Archaeology of Enslaved Women’s Resistance in the Great Dismal Swamp

ABSTRACT

Under the conditions of corporate slavery in the Great Dismal Swamp, enslaved women transformed the mechanisms of capitalist exchange into resistance. Archaeological evidence from Dismal Town, a late-eighteenth-century corporate plantation, shows that enslaved women consumed ceramics and clothing adornments that signaled social equality. Their participation in mass consumption was an act of resistive consumption that allowed them to imagine and enact a life outside of slavery, despite their being considered as commodities and exploited for productive and reproductive labor under harsh conditions by the Dismal Swamp Company.

KEYWORDS:

• Women
• resistance
• consumption
• corporate slavery
• Great Dismal Swamp
• archaeology
• material culture
• habitus

Acknowledgements

My investigations of Site 44SK0070 and other sites in the swamp were funded by a Provost Grant and Dissertation Research Grant from the American University, Washington, D.C. I would not have been able to conduct this investigation without the assistance of my advisor, Dr. Daniel Sayers. I appreciate his guidance and support, and his leadership of the Great Dismal Swamp Landscape Study. I would like to sincerely thank Charles Goode from Commonwealth Heritage Group’s Alexandria Regional Office (formerly John Milner Associates) for his expert excavations at Dismal Town, his extensive knowledge of regional and Dismal Swamp history, and for his encouragement and support. Gratitude is also offered to Andy Weir, president of Commonwealth Heritage Group, Dr. Becca Peixotto, Kerri Holland, Joshua Lay, and to all of the undergraduate and graduate students of the 2013 Great Dismal Swamp Landscape Study field school who helped to test various sites within and around the swamp. My appreciation is also given to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for allowing me access to these extraordinary resources. I would also like to thank Dr. Lydia Marshall for the opportunity to contribute to this journal, and Dr. Christopher Fennell and the two reviewers for their constructive critiques and thoughtful suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Cynthia Goode

Cynthia V. Goode, Ph.D., is a principal investigator and laboratory director for the Alexandria Regional Office of Commonwealth Heritage Group. Her current praxis focuses on raising awareness of the role of slavery and white supremacist ideology in the foundations of the U.S. economic and political system and investigating material culture consumption as a form of resistance.