work that I to do.

• Agbe-Davies, Anna
  • 2010 “Concepts of community in the pursuit of an inclusive archaeology,” In International Journal of Heritage Studies 16(6):373-389.
• Pindar, Roderick
  • 2012 Personal Communication, Governor’s Harbor, Eleuthera, Bahamas.

What kind of students and research win the award? Mullins concisely described the work of last year’s two recipients and we were curious to learn a little more about Corey McQuinn and Adrian Myers as students. We interviewed McQuinn and Myers and the following is a summary of their responses.

Corey McQuinn, a master’s student concentrating in Historical Archaeology at the University of Albany, researches enslavement in the Northeast, an understudied topic. He examines the Mabee Farm in Rotterdam, New York, and how different archaeological models of enslavement and racialization apply to the Northern context. Through another project focused on the Underground Railroad in Albany, New York, he studies how the construction of a community that supported the Underground Railroad relates to New York’s earlier history as a slave state and its continued economic dependence on enslaved labor corps.

McQuinn working with students at the Schoharie River Center archeological field school in Montgomery County, New York. Dragon site on the Schoharie Creek (2008).

In addition to this academic research, as a project manager for the cultural resource management firm Hartgen Archaeological Associates, Inc., McQuinn says he must be flexible and cover a broad range of time periods and historic contexts. He has worked in a variety of historical contexts, including cemetery excavations, tavern sites, Shaker village sites, farmsteads and industrial contexts. He has also helped to run Hartgren’s youth archaeological field school summer programs, getting students involved in community archaeology.

McQuinn and students screening at Stephen and Harriet Myers house youth field school in Albany, New York, last summer.

The Ed and Judy Jelks Travel Award helped McQuinn attend his first SHA conference, where he presented a paper, met other professionals in his field, including authors of papers and books he has read. A highlight of the conference was getting to know people and learning about work in progress. He finds both the annual conference and quarterly newsletter valuable resources for identifying potential partnerships and opportunities in the future.

Though his three kids, Remember, Beatrix, and Jasper, are his greatest successes, McQuinn also received the New York Archaeological Association’s William Beauchamp Student Award in 1998 and the 1997-1998 Dana Student Internship Grant from Ithaca College. He is looking forward to completing his master’s thesis next semester and his PhD in the future.

Myers excavating at the PoW camp in Manitoba.

A PhD candidate at Stanford, Adrian Myers, learned of the Ed and Judy Jelks Travel Award through attending the SHA conference, SHA business meetings, and from the HISTARCH email listserv. The award enabled him to present a paper, “Dominant Narratives, Popular, Assumptions, and Radical Reversals in the Archaeology of German Prisoners of War in a Canadian National Park” in the session chaired by Michael Roller and Paul Shackel, “Reversing the Narrative.” The paper was about all the surprising and counterintuitive things he encountered while studying the history of Nazi soldiers in a prison camp in Canada during World War II. Long interested in the history of the Second World War, his dissertation research is a historical archaeological study of a prison camp in Manitoba, Canada. Over three seasons of work he and colleagues surveyed, mapped, and excavated portions of the camp. Myers also travelled to Germany and met with three men who had been prisoners of the camp.

Myers has participated in a variety of other projects, including the “Van Project” at the University of Bristol, the Stanford Gymnasium Dig, and Bonnie Clark’s field school at the Granada Relocation Center, a World War II Japanese internment camp in Colorado. He also used free Google Earth imagery to map the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay, assembled and co-edited a book on archaeology and internment camps, did a study on 20th century porcelain electrical insulatorsand also manages to work part-time in CRM archaeology.

Myers interviewing German PoWs in Germany.

Also a recipient of the National Geographic Society Waitt Grant (2009), Myers suggests undergraduate students pursue ideas for projects, even if it seems impossible and incredibly far off, especially if they are passionate about the subject. He suggests finding a supportive graduate program and, with effort the research can probably be done. He also says having an awesome adviser helps.

