Table Of ContentStudies in
HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY
EDITOR
Stanley South
Institute of Archeology and Anthropology
University of South Carolina
Columbia, South Carolina
ADVISORS
Charles E. Cleland
John L. Idol, Jr.
Mark P. Leone
Kenneth E. Lewis
Cynthia R. Price
Sarah Peabody Turnbaugh
John White
ROY s. DICKENS, JR., (Ed.) Archaeology of Urban America: The Search for
Pattern and Process
ROBERT PAYNTER Models of Spatial Inequality: Settlement Patterns in Historical
Archeology
JOAN H. GEiSMAR The Archaeology of Social Disintegration in Skunk Hollow: A
Nineteenth-Century Rural Black Community
KATHLEEN DEAGAN Spanish St. Augustine: The Archaeology of a Colonial Creole
Community
KENNETH E. LEWIS The American Frontier: An Archaeological Study of
Settlement Pattern and Process
JOHN SOLOMON OTTO Cannon's Point Plantation, 1794-1860: Living Conditions
and Status Patterns in the Old South
In Preparation
WILLIAM M. KELSO Kingsmill Plantations, 1620-1800: An Archaeology of
Rural Colonial Virginia
Cannon's Point Plantation, 1794-1860
Living Conditions and Status Patterns
in the Old South
John Solomon Otto
Center for American Archeology
Kampsville, Illinois
1984
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United Kingdom Edition published by
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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Otto, John Solomon.
Cannon's Point Plantation, 1794-1860.
(Studies in historical archaeology)
Includes index.
I. Cannon's Point Plantation Site (Ga.) 2. Plantation
life—Georgia. 3. Excavations (Archaeology)—Georgia.
4. Slavery—Georgia—Condition of slaves. |. Title.
II· Series: Studies in historical archaeology (New York,
N.Y.)
F294.C36087 1984 975.8 83-15784
ISBN 0-12-531060-9
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
84 85 86 87 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To Charles Fairbanks, Samuel Proctor, and Jerry Milanich
■v.
John Couper (1759-1850)
Preface
This volume presents the results of historical archaeological in
vestigations at Cannon's Point, an antebellum sea-island cotton
plantation off the Georgia coast. Because the investigations com
pare archaeological remains at sites once occupied by slaves, over
seers, and planters—people who differed in racial, social, and eco
nomic status—this book will be of value to archaeologists for its
treatment of the problem of status patterning in the archaeological
record. And because the investigations compare the material living
conditions of the plantation's inhabitants, this book will interest
historians concerned with the treatment and daily lives of slaves in
the Old South.
Our understanding of the daily lives of slaves on Old South
plantations was, until quite recently, based upon somewhat unrelia
ble sources. Much of what we knew came from the writings of white
visitors to antebellum plantations, but these elite observers saw only
selected aspects of the slaves' lives. Another source has been a group
XI
Xll PREFACE
of autobiographies of slaves who escaped to the antebellum North.
Some were written by blacks, others were dictated by blacks to white
editors, and most were published in the North as antislavery propa
ganda. The authors were usually young men, craftsmen, and
border-state ex-slaves. Because few slaves from the Deep South,
women, or field hands left autobiographies, these narratives proba
bly were not typical of the lives of many slaves throughout the Old
South. After the Civil War, further information was gathered from
former slaves. During the 1930s, for example, Works Progress Ad
ministration (WPA) interviewers talked to hundreds of former slaves
about their life in the South both before and after Appomattox. The
narrators in the WPA project did include men and women who had
worked as field slaves in the Deep South, but their reminiscences
were all too often marred by lapses of memory, colored by postbellum
experiences, or misconstrued by white interviewers. All these
sources are more or less incomplete and biased. However, in the past
decade or so scholars have begun to develop a source of new infor
mation. Led by Charles Fairbanks of the University of Florida, some
historical archaeologists are now examining the unwritten legacy of
the slaves—their ruined cabins, their lost or discarded tools and
other artifacts, and what is left of their food remains and other
garbage.
The goal of excavating slave cabins—as with most other archae
ological excavations—is to recover tangible evidence concerning the
housing, possessions, foods, crafts, recreation, and lifestyle of the
former residents. Unlike many written sources, which are often di
rected toward posterity, archaeological remains are rarely falsified or
intentionally biased. When they discarded their kitchen garbage 150
years ago, these slaves had no idea that it would eventually interest
archaeologists. Archaeological evidence does have limitations, how
ever. Not all materials survive over time. Clothing, wood, and plants
often decay, whereas iron, ceramics, and bones usually survive. But
by combining the incomplete archaeological record with the in
complete written record, we may achieve a clearer appreciation of
how slaves lived. Our comparison of written and archaeological
sources also permits us an evaluation of the accuracy of the nar
ratives and reports left by plantation owners and white visitors.
