Abstract
This paper explores the intersections between the structural oppressions and violence of slavery and the social agency of captive people in the US South. In a collaborative partnership of descendant community members, institutional community partners, and archaeologists, this investigation focuses on the oral histories, historical documents, and archaeological material culture of Black women, men, and children associated with the Fanny Dickins plantation. This antebellum plantation is located in the modern 18,000-acre Ames land base near Memphis, Tennessee. Through an intersectional inquiry and praxis, variations in the everyday violence and material humanity associated with plantation geographies are unearthed, helping to reconstruct the historical continuation and influence of slavery from the past to the present.
Résumé de recherche
Cet article est une exploration des intersections entre les oppressions structurelles, la violence de l'esclavage et l'agentivité sociale des populations captives dans le Sud des États-Unis. Dans le cadre d'un partenariat collaboratif entre les membres d'une communauté de descendants, de partenaires d'une communauté institutionnelle et d'archéologues, cette recherche est axée sur les histoires orales, les documents historiques et la culturelle matérielle archéologique des femmes, hommes et enfants noirs liés à la plantation Fanny Dickins. Cette plantation antérieure à la guerre civile est située sur le territoire moderne d'Ames d'une superficie de 7 284 hectares (18 000 acres) près de Memphis dans le Tennessee. Au moyen d'une recherche et d'une praxis intersectionnelles, les variations dans la violence quotidienne et l'humanité matérielle associées aux géographies de la plantation sont mises à jour, contribuant à la reconstruction de la continuité historique et de l'influence de l'esclavage entre le passé et le présent.
Resumen
Este artículo explora las intersecciones entre las opresiones estructurales y la violencia de la esclavitud y la agencia social de las personas cautivas en el sur de los Estados Unidos. En una asociación colaborativa de miembros descendientes de la comunidad, socios institucionales de la comunidad y arqueólogos, esta investigación se centra en las historias orales, los documentos históricos y la cultura material arqueológica de mujeres, hombres y niños negros asociados con la plantación de Fanny Dickins. Esta plantación del período prebélico está ubicada en la moderna base terrestre Ames de 18 mil acres cerca de Memphis, Tennessee. A través de una indagación y una praxis interseccionales, se descubren variaciones en la violencia cotidiana y la humanidad material asociada con las geografías de las plantaciones, lo que ayuda a reconstruir la continuación histórica y la influencia de la esclavitud desde el pasado hasta el presente.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Adams, W. H. (2002). Machine cut nails and wire nails: American production and use for dating 19th-century and early-20th-century sites. Historical Archaeology, 36(4), 66–88.
Alpern, S. B. (1995). What Africans got for their slaves: A master list of European trade goods. History in Africa, 22, 5–43.
Ascher, R., & Fairbanks, C. H. (1971). Excavation of a slave cabin: Georgia, U.S.A. Historical Archaeology, 5, 3–17.
D. Avery, A Visitor Didn't Want to Hear About Slavery on Her Plantation Tour. This Historical Interpreter Has Something to Say About That. (Newsweek, 2019). https://www.newsweek.com/yelp-plantation-michael-twitty-1455983. Accessed 30, July 2021.
Battle-Baptiste, W. (2011). Black feminist archaeology. Routledge.
Bender, B. (2002). Landscape: Politics and perspectives. Berg Press.
Blakey, M. L. (1998). The New York African burial ground project: An examination of enslaved lives, a construction of ancestral ties. Transforming Anthropology, 7(7), 53–58.
Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction: A social critique of the judgement of taste. Harvard University Press.
Bourdieu, P. (1990). The logic of practice. Stanford University Press.
Clinton, C. (1982). The plantation mistress. Pantheon Books.
Collins, P. H. (2019). Intersectionality as critical social theory. Duke University Press.
Collins, P. H., & Bilge, S. (2016). Intersectionality. Polity.
Cottman, M. H. (2017). Shackles from the deep: Tracing the path of a sunken slave ship, a bitter past and a rich legacy. National Geographic Press.