Both McQuinn and Myers sound passionate about their research and actively pursue opportunities to participate in projects and make connections with their peers in historical archaeology. They recognize the SHA as a resource for students and advise them to participate in the organization by speaking or corresponding with other archaeologists and presenting at conferences. The Academic and Professional Training Student Subcommittee (SSC) is starting a group discussion on student professionalism and the Society for Historical Archaeology. Please become a member of the conversation by joining the SSC Yahoo! group. Email your request to JCoplin@gc.cuny.edu and include your email to join.

We look forward to hearing from you!

The use of virtual world environments to represent archaeological contexts encompasses hundreds of projects around the world and plans for a peer-reviewed multimedia journal are in the works (Bawaya 2010). Early work in the 1990s focused on creating images and video representing prehistoric and monumental sites. In the last decade research has moved towards visualization, or inferring complete contexts from the incomplete data recovered during archaeological research (Barcelo 2002).

Digital storytelling has its roots in a series of workshops in Los Angeles during the early 1990s (Lambert 2009). These workshops proved so successful that a Center for Digital Storytelling (CDS) was created shortly thereafter and remains the national center for working with digital media to tell personal stories (Lambert 2009:1-10). The impulse to share personal lives continues to characterize digital storytelling.

The Development and Destruction of Rosewood

Rosewood was settled in the mid-nineteenth century by a diverse group of people, and experienced rapid economic growth following the Civil War. Rosewood’s population was majority African American by the early twentieth century. By 1910, Rosewood’s population was eclipsed by the neighboring community of Sumner following the construction of a large sawmill complex approximately one mile west of Rosewood.

On New Year’s Day 1923, a white woman in Sumner fabricated a black assailant to hide her extramarital affair with a white man. A white mob formed and headed for Rosewood, encountering the home of Sam Carter. They interrogated Carter by hanging him from a tree by the neck, and when it seemed the mob might release him, a man leveled his gun at Carter’s face and ended the day with Carter’s lynching.

Two days later, whites in Sumner heard (or fabricated) rumors that the black assailant was with Sylvester Carrier. Carrier’s distrust of whites was well-known and before the night was out, two whites lay dead on his doorstep after attempting to set fire to his family’s home. By the sixth of January three other blacks had been brutally murdered and the white mob, now numbering in the hundreds, began the systematic burning of every black-owned home and building in Rosewood. A train was brought through town during this time to pick up women and children, who were hiding in the nearby swamps following the gun battle at the Carrier home. The train took dozens of families to towns like Otter Creek, Archer, and Gainesville where descendants live to this day.

Image of Rosewood’s Destruction (Literary Digest – January 4, 1923)

My decision to investigate digital heritage was motivated by specific questions posed to me by descendants of Rosewood’s community. These began with deceptively simple questions such as “can you show me where my grandfather’s house was located?” These early engagements ranged towards more complex conversations centering on the exploration of new methods for “getting our story” to wider and younger audiences.

Workflow for Creating Virtual Rosewood

The first step in visualizing Rosewood involved reconstructing property boundaries by reviewing thousands of historic deeds in the local courthouse. There are no maps, directories, or other information about Rosewood’s spatial layout. Therefore, geographic information systems (GIS) were used to reconstruct the metes and bounds on hundreds of historic deeds dating between 1870 and 1930. Historic census, aerial photographs, oral histories, and preliminary archaeological investigations were added to the GIS. The resulting dataset  provides the spatial template for the virtual world environment.

Virtual Reconstruction of Carter Home & Blacksmith Shop

High cost and lack of training has, until recently, limited the use of 3D programs for archaeological visualization. Companies are creating educational licensing programs. For instance, Autodesk, the parent company for 3DS Max and AutoCAD, began offering free educational licenses in 2010 at their educational site. The structures were created using 3DS Max and are available as a virtual world environment via a web-based format developed with a game engine. Game engines are used to create video games, and are increasingly used by archaeologists to create interactive virtual world environments of archaeological contexts (Rua and Alvito 2011). Unity 3D was used to export the 3DS Max models to the web. The result is two-plus square miles of virtual land, which re-creates the spatial layout of Rosewood as it existed in 1922. Interpretive signs throughout the virtual world environment tell the story of Rosewood’s development and destruction.