We were able to pursue this approach at Cannon's Point, an
abandoned cotton plantation that operated from 1794 to 1861. Can
non's Point contains the ruins of two sets of four slave cabins and
their refuse middens. At one of these cabins we exposed the founda
tions and much of the refuse midden, which contained nonperisha-
PREFACE
Xlll
ble possessions and food remains discarded by two generations of
slaves. Surviving written sources available from Cannon's Point
(and other sea-island cotton plantations) include plantation ac
counts, letters written by the planter family, and descriptions of the
plantation left by such visitors as Aaron Burr, Basil Hall, Fanny
Kemble, and Charles Lyell. The documents attest to the presence of
an elite planter family, the Coupers, and their hired middle-class
overseers on Cannon's Point Plantation. The ruins of houses once
occupied by these two groups were revealed by survey, and refuse
middens were found at the houses of each group. Because planters,
overseers, and slaves differed in racial, social, and economic status,
they enjoyed or suffered differential access to the material wealth of
the plantation—cash crops, food crops, and livestock. Their differ
ential access to material wealth is reflected in the archaeological
record of their material living conditions—house ruins and the dis
carded artifacts and food remains of the middens. The written and
material record of Cannon's Point Plantation thus offers a rare op
portunity not only to examine the material living conditions of the
Old South, but also to observe a substantial example of status pat
terning in the archaeological record.
Acknowledgments
Charles Fairbanks of the Department of Anthropology, Univer
sity of Florida, initiated plantation archaeology with his excavations
at Kingsley Plantation, Ft. George Island, Florida, and Rayfield Plan
tation, Cumberland Island, Georgia. His excellent articles on slave
cabin archaeology were the source of many of the research hypoth
eses in this book. Throughout the long period of research and writ
ing, Dr. Fairbanks generously shared his vast knowledge of histor
ical archaeology.
During the months of analysis and writing, Samuel Proctor and
Jerry Milanich of the Florida State Museum spared time from their
own research. Sam Proctor was especially helpful, relying on his
comprehensive knowledge of Southern history to aid me in locating
historical sources.
Stephen Cumbaa, a highly talented zooarchaeologist at the Na
tional Museum of Natural Sciences in Ottawa, unselfishly offered aid
and encouragement to me as I analyzed the Cannon's Point faunal
xv
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
XVI
remains in the zooarchaeological laboratory of the Florida State Mu
seum. Elizabeth Wing graciously provided me with work space and
access to the comparative faunal collections.
Stanley South, editor of the Studies in Historical Archaeology
series, offered invaluable criticism and advice. Moreover, he encour
aged me to make the needed revisions. In addition, South's numer
ous publications proved indispensable in writing the chapters.
The archaeological research that made this book a reality was
funded by National Science Foundation and Sea Island Company
grants awarded in 1973 to Charles Fairbanks and Jerry Milanich.
The Sea Island Company, of Sea Island, Georgia, the owners of Can
non's Point, also furnished meals and quarters for the archae
ological field crews.
Student crew members of the University of Florida Archeological
Field Schools excavated the plantation sites during the spring and
summer quarters of 1973 and 1974. In addition, Charles Fairbanks,
principal investigator of the Cannon's Point project, and two mem
bers of the spring 1974 field school, Kathy Beidelman and Nina
Thanz, mapped the standing ruins of the Couper house and kitchen
and the overseer's house. Another member of the spring 1974 field
school, Vincent Amanzio, aided me in reconstructing the ceramic
and glass items from the plantation sites.
Because documentary research played a major role in this
study, I thank the staffs of the following institutions for their coop
eration: Margaret Davis Cate Collection, Brunswick Junior College,
Brunswick, Georgia; Southern Historical Collection, University of
North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Georgia Historical Library, Savannah;
Wimberley George de Renne Library, University of Georgia, Athens;
Duke University Library, Durham, North Carolina; Georgia State
Archives, Atlanta; and the P. K. Yonge Library of Florida History,
University of Florida, Gainesville.
I also thank the people who responded to my written requests
for aid: James C. Bonner, Milledgeville, Georgia; E. M. Coulter, Uni
versity of Georgia; Lilla Hawes, Director, Georgia Historical Society;
James Heslin, Director, New York Historical Society; Bobby Frank
Jones, Tennessee Technological University; William D. Posteli,
Tulane University School of Medicine; and William K. Scarborough,
University of Southern Mississippi. Others contributing useful in
formation were James Bagwell, Georgia Southwestern College; K. G.
Berrie, Brunswick, Georgia; Francis A. Lord, Columbia, South Car
olina; and W. H. Parker and Curtis Stevens, of St. Simons Island.
Finally, I am most grateful to Sophie Otto, who typed several
