Abstract
The William Green Plantation near Trenton, New Jersey, was built circa 1720 and continuously occupied until the 1960s. The plantation served as a billet for Washington’s Light Cavalry during the Revolutionary War. Archival research has demonstrated the presence of indentured servants and at least one enslaved person on the plantation during the early nineteenth century. Because the archaeological signature of marginalized groups is often difficult to distinguish, an investigation of the attic space was conducted in 2019. At least seven occurrences of intentionally concealed material including a cage crinoline, worn beneath a woman’s skirt, were discovered under the attic floorboards. The concealed items fall in the mid-late nineteenth century time range. However, the items are not likely attributed to indentured or enslaved persons at the plantation. Instead, they resemble the long tradition of ritual concealment in historical homesteads usually associated with folk magic arriving with immigrants from England.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Data Availability
Artifacts are curated at The College of New Jersey Department of Sociology and Anthropology's Anthropology Lab and available for viewing upon request.
References
Ancestry.com. (2022a). New Jersey, US., Deaths and Burials Index, 1798–1971 [database online]. Provo, Utah. Original source: FamilySearch, Salt Lake City, Utah, New Jersey Deaths and Burials, 1720–1971; Accessed January 2023.
Ancestry.com. (2022b). New Jersey, U.S., Birth, Marriage, and Death Records, 1711–1878 [database online]. Lehi, Utah. Original source: New Jersey State Archives, Trenton; New Jersey Birth, Marriage, and Death Records, 1711–1818; Accessed January 2023.
Anderson, J. (2005). Conjure in African American Society. Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge.
Anderson, J. (2008). Hoodoo, Voodoo, and Conjure: A Handbook. Greenwood, Westport, CT.
Augé, R. C. (2022). Field Manuel for the Archaeology of Ritual, Religion, and Magic. Berghahn, New York.
Austrian Firearm Manual. (1856). Das kaiserlich-königlicheösterreichische Infanterie-Feuergewehr. Auf die hohen Vorschriften basirt und zum Gebrauche für den Officier. Vienna.
Becker, M. J. (2005). An Update on Colonial Witch Bottles. Pennsylvania Archaeologist 75(2): 12-23.
Bridges, K. (2020). “Time of a Black Boy:” Slavery in New Jersey and the William Green Plantation. Senior Capstone Project, Department of History, The College of New Jersey, Ewing.
Carskadden J. and Gartley R. (1990). A preliminary seriation of 19th-century decorated porcelain marbles. Historical Archaeology 24(2): 55–69.
Catts, W. P. and Silber, C. H. (2004). Archaeological Data Recovery Investigations at the Beverwyck Site (28Mr256), Vol. 2. Mt. Laurel, NJ. McCormick Taylor.
Cochran, M. D. (1999). Hoodoo’s fire: interpreting nineteenth century African-American material culture at the Brice House, Annapolis, Maryland. Maryland Archaeology 35(1): 25–33.
Cooley, E. F. (1883). Genealogy of Early Settlers in Trenton and Ewing. Old Hunterdon County, New Jersey. W. S. Sharp, Trenton, NJ.
Costello, J. (2014). Tracing the Footsteps of ritual: concealed footwear in America. Historical Archaeology 48: 35–53.
Davies, O. and Houlbrook, C. (2021). Building Magic: Ritual and Re-Enchantment in Post-Medieval Structures. Springer Nature, Cham, Switzerland.
Delle, J. A. (2019). Archaeology of Northern Slavery and Freedom. University Press of Florida, Gainesville.
Eastop, D. and Dew, C. (2003). Secret agents: deliberately concealed garments as symbolic textiles. In Vuori, J. (ed.), Tales in the Textile: The Conservation of Flags and Other Symbolic Textiles. North American Textile Conservation Conference 2003, Albany, pp. 5–15.
Eastop, D. (2006). Outside in: making sense of the deliberate concealment of garments within buildings. Textile 4(3): 238–255.
Eastop, D. (2007). Material culture in action: conserving garments deliberately concealed within buildings. Anais do Museu Paulista: História e Cultura Material Journal of the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil 15(1): 187–204.