Virtual Rosewood Museum in Second Life

In addition to the web-based virtual world environment, a Virtual Rosewood museum is available in the popular online world of Second Life. The basic design is that of a repurposed, historic building converted to a local history museum. Visitors explore the history of Rosewood through museum-like displays. The Virtual Rosewood Museum continues to attract students, educators, and the general public. In December 2011 I led a two-hour tour to the Virtual Pioneers, a group of educators who regularly meet in Second Life to explore the intersection of online worlds and social justice education.

Virtual Rosewood Museum in Second Life

Visitors to the Virtual Rosewood Museum in Second Life can also watch a 25 minute video exploring Rosewood’s history, which is also available at the VRRP website.

Digital Storytelling and Rosewood’s Heritage

Digital stories can be created with relatively little investment and freely delivered using the internet, making research immediately accessible to more people. The VRRP includes a 26 minute digital documentary (link) exploring the development and destruction of Rosewood, the lives of those who survived through oral histories, and an exploration of the various methods used to document the town.

A particularly touching moment in the documentary occurs when Robie Mortin describes meeting her father for the first time following the 1923 race riot. Mortin’s father recognized early on how the accusation of rape might turn into large scale violence. He sent Robie, who was seven at the time, to a nearby town with her older sister. After hearing about the destruction of Rosewood days later, and failing to meet their father, the two girls assumed the worst. They eventually made their way to Miami working as migrant laborers. Robie Mortin shares what happened one morning when she went to a newly constructed church.

“There was a ditch that separated Riviera Beach from the black neighborhood. There was a bridge across it, and there was a Hearst Chapel AME Church there. They had built that church right on our side of the ditch. So, we, my sister and I, went to church, and would you believe our daddy was there, and we didn’t know where he was, hadn’t seen him in months. We didn’t even know he was still alive, and there he was in the front of that church.” – Robie Mortin (2009)

The author conducting oral history interview with Robie Mortin

The ability of digital storytelling to share touching moments like these with a wide audience is an important aspect of social justice education. Robie Mortin’s words, delivered in her soft, ninety-four year-old voice, touch the viewer in an unmistakable way. The emotional impact of her story demonstrates the trials, and in this one example, happy surprises which make a life scared by trauma bearable.

Discussion and Concluding Thoughts

The creation of a website for my research into Rosewood’s past – including a data warehouse with census records and oral history transcripts -  has led to many unexpected engagements. This includes journalists, interested members of the public, and members of Rosewood’s multifaceted descendant communities. While the newspaper articles bring increased traffic to the VRRP website, it is the other engagements which demonstrate the collaborative potentials of new media for heritage. For instance, one property owner in the area where Rosewood was located contacted me after watching the digital documentary. His property is home to the African American cemetery in operation during Rosewood’s occupation. While allowing descendants to visit their ancestors’ graves, he has kept the property closed to academics after previous researchers  misrepresented his involvement in their projects. At present, myself and Dr. James Davidson of the University of Florida are documenting the property and its value to various descendant communities.

Documenting Rosewood’s African American Cemetery

The creation of new media represents a pedagogical toolkit. The new forms of knowledge produced by the synthesis between historical research and new media accomplish a number of things. It highlights the experiences of descendants and other interested parties, provides tools for critically engaging with history and media, and offers researchers new techniques for crafting the way historical knowledge is accessed and interpreted by others. In many ways, new media offers a new set of tools, ones not found in the master’s house (Lourde 1984:110-113) and potentially very liberating. New media is a constellation of approaches and technologies not regulated by gatekeepers and tradition – although certainly in dialogue with them. Obvious and sizable obstacles to full participation include the manifestation of a digital divide as well as the (re)inscription of negative identity politics (Nakamura 2008) within virtual spaces. Only time will tell if this optimistic viewpoint will produce transformative fruit or if mass standardization will assert itself and crush individual creativity and expression. I have chosen to be optimistic, and hope that the Virtual Rosewood Research Site motivates others to do the same.

