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Excavating the Quiet History of a Providence Plantation

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Abstract

In November 2010, 78% of Rhode Islanders elected not to eliminate the second half of the state’s official name, “Rhode Island and Providence Plantations.” The debate over removing “Providence Plantations” suggests the selective historical memory of both civic leaders and citizens, who have forgotten the impacts and legacy of colonization in the 17th century. During the early settlement of Rhode Island, planting and plantations were explicit tools of European colonization involving many forms of oppression. Evidence from the 17th-century Old House site at Greene Farm, a former plantation in Warwick, Rhode Island, depicts a multicultural landscape and community increasingly dominated by the Greenes, an influential English family. An examination of changes in the documentary record, material culture, and lived environment related to Greene Farm between 1642 and 1711 maps the aggressive use of plantations by English settlers to permanently colonize a place and its original inhabitants, and considers how these acts of “planting” served to reinforce the development and maintenance of their New English identity.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of American Studies, Brown University, Box 1892, 82 Waterman Street, Providence, RI, 02912, USA

    Caroline Frank

  2. Department of Anthropology, Wayne State University, 3054 FAB, 656 W. Kirby, Detroit, MI, 48202, USA

    Krysta Ryzewski

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  1. Caroline Frank
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Frank, C., Ryzewski, K. Excavating the Quiet History of a Providence Plantation. Hist Arch 47, 16–44 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03376897

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