Zooarchaeological Evidence for Animal Husbandry and Foodways at Sylvester Manor

Creole Materialities: Archaeological Explorations of Hybridized Realities on a North American Plantation

“…The other major archaeological concentration was a large waste pit located southeast of the 1735 Manor House that contained a substantial assemblage of slaughtered pig remains (Feature 221 Figure 4). Analysis of the faunal material from this deposit confirms that it contained the remains of several species including pig, cattle, sheep/goat, and in smaller numbers deer, chicken, dog and raccoon (Sportman, Cipolla and Landon 2007:137). The pig remains represent more than 65% of the entire assemblage from the feature and these represent roughly thirteen large pigs who are estimated to have represented 1300 pounds of meat from a quick slaughtering event (Sportman, Cipolla and Landon 2007: 138).…”

“…Analysis of the faunal material from this deposit confirms that it contained the remains of several species including pig, cattle, sheep/goat, and in smaller numbers deer, chicken, dog and raccoon (Sportman, Cipolla and Landon 2007:137). The pig remains represent more than 65% of the entire assemblage from the feature and these represent roughly thirteen large pigs who are estimated to have represented 1300 pounds of meat from a quick slaughtering event (Sportman, Cipolla and Landon 2007: 138). As rations for a slave population of 100, this amount of meat would have lasted for 3½ months (Sportman, Cipolla and Landon 2007: 138).…”

“…The project is conceived as an interdisciplinary endeavor that relies upon multiple analytical approaches in an effort to provide a detailed portrait of life at the Manor. Beyond the standard excavation and interpretation of building remains and subterranean features such as trash middens, trenches, and waste pits, the project team analyzed material culture (Gary 2007), plant remains (Trigg and Leasure 2007) and animal remains from the site (Sportman, Cipolla and Landon 2007). Specialized techniques such as the use of micro‐stratigraphic blocks (Piechota 2007) enabled us to conduct refined startigraphic analysis which helped to provide tremendous spatial and temporal control over a complex archaeological record that is urban in character (Mrozowski, Hayes and Hancock 2007: 3).…”

“…At the center of the plantation core are several large archaeological deposits one of which is a household midden that accumulated between 1650 and 1735 (Figure 4). The analysis of the animal bone from this deposit points to it being a kitchen midden associated with the main house (Sportman, Cipolla and Landon 2007). It may also contain waste from those outside the main house who may have lived in the attics of barns, stables or other subsidiary buildings as documentary evidence suggests was the case for many enslaved Africans in the northeastern United States (Bankoff et al.…”

Stable-Isotope Bone Chemistry and Human/Animal Interactions in Historical Archaeology

“…Important aspects of animal husbandry include human control over or provisioning of foodstuffs, as well as (though not necessarily in all cases) human control over animal movement. Traditional faunal analyses are not always able to address these key features of the human/ animal relationship--e.g., Noël (2010: 132), Sportman, Cipolla, and Landon (2007), and Tourigny (2009: 166). For this reason, stableisotope analyses, with their capacity to differentiate dietary regimes and mobility patterns at intra-individual as well as intraand interpopulation levels, are ideally suited to answer questions about the potential variety of ways that humans influenced animal diets and movement, and, in so doing, reveal previously hidden aspects of specific human intentions relating to food production and trade.…”