Page 88 - Maryland Historical Trust - Archaeology Colonial MD

figure 30
A tin-glazed earthenware plate fragment, Patuxent Point (18CV271).
86
her marriage posed for her children.54
In his study of earthfast housing in the greater
Chesapeake, Fraser Neiman observed that a period of experimentation was soon followed by the emer- gence of hall-parlor dwellings with end chimneys and direct entries: a trend generally but not perfectly observed in the evidence presented here. Neiman interprets this change as a response to the growing presence of African laborers, the majority of whom were enslaved for life. These laborers along with in- dentured servants were increasingly removed from the planter’s dwelling to detached quarters, yet re- mained in need of a constant surveillance. Direct entries, Neiman argued, created a better viewshed for this surveillance. The dwellings at both Patuxent Point and King’s Reach reflect this adaptive style. At least one outbuilding, perhaps a quarter, ap- pears to have stood behind the dwelling at Patuxent Point. Its only archaeological signature is a small, flat-bottomed storage pit filled with ash refuse. At King’s Reach, a 10 by 20 ft outbuilding thought to have served as a quarter was located adjacent to the dwelling and a second quarter was located some 500 feet east of the dwelling. Both dwellings appear to have had direct entries with the entries facing the quarter yards. King’s Reach, while a relatively flimsy (and short-lived) dwelling, takes its form from de- velopments in England that switched from a “lower
and upper end orientation to a front-and-back ar- rangement,” a shift that not only rearranged service areas but that created a dwelling less “decipherable” from the outside.55
Neiman further argued that bulk process- ing activities (which, in the 17th-century Ches- apeake, included the processing of tobacco, maize, and animal products) were also being moved from within dwellings to spaces detached from the planter’s house, a finding echoed by William Graham and his colleagues. Without more house plans, it is difficult to assess Neiman’s interpreta- tion for Maryland, but the distributions of coarse earthenware ceramics may serve as a reasonable proxy in the absence of house plans. Coarse earth- enwares tend to include utilitarian vessels used in both bulk processing and general household activities: milk pans, bowls, pitchers, and other functional forms (see figure 29). Arranging the sites used in this study chronologically reveals that the proportions of tablewares (plates, dish- es, mugs, jugs, and cups) increases through time while the proportions of utilitarian wares decreas- es (see table 2). This trend, previously recognized by James Deetz in his arguments concerning the rise of the “Georgian mindset,” suggests that the activities for which utilitarian wares are necessary were indeed removed to other spaces. Some util-
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE MARYLAND ARCHAEOLOGICAL CONSERVATION LABORATORY.