Archaeology at Evergreen Plantation

Archaeology is the study of past human behavior through the analysis and interpretation of the material remains, such as artifacts and features, that people used and then left behind. The study of artifacts, the objects made and used by hnmans, allows archaeologists to reconstruct certain patterns of human behavior. It is these patterns of behavior that inform us about the daily lives of people, such as the African-American slaves and freedmen, who are poorly represented in the documentary record.

Archaeologists excavate the layers of soil found at a site - the stratigraphic record -to learn about the past. Soil layers or strata, contain the remains of objects that people made and used here in the Quarters Are& These objects include ceramics - typically fragments of plates, bowls, dishes and cups, bottle glass, nails and other metal hardware, bones of animals consumed as food, and toys such as marbles and doll parts. Other items include slate fragments, which may have been parts of writing slates, spent rifle cartridges, parts of musical instruments, and buttons, which are often recovered in large numbers at African-American archaeological sites.

Ceramic artifacts are particularly important to archaeologists. Because pottery manufacturers maintained detailed records of when certain ceramic types were produced, archaeologists can use this information to date certain strata they encounter at historic period archaeological sites. In addition, the numbers and variety of ceramic artifacts, as well as glassware, provide information on market access to these items, which in turn relates information on the roles that African-Americans played as participants in the local and regional economy.

Some of the research goals of the African-American Archaeology Research Program at Evergreen Plantation are to determine:

• When the slave quarters were built and occupied
• What kinds of craft items and foods the slaves and freed African-Americans produced in the Quarters Area
• How slaves and freed African-Americans used extramural spaces and modified the landscape in the Quarters Area
• What kinds of foods the slaves ate and how they obtained these foods
• How slave diets compare with those of African-American freedmen
• The manner in which African-Americans negotiated and maintained their relative autonomy in terms of their spiritual and religious belief systems
• The differences that were present in the relative power and status of different African-American households
• The similarities and differences between certain aspects of African-American life along the German Coast and African-American life elsewhere in southern Louisiana and the South.
  

This was made possible by a grant from the Louisiana Endowment of the Humanities administered through the Cultural Resource Management Program at Southeastern Louisiana University.