Eastop, D. (2016). Garments concealed within buildings: following the evidence. In Hutton, R. (ed), Physical Evidence for Ritual Acts, Sorcery, and Witchcraft in Christian Britain: A Feeling for Magic. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke.
Eighth Census of the United States. (1870). Population Statistics, Mercer County, New Jersey. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC.
Elliott, K. (2009). House renovation: ceiling and frozen pipes. December. Marblehead, MA. http://www.katyelliott.com/blog/2009/12/house-renovation-ceiling-frozen-pipes.html.
Evans, I, Manning, M. C., and Davies, O. (2016). The wider picture: parallel evidence in America and Australia. In Hutton, R. (ed), Physical Evidence for Ritual Acts, Sorcery, and Witchcraft in Christian Britain: A Feeling for Magic. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke.
Fennell, C. (2000). Conjuring boundaries: inferring past identities from religious artifacts. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 4(4): 281–314.
Ferguson, L. (1992). Uncommon Ground: Archaeology and Early African America, 1650-1800. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington DC.
Gabriel, E. (1990). Die Hand- und Faustfeuerwaffen der Habsburgischen Heere (Schriften des Heeresgeschichtlichen Museums in Wien), Österreichischer Bundesverlag, Vienna, pp. 296–99.
Galke, L. (2003). Ritual caches and ethnicity: how do we recognize them and who is responsible for their creation? Journal of Middle Atlantic Archeology 19: 55–66.
Geisler, J. W. (2003). Tracing the Footsteps of Ritual: Concealed Footwear in Quincy, Massachusetts. Master’s thesis, University of Massachusetts, Boston.
Gell, A. (1998). Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory. Oxford University Press. Oxford.
Gigantino, J. (2015). The Ragged Road to Abolition: Slavery and Freedom in New Jersey, 1775-1865. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia.
Green, W. W. (1808). Trenton Federalist, May 2, 1808. Runaway Newspaper Advertisement. Accessed from Early American Newspapers, Series I.
Green, R. R. (1979). Land Along the Shabakunks: Adventures into Ewing’s past from Old Cross Keys to the William Green Farm. Self-Published.
Henrywood, R. K. (1984). Relief-Moulded Jugs 1820–1900. Antique Collectors Club, Woodbridge.
Hoggard, B. (2019). Magical House Protection: The Archaeology of Counter-Witchcraft. Berghahn, New York.
Houlbrook, C. (2013). Ritual, recycling and recontextualization: putting the conceal shoe into context. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 23(1): 99–112.
Jones, L. (2000). Crystals and conjuring at the Charles Carroll House, Annapolis, Maryland. Newsletter of the African-American Archaeology Network 27.
Klingelhofer, E. (1987). Aspects of early Afro-American material culture: artifacts from the slave quarters at Garrison Plantation, Maryland. Historical Archaeology 21(2): 112–119.
Leader, G. M. and Hammer, J. (2019). The first excavations of the colonial William Green House, Ewing, New Jersey and its role as a Revolutionary War billet. Archaeological Society of New Jersey Bulletin 71-73: 187–196.
Leone, Mark P. and Fry, G-M. (1999). Conjuring in the big house kitchen: an interpretation of African American belief systems based on the uses of archaeology and folklore sources. Journal of American Folklore 112(445): 372–403.
Leone, M. P., Fry, G., and Ruppel, T. (2001). Spirit management among Americans of African descent. In Orser, Jr. C. E. (ed.), Race and the Archaeology of Identity. University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City, pp. 143–157.
Lynn, E. (2010). Underwear Fashion in Detail. V & A, London.
Manning, M. C. (2014). The material culture of ritual concealments in the United States. Historical Archaeology 48(3): 52–83.
Manning, M. C. (2012). Homemade Magic: Concealed Deposits in Architectural Contexts in the Eastern United States. Master’s thesis, Ball State University, Muncie, IN.
Merrifield, R. (1987). The Archaeology of Ritual and Magic. New Amsterdam, New York.
Mullins, P. (2001). Racializing the parlor: race and Victorian bric-a-brac consumption. In Orser, Jr., C. E. (ed.), Race and the Archaeology of Identity. University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City, pp. 158–176.