Crenshaw, K. W. (1989). Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: A Black feminist critique of anti-discrimination doctrine, feminist theory, and anti-racist politics. University of Chicago Legal Forum, 1989(1), 139–167.
Crenshaw, K. W. (1991). Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics, and the violence against women of color. Stanford Law Review, 43(6), 1241–1299.
de la Cova, C. (2012). Patterns of trauma and violence in 19th century-born African American and Euro-American females. International Journal of Paleopathology, 2, 61–68.
DiAngelo, R. (2012). Chapter 13: Popular white narratives that deny racism. Counterpoints (Vol. 398, pp. 221–242).
Du Bois, W. E. B. (2010). The home of the slave. In C. Ellis & R. Ginsburg (Eds.), Cabin, quarter, plantation: architecture and landscapes of north american slavery (pp. 17–25). Yale University Press.
Elder, M. (1992). Slave trade and the economic development of 18th-century Lancaster. Edinburgh University Press.
Ellis, C. (2010). Building for “our family, black and white”: the changing form of the slave house in antebellum Virginia. In C. Ellis & R. Ginsburg (Eds.), Cabin, quarter, plantation: Architecture and landscapes of North American Slavery (pp. 141–155). Yale University Press.
Epperson, T. W. (1999). Constructing Difference: The Social and Spatial Order of the Chesapeake Plantation. In T. Singleton, T. (ed.), “I, too, am America": Studies in African America Archaeology, University Press of Virginia, Charlottesville, pp. 159--172.
Farmer, P. (2004). An anthropology of structural violence. Current Anthropology, 45(3), 305–325.
Fayette County Deed Book. (1837). State of Tennessee, Fayette, Tennessee.
Fayette County Census Book. (1850). State of Tennessee, Fayette, Tennessee.
Fayette County Census Book. (1870). State of Tennessee, Fayette, Tennessee.
Fayette County Census Book. (1920). State of Tennessee, Fayette, Tennessee.
Federal Writers’ Project. (1936–1938). Mississippi slave narratives: Slave narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, University of Minnesota Libraries, Archie Givens, Sr. Collection of African American Literature.
Ferguson, L. (1992). Uncommon ground: Archaeology and early African America, 1650–1800. Smithsonian Press.
Fesler, G. (2010). Excavating the spaces and interpreting the places of enslaved Africans and their descendants. In C. Ellis & R. Ginsburg (Eds.), Cabin, quarter, plantation: Architecture and landscapes of North American slavery (pp. 27–49). Yale University Press.
Fitts, R. (2010). Landscapes of North Bondage. In C. Ellis & R. Ginsburg (Eds.), Cabin, quarter, plantation: Architecture and landscapes of North American slavery (pp. 193–222). Yale University Press.
Foucault, M. (1978). The history of sexuality: An Introduction (Vol. I). Vintage Book.
Fox-Genovese, E. (1988). Within the plantation household: Black and white women of the Old South. The University of North Carolina Press.
Franklin, J. (2010). From slavery to freedom: A history of African Americans (9th ed.). McGraw Hill.
Franklin, M. (2001). A Black feminist-inspired archaeology? Journal of Social Archaeology, 1(1), 108–125.
Fried, M. (1967). The evolution of political society: And essay in political anthropology. Random House.
Gabriel, T., and Goldstein, D. (2021). Disputing racism’s reach, Republicans rattle American schools. (New York Times), https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/01/us/politics/critical-race-theory.html. Accessed 26 July 2021.
Gatlung, J. (1969). Violence, peace, and peace research. Journal of Peace Research, 6(3), 167–191.
Gershon, L. (2021) This rare copper badge tells a story of slavery in Charleston. (Smithsonian Magazine), https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/slave-badge-found-charleston-180978055/. Accessed 12 August 2021
Giddens, R. (2019). Mama’s crying. Songs of Our Native daughters, Smithsonian Folkways Recording, Louisiana.
