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Why Teacups?: Assessing Enslaved People’s Use of Teawares in Antebellum Virginia

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Abstract

This article uses a systematic use-wear study and an assessment of absorbed organic residues (using FTIR) to create a robust understanding of how enslaved people used teacups and saucers, focusing on ceramics recovered from the enslaved quartering site at Belle Grove Plantation (Frederick County, Virginia, USA). These analyses show that enslaved people used teacups and saucers for eating and drinking, although more evidence for the use of teawares as tablewares comes from the saucers. While a variety of food may have been eaten from these vessels, at least one saucer from Belle Grove was used to consume cruciferous vegetables. Finally, to address why enslaved people may have used teacups and saucers in this way, the price of these vessels was compared with the price of ceramic mugs and bowls, as well as glass and tin cups using nine merchants’ ledgers from the counties surrounding Belle Grove. This comparison demonstrates that ceramic teacups/saucers were often the cheapest vessels of any material that could serve as a bowl, possibly indicating that the decision to use teawares as tablewares was an improvisation that enslaved people made based on the relative price of teacups and saucers.

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Acknowledgments

Funding for this research was provided by a Pre-Doctoral Fellowship at the Carter G. Woodson Institute for African-American and African Studies at the University of Virginia and by the Roscoe Martin Fund for Dissertation and Thesis Research at Syracuse University. Funding for the Belle Grove excavations was provided by the Wilkins Family Foundation, Roscoe Martin Fund for Dissertation and Thesis Research at Syracuse University, and The National Trust for Historic Preservation’s Battlefield Preservation Fund. Funding for the data provided in the comparative analysis was provided by a National Science Foundation SBE Postdoctoral Research Fellowship (NSF SMA-2204085). I owe an immense debt of gratitude to Pate Brooks and the University of Virginia’s Chemistry Department for giving me the space and equipment to conduct the FTIR analysis. I could not have done this analysis without their generous help. Finally, I want to thank to reviewers for their comments, which greatly improve the arguments presented in this article.

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    Matthew C. Greer

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Greer, M.C. Why Teacups?: Assessing Enslaved People’s Use of Teawares in Antebellum Virginia. Int J Histor Archaeol (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10761-023-00725-3

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