About This Project

Archaeologists and historians of slavery know that the foodways of slaves -- their diet, dishes, and social mores of eating -- changed over time for a variety of reasons. Was emancipation one such reason? Did it further change the way people ate in the South? I am studying the foodways of enslaved and recently emancipated people in order to find out.

Ask the Scientists

What is the context of this research?

Archaeologists and historians of slavery know that what people ate changed over time for a variety of reasons (Orser 1998, Singleton 1995). Although recipes and cooking know-how are sometimes passed down, the descendants of enslaved people do not eat exactly the same things as their ancestors. (People in the 19th century did not have electricity or Publix.)

We know that plantation owners provided their slaves with rations; but, we also know that Lowcountry slaves grew some of their own food, gathered nuts and berries, fished, and hunted or trapped wild animals (Zierden and Reitz 2016). We do not know how much the loss of rations associated with freedom might have affected their diet. I want to find out how, and how much, their diet changed as a result of freedom.

What is the significance of this project?

This project will be the first of its kind, a comparison of pre- and post-emancipation foodways on a single South Carolina plantation. It will help historians make broader statements about how and why people's eating changes over time. How people procure, prepare, and dispose of food changes as does their ways of thinking about their foods and food-related activities.

The results of the project will help researchers to understand how Lowcountry cuisine (think shrimp and grits and hoppin' John) came to be the way we know it today. This information will inform us about the daily activities of people who lived through it emancipation, how it effected their daily lives, and how that impacts what we do today.

What are the goals of the project?

This fall I will use archaeology to explore a post-emancipation, tenant settlement site. I will dig shovel tests (small holes) and a few units (big, square holes) to recover the trash left behind by people who used to live there -- animal bones and pieces of broken ceramics. Everything about the work will be documented (soil types and depths, what objects are found and where exactly they were found, etc.). I will then compare the artifacts I find to the artifacts that I already have from the slave settlement site to see if and how the types and numbers of artifacts differ.

Example: If the bone types are different, I will know the slaves and tenants ate different meats.