Giddens, A. (1984). The constitution of society: Outline of the theory of structuration. University of California Press.
Giddens, A. (1990). The consequences of modernity. Stanford University Press, Stamford.
Glymph, T. (2008). Out of the house of bondage: The transformation of the plantation household. Cambridge University Press.
Hancock, A. M. (2016). Intersectionality: An intellectual history. Oxford Press.
Haraway, D. (1988). Situated knowledges: The science question in feminism and the privilege of partial perspective. Feminist Studies, 14(3), 575–599.
Hartman, S. (1997). Scenes of subjection: Terror slavery and self-making in nineteenth century America. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hartman, S. (2007). Lose your mother: A journey along the atlantic slave route. Farrar.
Heath, B. J. (2004). Engendering choice: Slavery and consumerism in central Virginia. In J. E. Galle & A. L. Young (Eds.), Engendering African American archaeology: A southern perspective (pp. 19–39). University of Tennessee Press.
Hillard, S. (1972). Hog meat and hoe cake: Food supply in the Old South 1840–1860. Southern Illinois University Press.
Hillard, S. (1985). Atlas of Southern antebellum agriculture. Louisiana State University Press.
Hooks, B. (1984). Feminist theory: from center to margin. South End Press.
Hunter, M. A., & Robinson, Z. F. (2018). Chocolate cities: The black map of American Life. University of California Press.
Hurmence, B. (Ed.). (1984). My folks don’t want me to talk about slavery. John F Blair Publishing.
Hurston, Z. N. (2018). Barracoon: The story of the last “black” cargo. Amistad.
Johnson, W. (2003). On agency. Journal of Social History, 37(1), 113–124.
Jones-Rogers, S. E. (2019). They were her property: white women as slave owners in the American South. Yale University Press.
LaRoche, C. J. (1994). Beads from the African burial ground, New York City: A preliminary assessment. Beads: Journal of the Society of Bead Researchers, 6, 2–20.
Lusby, J. C. (1855). Biennial Report of the Agricultural Bureau, Nashville, Tennessee.
Macdonald, K. C., & Morgan, D. W. (2012). African earthen structures in colonial Louisiana: Architecture from the Coincoin Plantation (1787–1816). Antiquity, 86(331), 161–177.
Mai, E. (2017). Disarming to Disenfranchise: An Archaeological Examination of Gun Possession by Slaves on the Mount Vernon and Monticello Plantations. Master’s Thesis. University of Leicester School of Archaeology and Ancient History, Leiscester
McInnis, J. C. (2019). Black women’s geographies and the afterlives of the sugar plantation. American Literary History, 31(4), 741–774.
McKittrick, K. (2011). On plantations, prison, and a black sense of place. Social and Cultural Geography, 12(8), 947–963.
McKittrick, K. (2013). Plantation futures. Small Axe, 17(3), 1–15.
McKittrick, K. (2021). Dear science and other stories. Duke University Press.
McKittrick, K., & Woods, C. (Eds.). (2007). Black Geographies and politics of place. South End Press.
Meeker, E. (1971). The Improving Health of the United States, 1850-1915. Explorations in Economic History, 9, 353–373.
Meeker, E. (1976). Mortality trends of southern Blacks, 1850–1910: Some preliminary findings. Explorations in Economic History, 13(1), 13–42.
Millward, J. (2013). On agency, freedom, and the boundaries of slavery studies. Labour / Le Travail, 71, 193–201.
Moreland, M. (In press). Living in high cotton: Women (enslaver) plantation owners in the antebellum South. In Kasper, K., and Kus, S. (Eds.), Women as change makers: Materiality, power, and gendered negotiations of social worlds, University Press of Colorado, Boulder.
National Archives. (2019). The district of Columbia Emancipation Act online exhibits. (National Archives), https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured-documents/dc-emancipation-act. Accessed 12 August 2021.