References Cited

• Barcelo, Juan A.
  • 2002    Virtual Archaeology and Artificial Intelligence. In Virtual Archaeology, Franco Nicolucci, editor, pp. 21-28. ArchaeoPress, Oxford.
• Baway, Michael
  • 2010    Virtual Archaeologists Recreate Parts of Ancient Worlds. Science 327(5962):140-1.
• Kalay, Yehuda E., Thomas Kvan, and Janice Affleck
  • 2007    New Media and Cultural Heritage. Routledge, New York.
• Lambert, Joe
  • 2009    Digital Storytelling: Capturing Lives, Creating Community. Digital Diner Press, Berkeley, CA.
• Lourde, Audre
  • 1984    Sister Outsider: Essay and Speeches. Crossing Press, Freedom, CA.

In years prior, scholars and students alike have historically discussed the need to create an organization (or institute) to identify and address these social and political concerns as well as foster additional dialogue. However, the low numbers of Blacks in the field thwarted previous attempts to solidify an organization until now. More than four decades after the establishment of the Association of Black Anthropologists and a decade after these publications, the Society of Black Archaeologists (SBA) was established.

The groundwork for SBA was laid in 2011 by a few students at the University of Florida who saw the potential to address some concerns within the field of archaeology. At this year’s annual SHA conference in Baltimore, Maryland a group of Black archaeologists came together to discuss their experiences as racial minorities in the field. The meeting brought together veteran and amateur archaeologists, reaffirming the organizations commitment to promote the development of five goals:

1. To lobby on behalf and ensure the proper treatment of African and African Diaspora material culture.
2. To promote archaeological research and recruit more blacks to enter the field of archaeology.
3. To raise and address contemporary concerns relating to African peoples worldwide.
4. To highlight the past and present achievements and contributions that blacks have made in the field of archaeology.
5. To ensure that the communities affected by archaeological work are not simply viewed as objects of study or informants. Rather, they should be treated as active makers and/or participants in the unearthing and interpretation of their history.

As of right now SBA currently operates as a listserv as opposed to a formal organization; however, it is currently engaged in two new projects. The first project is interested in exploring the history of blacks in archaeology. SBA is working to collect oral histories from individuals throughout the African Diaspora who have had exposure to archaeology. The Oral History Project was created to collect and archive oral history interviews of Blacks in the field to gain a better understanding of the roles and experiences Blacks have had in the past and present. The first interview was with Whitney Battle-Baptiste, an associate professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and can be heard online at the SBA website. Listeners can hear Dr. Battle-Baptiste discuss how her worldview influenced her research, and her humble beginnings in the field of archaeology.

In addition to the Oral History project, SBA members have been working to increase the presence of archaeology in the field of African Diaspora Studies and organized a panel presentation entitled, “Our Things Remembered: Unearthing relations between Archaeology and Black Studies,” at the National Council for Black Studies 2012 annual conference in Atlanta, Georgia. SBA has also been invited to organize an additional panel for the 2012 Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH) convention to be held in Philadelphia this September.

If you have an interest in archaeology and would like to join our listserv please e-mail sbarchaeologists@gmail.com. The organization is still in its foundational stage and we are currently looking for relevant information to post on the website including job openings, internships, field schools, and articles for the blog attached to the website. We are always open to comments and suggestions.

Please check out the SBA website often for updates at www.societyofblackarchaeologists.com or find us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/sbarchaeologists

References

• Franklin, Maria
• 1997a “Power to the People”: Sociopolitics and the Archaeology of Black Americans. Historical Archaeology 31(3):36-50.
• 1997b Why are there so few black American archaeologists? Antiquity: an international journal of expert archaeology 71(274).
• La Roche, Cheryl and Michael Blakey
• 1997 Seizing Intellectual Power: The Dialogue at the New York African Burial Ground. Historical Archaeology 31(3):84-106.
• Singleton, Theresa (editor)
• 1999 “I, Too, Am America”: Archaeological Studies of African-American Life. University Press of Virginia, Charlottesville

Headlines

Archaeologists in Amsterdam have discovered 18th century bone telescopes.

A proposal in Kentucky that would have allowed metal detecting in state parks has hit a roadblock in the legislature.

A man in Virginia received a 366 day sentence for metal detecting on the Petersburg National Battlefield.

Archaeologists have used chemical analysis  to reconstruct the diet of Nelson’s Navy.

