The Archaeological Analysis of Plantation Society: Replacing Status and Caste with Economics and Power

Abstract

In recent investigations of plantation society, Otto and Moore use a model that incorporates status and caste. I argue that these concepts are too vague for plantation studies and must be replaced with a more relevant formulation that includes economics and power. A reconsideration of the data presented by Moore indicates that these last concepts have greater strength in the archaeological analysis of plantation society.The identification of artifacts and artifact groups that indicate class, status, and ethnic divisions in past societies has been, and rightly will continue to be, an important line of investigation for archaeologists. Studies of this kind are important in all archaeology, but this kind of research might be initiated best in historical archaeology because of the added social information provided in historical documents.Within historical archaeology, the plantation has been one kind of site where the investigation of the material associations of past social groups has been especially pertinent, and where such study is particularly illustrative of the problems encountered by archaeologists. Prominence may be given to plantation research if for no other reason than to demonstrate that distinctly different social groups are known to have lived and interacted on plantations. Of course, the most diverse social groups on plantations were planters and slaves.The obvious social differences between slaves and their masters have led some archaeologists to search for these distinctions in the archaeological deposits left by both groups. As the number of archaeologists interested in plantation research grows, and as this line of inquiry becomes more common, the findings made at plantations will assume a more prominent place in general archaeological theory.The purpose of this paper is to address the difficulties archaeologists have had analyzing the relations between plantation social groups by focusing on the recent research of Otto (1975,1977, 1980, 1984) and Moore (1981,1985). An alternative perspective on the plantation is offered, and a different method of analysis is illustrated. The subject of this paper is the antebellum plantation in the American South, but the ideas presented perhaps are applicable to all plantations in the New World. SOCIOLOGICAL PLANTATION STUDIES Even though the archaeological study of plantations is not entirely new (Fairbanks 1983, 1984;Orser 1984), sociologically oriented plantation studies generally have been conducted in cultural anthropology, sociology, and history. In sociology the study of plantation social relations usually is associated with Thompson (1939Thompson ( , 1941Thompson ( , 1959Thompson ( , 1975), Raper (1936), Raper and Reid (1941), and Rawick (1972), and in anthropology plantation research typically is associated with the work of Steward and others (1956), Rubin (1951), Mintz (1959, 1974a, 1974b, 1978), and to some extent Wolf (1959, 1982:278-284, 323-346). Historians who have examined plantations are far too numerous to mention, but notable studies have be...

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