Community Development and Cultural Creolization Through Food

The Oval Site at Stratford Hall Plantation

Bibliographic Data

ID18952989
AuthorsAlexandra Crowder (0000-0003-1542-1513, AECOM, Burlington, NJ, USA, corresponding author)
Year2020
Volume9
Issue2
Pages148-170
Publication date2020-05-03
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of African Diaspora Archaeology and Heritage (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2161-9441 • E-ISSN: 2161-9468
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/21619441.2021.1878431
OpenAlexW3134949883
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited17

The once-dynamic Oval Site at Stratford Hall Plantation in Westmoreland County, Virginia, is a prime example of how the history of an enslaved community can be lost to time. As an eighteenth-century farm quarter that housed both an overseer and enslaved individuals, the undocumented space was a location of constant cultural interaction and negotiation that, without archaeology, would have remained unknown. An archaeobotanical analysis conducted on plant remains recovered from the site demonstrates how enslaved Africans and African Americans on the site acquired and consumed food, and interacted with the site overseer and slave owners. Identified botanical material suggests that food was both a mechanism and a product of community development, identity formation, and agency assertion. The botanical assemblage further illuminates the multitude of influences and experiences that went into forming new, creolized African American foodways

Archaeology · Assertion · Creolization · Ethnology · Foodways · Geography · Pottery · Social science · Sociology · American History and Culture · Anthropology · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Historical and Cultural Archaeology Studies · History

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Open DOI