Excavations are underway at the Harrington Graded School on St. Simon’s Island.

On the Blogs

An interview by Minelab with Montpelier’s Metal Detector Technician, Lance Crosby. Read more about Montpelier and Minelab’s collaboration in this week’s Current Topics Post.

Katy Meyers takes a look at the chemical analysis conducted on Nelson’s Navy at Bones Don’t Lie.

Digs and Docs suggests that we should value public outreach more in academic circles.

A good conversation about teaching in the classroom and student response to American Diggers at Archaeology, Museums, and Outreach.

Figure 1: The Manor home at Fairfield Plantation (courtesy of the Virginia Historical Society).

In 2000, we started the Fairfield Foundation, a not-for-profit dedicated to archaeological research and public outreach at Fairfield Plantation in Gloucester County on Virginia’s Middle Peninsula. Our first priority was a shovel test pit (STP) survey of nearly 60 acres of agricultural fields and forest surrounding the manor house ruins and adjacent Carters Creek, a tributary of the York River. The goal of the survey wasn’t to confront inadequacies in the study of plantation landscapes; we simply thought it was the best way to begin understanding this historic plantation that we knew nothing about. Over the subsequent 10 years of extensive sampling and focused excavations on the manor house, nearby quarters, and the spaces in between, these 1,500+ STPs remain the basis for interpreting this complex and constantly changing landscape, challenging us to rethink how we study plantations and their inhabitants. Shovel testing is not glamorous, but it is a quick and proven method for large-scale site study, looking more objectively at a landscape without preconceptions of the ‘best’ places to dig. We by no means planned to ignore the ruins of the 1694 manor house (Figure 1), an architectural enigma that had fascinated researchers since the early 20th century; we just assumed that anyone would begin with the large-scale survey if they could. But in searching for comparable, systematic plantation surveys in our region, we realized how rare it was for archaeologists to look beyond the 10 or 20 acres surrounding the manor house.

When archaeologists and historians study these landscapes – particularly how and why they changed over time – most fill in their knowledge gaps with primary documents from later periods projected backwards, with over-used generalizations from rare contemporary documents, and, most often, with assumptions based on little historical or archaeological evidence. These interpretations aren’t necessarily wrong, but they are often based on logical suppositions of how we, in the present, think those in the past would have acted. There is limited evidence to shed light on these  under studied elements of the plantation landscape, and, as a whole, scholars have had little interest in researching them. What we have found, though, is that at Fairfield Plantation (and perhaps elsewhere) these elements reveal the physical evidence for one of the most important periods in the region’s history: the transition from tobacco monoculture to mixed grains and the dramatic and contemporary reorganization of space (See Figure 2). Unfortunately, increasing suburbanization and large-scale development are severely limiting future opportunities to look into plantation landscapes and, with some notable exceptions, few archaeologists are stepping up to the challenge.

Figure 2: STP survey at Fairfield Plantation has demonstrated a changing landscape through four phases from the 17th through 19th centuries. (Figure courtesy of Fairfield Foundation).

Despite widespread development, southeastern Virginia maintains the historical association with plantations and agriculture that defined it for much of the last four centuries. This past is marketed as an invaluable asset to the local economy, and promulgated by many interested residents and descendants. Images of plantations across the tidewater are a vital part of the region’s local identity and the face it promotes to the rest of the state and country. We know that a large 18th-century brick building and terraced garden, surrounding agricultural fields, and occasional barn or slave quarter can each give solitary testimony to our region’s storied past, but these are inherently incomplete and misleading images of plantation life. We cannot expect historic house owners, house museums, and budget-constrained localities, dependent on limited tourist revenue and mired within the prevailing paradigms of plantation interpretation, to push a program of intensive study of the development of the region’s historic landscape. But we, as archaeologists, need to do a better job to confront the wide gaps in our knowledge, to look broadly at landscapes and time, to embrace the 19th century and not just the colonial, and to deal with misconceptions, prejudices, and myths harbored by the public about plantation history. It is our responsibility to better explore the development of these landscapes to fill in the gaps that assumptions have bridged for far too long before the continued development of our region leaves us with only relatively small historic islands surrounding the manor houses of dead rich white men and their families.