Mullins, P. (1996). The Contradictions of Consumption: An Archaeology of African American and Consumer Culture, 1850–1930. Doctoral dissertation, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
Ninth Census of the United States. (1880). Population Statistics, Mercer County, New Jersey. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC.
Reitz, E. (1987). Vertebrate fauna and socioeconomic status. In Spencer-Wood, S. (ed.), Consumer Culture in Historical Archaeology. Plenum, New York, pp. 101–119.
Rupple, T., Neuwirth, J., Leone, M., and Fry, G-M. (2003). Hidden in view: African spiritual places in North American landscapes. Antiquity 77(296): 321–335.
Sandlin, J. (2023). A Rat’s Nest in George Washington’s Bedroom was chock-full of treasures. https://boingboing.net/2023/05/23/a-rats-nest-in-george-washingtons-bedroom-was-chock-full-of-treasures.html; Accessed June 2023.
Seventh Census of the United States. (1860). Population Statistics, Mercer County, New Jersey. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC.
Short and Ford Architects and Heritage Studies. (1976). Historical Analysis and Feasibility Study, The William Green House, Trenton State College. Division of Building and Construction, New Jersey Department of Treasury, Trenton.
Silber, B., Hsiao, C., and Catts, W. P. (2004). Archaeological Data Recovery Investigations at the Beverwyck Site (28Mr256), Vol. 1. McCormick Taylor, Mt. Laurel, NJ.
Sixth Census of the United States. (1850). Population Statistics, Mercer and Hunterdon Counties, New Jersey. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC.
Springate, M. E. (2014). Double consciousness and the intersection of beliefs in an African American home in northern New Jersey. Historical Archaeology 48(3): 125–143.
Springate, M. E. (2010). The Sexton’s House has a ritual concealment: late nineteenth-century negotiations of double consciousness at a Black family household in Sussex County, New Jersey. African Diaspora Archaeology Network Newsletter 2.
Staples, B. (2001). To be a slave in Brooklyn. New York Times Magazine, June 24, pp. 34–37.
Swann, J. (2016). Shoes concealed in buildings. In Hutton, R. (ed.), Physical Evidence for Ritual Acts, Sorcery, and Witchcraft in Christian Britain: A Feeling for Magic. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke.
Tortora, G. P. and Eubank, K. (2010). Survey of Historic Costume: A History of Western Dress. 5th ed. Fairchild, New York.
Waugh, N. (1954). Corsets and Crinoline. Routledge Theatre Arts Books, New York. http://www.reenactor.ru/ARH/PDF/Waugh.pdf; Accessed Jan 2023.
Weiner, M. (2022). Unfreedom: enslaving in New Jersey through gradual abolition and emancipation. Slavery and Abolition 43(3): 1–19.
Wekselblatt, N. and Leader, G. M. (2023). Excavating enslavement in the Garden State: historical archaeology of an 18th and 19th century plantation near Trenton, New Jersey. Journal of African Diaspora Archaeology and Heritage.
Wekselblatt, N. (2022). The William Green Project: Evidence of Slavery at the William Green Plantation in 19th Century Trenton, New Jersey. Capstone thesis, College of New Jersey, Ewing.
Wilkie, L. (1997). Secret and sacred: contextualizing the artifacts of African-American magic and religion. Historical Archaeology 31(4): 81–106.
Wilkie, L. (2000). Creating Freedom: Material Culture and African American Identity at Oakley Plantation, Louisiana, 1840-1950. Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge.
Acknowledgments
Many thanks to Professor Paul Lockhart of Wright State University for helping to identify the barrel band. The authors wish to thank the Winterthur Museum Conservation Program team, specifically Kate Sahmel, for collaborating on and analysis of the cage crinoline.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of Interests
Authors have no competing interests to disclose.
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
About this article
Cite this article
Leader, G.M., Wekselblatt, N., Greene, L. et al. A Crinoline in the Attic: Ritual Concealment at a Historic Plantation in New Jersey. Int J Histor Archaeol (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10761-023-00711-9
Accepted:
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10761-023-00711-9