Orser, C. E. (1990). Archaeological approaches to new world plantation slavery. Archaeological Method and Theory, 2, 111–154.
Otto, J. S. (1980). Race and class on antebellum plantations. In R. L. Schuyler (Ed.), Archaeological perspectives on ethnicity in america: afro-american and asian american culture history (pp. 3–14). Baywood Publishing Company Inc, Farmingdale.
Panich, L. M. (2014). Native American consumption of shell and glass beads at Mission Santa Clara de Asís. American Antiquity, 79(4), 730–748.
Parker, K., Horowitz, J. M., Morin, R., & Lopez, M. H. (2015). Multiracial in America proud diverse and growing in numbers. Pew Research Center.
Peeples, M. A., R script for calculating mean ceramic dates and estimating error. (2011) http://www.mattpeeples.net/mcd.html. Accessed 12, April 2018.
Robinson, Z. (2014). This Ain’t Chicago: Race, Class and Regional Identify in the Post-Soul South, University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill.
Robinson, E. (2021). The cold truth about Republicans’ hot air over critical race theory. (Washington Post, 2021), https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/06/28/cold-truth-about-republicans-hot-air-over-critical-race-theory/. Access 34 July 2021.
Rondini, A. (2018). White supremacist danger narratives. Contexts, 17(3), 60–62.
Russell, A. E. (1997). Material culture and African-American spirituality at the Hermitage. Historical Archaeology, 31(2), 63–80.
Samford, P. (1996). The archaeology of African-American slavery and material culture. The William and Mary Quarterly, 53(1), 87–114.
Samford, P. (2004). Engendering enslaved communities on Virginia’s and North Carolina’s eighteenth- and ninteenth-century plantations. In J. E. Galle & A. L. Young (Eds.), Engendering African American archaeology: A southern perspective (pp. 151–177). University of Tennessee Press.
Samford, P. (2007). Subfloor Pits and the Archaeology of Slavery in Colonial Virginia, The University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa. Alabama.
Sears, W. H. (1955). Creek and Cherokee culture in the 18th century. American Antiquity, 21(2), 143–149.
Seidemann, R. M., & Halling, C. L. (2019). Landscape structural violence: A view from New Orleans’s cemeteries. American Antiquity, 84(4), 669–683.
Service, E. (1962). Primitive Social Organization: An Evolutionary Perspective. Random House, New York
Service, E. and M. Sahlins. (1960). Evolution and Culture. The University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor
Sharpe, C. (2016). In the wake: On blackness and being. Duke University Press.
Silliman, S. (2009). Change and continuity, practice and memory: Native American persistence in colonial New England. American Antiquity, 74(2), 211–230.
Smith, J. F. (1991). Slavery and rice culture in low country georgia, 1750–1860. University of Tennessee Press.
Smith, M. T. (2002). Eighteenth-century glass beads in the French colonial trade. Historical Archaeology, 36(1), 55–61.
Spencer-Wood, S. M. (1995). Toward the further development of feminist historical archaeology. World Archaeological Bulletin, 7, 118–136.
Spencer-Wood, S. M. (2010). A feminist framework for analyzing powered cultural landscapes in historical archaeology. International Journal of Historical Archaeology, 14(4), 498–526.
Spencer-Wood, S. M. (2013). Western gender transformations from the 18th century to the early 20th century: combining the domestic and public spheres. In S. M. Spencer-Wood (Ed.), Historical and archaeological perspectives on gender transformations: From private to public (pp. 173–214). Springer.
Spencer-Wood, S. M. (2016). Feminist theorizing of patriarchal colonialism, power dynamics and social agency materialized in colonial institutions. International Journal of Historical Archaeology, 20(3), 477–491.
Stampp, K. (1956). The peculiar institution: Slavery in the antebellum South. Alfred Knopf.
Stanton, L. (2002). Free some day: The African American families of Monticello. Durham, NC: The University of North Carolina Press.
