Locating Marginalized Historical Narratives at Kingsley Plantation

Landscapes of movement on lowcountry rice plantations

“…Plantation studies have focused on the ways that the manipulation of space was influenced by the environment and intended to increase production and maintain surveillance over enslaved laborers (Singleton, 2001). Additional studies have assessed the ways in which enslaved people created their own spaces within these settings (Armstrong and Kelly, 2000; Flewellen, 2017; LaRoche, 2014; McKittrick, 2011; Weik, 2012). Further investigations have addressed aspects of water on plantations, including drinking water and exchange via watercraft and wharves (Harris, 2014; Hauser, 2017; McKinnon, 2016).…”

“…Interdisciplinary work in plantation studies is one body of literature that has sought to highlight the agency of enslaved individuals in the context of violent landscapes. For example, Ayana Omilade Flewellen (2017) has critiqued dominant plantation perspectives as primarily oriented towards that of the white, male planter as a means of creating a cohesive historical narrative for public consumption. This manifests in bounded spaces, which present the plantation mistress in domestic settings, enslaved inhabitants in domestic and labor settings, and the male plantation owner everywhere.…”

“…Although Mark Hauser (2017: 229) has noted that “water is a tool of ‘management’ linked to states and the consolidation of power,” his work primarily focuses on the idea of Caribbean plantation waterways through drinking water, and points to navigable waterways as a future avenue of research. Many plantation studies (Battle-Baptiste, 2010; Ferguson, 1992; Flewellen, 2017; Hauser, 2011; Hauser and Armstrong 2012; Lenik, 2011; Meier, 2012; Singleton, 2001; Skipper, 2016; Spencer-Wood, 2010; Weik, 2012; Wilkie, 2000) have focused on how landscapes both represent and reinforce power structures, noting that the particular plantation layouts were influenced by the ideologies of the societies that built them as well as their natural environments. While studies of the natural environment have investigated agriculture, terrestrial mobility, disease, and “the spaces between,” they have not addressed landscapes of movement across and through the water (Bates et al., 2016; Swanson, 2012).…”

“…Recent scholarship in plantation studies has engaged with "black geographies" and "geographies of resistance" to critically assess the ways that enslaved and free people experienced shared geographical spaces in vastly different ways (see for example : Flewellen, 2017;LaRoche, 2014;McKittrick, 2011;Weik, 2012). At the same time, there has been an interest in the ways human-environment interactions co-create landscapes, with different degrees of agency (see for example : Bennett, 2010;Haraway, 2007;Jones and Alberti, 2013;Mitchell, 2002;Tsing, 2015).…”

Introduction: New Directions in African Diaspora Archaeology

“…For example, the discovery of the New York African Burial Ground illuminated the hidden slave past in the northern United States and transformed archaeological practice with the demand that practitioners share intellectual power with descendant community members (LaRoche and Blakey ). In addition, the studies of enslaved quarters on plantations like Rich Neck (Virginia), Carter's Grove (Virginia), Poplar Forest (Virginia), the Hermitage (Tennessee), and Kingsley Plantation (Florida) uncovered important evidence of the nature of Black cultural resistance by highlighting the ways that enslaved Blacks transformed foodways or the natural landscape to both preserve and transmit their African roots (Battle ; Battle‐Baptiste ; Davidson ; Fairbanks ; Flewellen ; Franklin , ; Heath and Gary ; McKee ; Mrozowski, Franklin, and Hunt ; Thomas ). Scholars also highlighted the ways that material culture became entangled in processes of racialization and, hence, indicative of racism, racial formation, ethnogenesis, cultural change and retention, or unequivocal acts of resistance like marronage (Bell ; Epperson ; Ferguson ; Leone, LaRoche, and Babiarz ; Mullins ; Sayers ; Weik ).…”