Don’t get us wrong – we strongly believe that historical archaeologists have contributed significantly to a greater understanding of the development of specific elements of plantations. We’d like to think that a more comprehensive view of the larger plantation acreage, beyond the manor house, the individual quarters, and the formal gardens, has been as much an essential priority for the many archaeology-focused organizations (private and public) in Virginia as it is for researchers of sugar plantations in Barbados, coffee plantations in Jamaica, or even provisioning plantations in New York and Massachusetts. But looking at the body of research in our region, we realized that despite having seen more projects on plantations than perhaps any other part of the world, systematic plantation surveys numbered exactly two: Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, and his retreat house, Poplar Forest. Various systematic surveys were undertaken in the 1970s and 1980s (Carter’s Grove in James City County and Stratford Hall in Westmoreland County to name two), but these and a handful of others were seldom written up, the data left inaccessible due to time and funding constraints. Other surveys are still trapped in the grey literature, the scope of work and research designs limited by the priorities of clients and the Section 106 process. Some of our most recognizable plantations, including George Washington’s Mount Vernon, are already islands within a sea of development, but still look in the backyards of their neighbors to recover what they can (Pogue 1988; Pecoraro and Cole 2012). Despite recent trends focusing on plantation gardens and the yard areas around domestic spaces, there remains a very real preference by many archaeologists to focus on individual buildings and activity areas associated with abundant material culture and architectural evidence, because these permit a level of detailed interpretation that seems to pay more dividends than digging several hundred STPs or studying difficult to recognize extant landscape features. In a time of limited funding and a growing curation crisis of previously excavated materials, we’d like to think an approach that better serves preservation of cultural landscapes through their holistic (yet less obtrusive) study would appeal to the community of historical archaeologists.

We’re uncertain whether most scholars in our region will expand their gaze beyond the immediate surroundings of a plantation’s remarkable manor homes, nearby ancillary buildings, and quarters, yet we contend that this expansion is absolutely necessary. While these plantation elements are legitimate research foci, and will always provide new information, they did not exist in a vacuum. To know the manor house we must know the quarter; to understand the gardens we must investigate the fields. How can we expect to decipher how warehouses, docks, and barns functioned within the landscape without mapping the roads, fencelines, and field divisions? Do we understand the complicated interplay between plantation and town, or between manor house, court house, and house of worship? Are we satisfied assuming the public, and funding organizations, believe our time is best spent on the search for “cool things” rather than “cool ideas”? Or do we engage with modern residents and descendant communities to add depth and nuance to our research, confront misunderstandings and misrepresentations of the past, and demonstrate the full potential of the discipline to contribute to a better understanding of the past? As recent blog posts on this site have proven, historical archaeologists of other regions have succeeded in these endeavors. The realization that there is much that we do not know, concerning subjects long thought already decided or relatively unimportant, will lead to a broader challenging of the historical narrative and a greater role for historical archaeology in understanding our shared pasts.

Update 2/27/2012

We are encouraged by the response to the blog we posted on February 22nd and are happy to report that, because of this post, we have been contacted regarding additional plantation surveys in our region beyond those we listed. These include the 500-acres surrounding Mount Vernon, the National Park Service’s acreage at George Washington’s Birthplace National Monument, the Lee family plantation at Stratford Hall, and the plantations on Jamestown Island. Many of these are used as internal planning documents, influencing excavation strategies and site development.  Others, by necessity, remain out of public access due to concerns over site preservation. This is not to say that the authors are not encouraging of their use in research by those studying and interpreting plantation landscapes, and many would be happy to share this data.  Ultimately, increased interest in looking beyond the plantation’s core will lead to the greater exchange of archaeological data in addition to refocusing the priorities of plantation studies. If you know of other plantation surveys, please do not hesitate to share them in the comment field or contact us separately.

References Cited

• Pogue, Dennis J.
  • 1988 Archaeology at George Washington’s Mount Vernon 1931 – 1987, Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association Archaeology Department, File Report #1.
• Pecoraro, Luke and Bill Cole
  • 2012 Reanalysis of Two Features at the Potomac Overlook Site, 44FX885, Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association Archaeology Department.