Steckel, R. H. (1979). Slave mortality: Analysis of evidence from plantation records. Social Science History, 3(3&4), 86–114.
Stine, L. F., Cabak, M. A., & Groover, M. D. (1996). Blue beads as African-American cultural symbols. Historical Archaeology, 30(3), 49–75.
Strutt, M. (2010). Slave housing in antebellum Tennessee. In C. Ellis & R. Ginsburg (Eds.), Cabin, quarter, plantation: Architecture and landscapes of North American slavery (pp. 223–232). Yale University Press.
The Rape of Rece Taylor. (2017). Augusta Films, Augusta.
Thomas, B., & Thomas, L. (2004). Gender and the presentation of self: An example from the Hermitage. In J. Galle & A. Young (Eds.), engendering African American archaeology (pp. 101–132). University of Tennessee Press.
Upton, D. (2010). White and black landscapes in eighteenth-century Virginia. In C. Ellis & R. Ginsburg (Eds.), Cabin, quarter, plantation: Architecture and landscapes of North American Slavery (pp. 121–139). Yale University Press.
Vlach, J. M. (1995). “Snug lil’l house with flue and oven”: Nineteenth-century reforms in plantation slave housing. Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture, 5, 1180–2129.
Westmacott, R. (1992). African American gardens and yards in the Rural South. University of Tennessee.
Whayne, J. (2014). Cotton’s metropolis: Memphis and plantation development in the trans-Mississippi West, 1840–1920. In F. Uekötter (Ed.), Comparing apples, oranges, and cotton: Environmental histories of the plantation (pp. 49–84). Campus Verlag.
Wilkie, L. (2000). Creating freedom: Material culture and African-American Identity at Oakley plantation, Louisiana, 1840–1850. Louisiana State University Press.
Wilkie, L. (2003). The archaeology of mothering: An African-American midwife’s tale. Routledge.
Williams, S. C. (1930). Beginnings of western Tennessee: In the Land of the Chickasaws. Watauga Press.
Wood, K. E. (2004). Masterful women: Slaveholding widows from the American revolution through the civil war. The University of North Carolina Press.
Acknowledgements
We recognize and acknowledge that we are on the historic Homeland of the Chickasaw Nation of which they inhabited. Memphis, and all of Tennessee, was the long-established territory for many indigenous peoples prior to their forced removal and unforeseen extinction. We have a responsibility to acknowledge the peoples and histories of these lands. Our ability to live here is the result of direct coercion, forced dispossession, and deliberate colonization. To ignore that is to perpetuate injustice to populations of people that no longer exist in this state yet have established major societies elsewhere in this country. The City of Memphis respects the diverse communities it touches, including those who occupied this territory originally, those brought to it by force, and those who settled here in search of better circumstances. We understand that territorial acknowledgement is only a gesture, but it represents the beginning of our commitment to justice and reconciliation in the USA. We also would like to acknowledge the African and African American communities who were tied to this landscape and created the social, economic, and political landscapes of the South, particularly Memphis. And lastly, the Trustees of Hobart Ames Foundation for their cooperation in the research and providing access to the Ames land base, as well as for their commitment to preserving the history of the land under their management. Lastly, we would like to thank all our Rhodes College field school students (2012–2018) and our research assistants, Molly Webster and Veronica Kilanowski-Doroh, for helping to unearth this dynamic past. We also would like show our appreciation to the peer reviewers, and the editors of this Special Issue, particularly Suzanne Spencer-Wood and Jennifer Trunzo, for their help in editing and fine tuning this collaborative piece of work. Their patience, insight, and input have helped immensely in creating a document that we hope that the descendant communities of the Ames land base would have been proud to have been acknowledged and recognized for their journey in the past to the present.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Kasper, K., Fryer, D., Evans, J. et al. The Intersections of Structural Violence and Social Agency in Plantation Geographies. Arch 18, 161–199 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11759-022-09444-3
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11759-022-09444-3