Abstract
Restoration projects at Charleston townhouse properties, both public and private, have provided opportunities for archaeological exploration on a variety of scales. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, these properties were the homes of wealthy planters and merchants and enslaved African Americans, who lived and worked in the service buildings and work yard. The inter-dependence of these diverse occupants, their daily affairs, and the landscape elements under their purview has been revealed in the research of scholars from a host of disciplines, including archaeology. Townhouse compounds included support structures and activity areas required to meet the range of daily life affairs, from the necessary to the luxurious. While the front of the house, and the formal garden, presented a well-ordered façade, the work yard housed the facilities for the necessities of daily life, in an often dirty, noisy, and unordered space. The deliberate separation of space and placement of specialized service buildings and their occupants created an urban landscape suitable to the social values, as well as physical needs, of the townhouse owners. Thus, owner and slave lived in a compound that was physically close, but socially distinct. Archaeological case studies are used here to explore the racial power dynamics embodied in the urban townhouse landscape. The archaeological mixing of material from master and slave is, however, a material reflection of the racial power dynamics played out in constricted urban spaces.
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Acknowledgments
Excavations at 14 Legare Street and at the Miles Brewton house were conducted for the owners, who funded the projects. Their support of archaeological research and preservation stands is outstanding, even in a preservation-minded city such as Charleston. Excavations at the Beef Market were funded by the City of Charleston, as part of a massive renovation of City Hall, built on the site in 1800. Materials from the projects are curated at The Charleston Museum. I am grateful to the historians and architects whose knowledge of the built environment helped with interpretation of archaeological evidence; Tommy Graham, Willie Graham, Bernard Herman, Glenn Keyes, Carl Lounsbury, Richard Marks, Jonathan Poston, Orlando Ridout, and Joe Schmidt. Interpretation of the gardens is the result of conversations with a number of experts; C. Allan Brown, Barbara Heath, William Kelso, and Tim Trussell. Environmental analyses at the sites were conducted by Robert Fosse, John Jones, Lisa Kealhofer, Elizabeth Reitz, and Karl Reinhard. This paper was greatly improved from conversations with Sherene Baugher and Suzanne Spencer-Wood, and particularly from the thoughtful suggestions of two anonymous reviewers.
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Zierden, M. Landscape and Social Relations at Charleston Townhouse Sites (1770–1850). Int J Histor Archaeol 14, 527–546 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10761-010-0124-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10761-010-0124-8