From Household to Neighborhood: Toward a Community-Oriented Archaeological Approach in the Plantation Chesapeake

Abstract

As Williamsburg became a prosperous urban center, African Americans interacted in dynamic rural plantation neighborhoods that enveloped the city and dominated the landscapes and waterways of colonial and antebellum Virginia. Neighbors, free and enslaved, laid deep ancestral and communal roots within mosaics of local places as they shared in labors and experiences, trials and exploits on grounds that reverberated with the comings and goings of successive generations. Starting from a recently excavated antebellum field quarter and post-Emancipation tenant residence adjacent to Colonial Williamsburg’s Historic Area, this essay asserts that in order to craft more nuanced archaeological interpretations that are based in similar domestic contexts, the types of associated places that typically defined life in plantation communities (places that became entwined with the lives and experiences of generations past and present) must be addressed.