User:Ceparris/Poplar Forest
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[edit]Site A
[edit]This is the newest of the three sites; current scholarship indicates that it was built in the 1830s and was operational until emancipation. Scholars believe that the site was home to a slave cabin likely occupied between 1840 and 1860. Archaeologists have uncovered a 3 ft. pit that would have been located underneath the floor of the cabin, postholes, and remnants of a shone chimney. The excavation at Site A has yielded buttons, straight pins, needles, thimbles, and the bone cap of a needle case; this suggests that this site may have been the home of a seamstress.
In addition, 191 beads have been recovered, with only one made of bone, and the rest from glass. 159 were seed beads, most predominantly found in aqua, turquoise, red and white cased, and white. Though five single beads in dark blue, light blue, black, dark green, and purple were also uncovered, as well as two light green, and four colorless seed beads. The residual thirty one beads were crafted from different glass bead making methods, and were found in three colors. Twenty six were wound glass in black, three were faceted, two black and one purple, and two drawn glass in white.[1]
A Spanish half real had also been excavated, pierced at the top.[2] Beginning in 1965, Spanish reales were standard currency in Virginia, and were considered legal tender from 1793 to 1857 in the United States as a whole. Though, considering the recovered half zeal was found altered, it suggests that the zeal was worn as an adornment object.[2] Historically, both pierced and unpiered coins were worn for protection and security by enslaved African Americans.[3]
References
[edit]- ^ Heath, Barbara; Lee, Lori (2008). The Smallest Things Forgotten: Comparative Analyses of Three Subfloor Pit Assemblages at Poplar Forest. Paper presented at the 41st Conference on Historical and Underwater Archaeology, Albuquerque, NM.
- ^ a b Heath, Barbara; Lichtenberger, Randy; Adams, Keith; Lee, Lori; Paull, Elizabeth (2004). Poplar Forest Archaeology: Studies in African American Life: Excavations and Analysis of Site A, Southeast Terrace, and Site B, Southeast Curtilage (PDF). Poplar Forest Plantation, Poplar Forest, VA: Public Welfare Foundation (published June 15, 2004).
- ^ Baker, T. Lindsay; Baker, Julie P. (1996). The WPA Oklahoma Slave Narratives. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press (published March 1996). ISBN 0806127929.