SUMMARY
As a rare surviving example of a 17th-century Virginian house, Bacon’s Castle is often glossed as an isolated architectural artefact, and a backdrop for historical events and ghost stories alike. Yet, the complex life-history that lends it this evocative, distributed character remains underexplored. Likewise, building deposits – like those rediscovered during ongoing reassessment of Bacon’s Castle’s archaeological collection – elicit excitement when associated with ‘magic’ or ‘ritual,’ while their specific contexts and unique materiality go unexamined. Drawing on Peircean semeiotics and assemblage theory, I propose a holistic, contextual archaeology of building deposits from recent historical sites – particularly pluralistic or contested spaces, like colonial plantations.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks to Preservation Virginia for permitting access the site, archives and collections for my research and for allowing me to publish my findings. I am especially grateful to the many current and former staff there who have shared their recollections, knowledge and time, and to the subject matter experts who have consulted on particular finds. Jessica Costello and Rebecca Shawcross, respectively, provided information and insights on ritual concealments, especially footwear. Robert Lyon provided expertise on the dating of paper artefacts. He and Andy Edwards also provided the first-hand account of the concealed cat and expressed interest and encouragement as I bored them with details at various stages. My ongoing research on the Bacon’s Castle plantation builds on extensive work by Nicholas Luccketti, who has generously shared his reports and expertise, as well as workspace and collections access. Matthew Forcier provided invaluable assistance with documentary research; credit for identifying correct editions for the printed artefacts and for locating several names in the 1880 census goes to him. Peighton Young, Dr Ywone Edwards-Ingram and Mr Joseph Jenkins have vastly enriched my understandings of the African and African American history of the area, and I am particularly grateful to Peighton for long conversations about our respective work in Surry County and for providing feedback on this project. Finally, thanks to the many patient, helpful readers who helped make this article better, including PMA and T&F editors and reviewers, Drs Beverly Straube and Grey Gundaker, and especially my dissertation committee chair and mentor, Prof. Audrey Horning.
| ABBREVIATIONS |
| APVA | = | Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities |
| CWF | = | Colonial Williamsburg Foundation |
| HABS | = | Historic American Buildings Survey |
| LOC | = | Library of Congress |
| SCCR | = | Surry County Court Records |
| VA DHR | = | Virginia Department of Historic Resources |
| VA HLC | = | Virginia Historical Landmarks Commission |
| VCLO | = | Virginia Colonial Land Office |
RECORD OF ARCHIVE DEPOSIT
The site, structures and materials described, and represented in the figures, are the property of Preservation Virginia. A report on these materials (as well as the surface finds referenced in the introduction), including a complete finds list, additional images and an appendix containing additional research by Matthew Forcier is on file at their institutional archive in Richmond, Virginia.
SUMMARY IN FRENCH, GERMAN, ITALIAN AND SPANISH
RESUME
Une archéologie des remblais de construction du site de Bacon’s Castle, comté de County, Virginia
Rare exemple encore en place d’une maison virginienne du XVIIe siècle, Bacon’s Castle est souvent considéré comme un artefact architectural isolé, employé comme décor pour des événements historiques et inspire des histoires de fantômes. Et pourtant, l’histoire de vie complexe de ce bâtiment au caractère évocateur reste inexplorée. Des remblais de construction – tels que ceux mis au jour lors de la réévaluation en cours de la collection archéologique de Bacon’s Castle – ont suscité un vif intérêt en étant attribués à un contexte magique ou rituel. Cependant leurs contextes réels spécifiques et leur matérialité unique demeurent inétudiés. A partir d’une théorie d’assemblage et de sémiotiques à la Pierce, je propose une étude archéologique holistique et contextuelle des remblais de construction de sites historiques récents – en particulier des espaces pluralistes et contestés, à l’instar de plantations coloniales.
ZUSAMMENFASSUNG
Die Aufmachung macht’s: Die Untersuchung von Bauablagerungen des Bacon‘s Castle, Surry County, Virginia
Als seltenes, vollständig erhaltenes Beispiel eines Virginia-Hauses des 17. Jahrhunderts, wird Bacon’s Castle oft als isoliertes, architektonisches Artefakt angesehen und dient als Kulisse für historische Ereignisse und Geistergeschichten gleichermaßen. Dennoch wurde die komplexe Baugeschichte, die genau diesen Charakter des Hauses ausmacht, nie weitergehend untersucht. Auch die Baudepots, die bei der laufenden Neubewertung der archäologischen Hinterlassenschaften wiederentdeckt wurden, lösen Begeisterung aus, wenn sie mit „Magie“oder „Ritualen“in Verbindung gebracht werden, ohne jedoch den genauen Kontext näher zu analysieren. In Anlehnung an die Peircesche Semeiotik und Assemblagetheorien schlage ich eine ganzheitliche, kontextbezogene Analyse der Bauablagen der jüngeren historischen Stätten vor – gerade auch in Bezug auf besondere, pluralistische oder fragwürdige Stätten, wie beispielsweise koloniale Plantagen.
RIASSUNTO
Elementi rivelatori: per un’archeologia dei depositi di fondazione nel sito di Bacon’s Castle a Surry County, Virginia
In qualità di raro esempio di casa vittoriana del XVII secolo, il Bacon’s Castle è spesso citato come un manufatto architettonico isolato, che fa da sfondo a vicende storiche e in parallelo a storie di fantasmi. Eppure, la complessa storia che, nella sua interezza, gli conferisce tratti suggestivi, rimane indagata in minima parte. Analogamente, i depositi di fondazione, come quelli riscoperti durante il lavoro di riordino in corso sulla collezione archeologica del Bacon’s Castle, risvegliano interesse quando associati alla sfera ‘magica’ o ‘rituale’, mentre i loro specifici contesti di ritrovamento, e la loro unicità in termini di cultura materiale, non vengono analizzati. Rifacendomi alla semiotica di Peirce e alla teoria dei depositi archeologici, suggerisco un’archeologia che tenga in considerazione il contesto globale rispetto ai depositi di fondazione di siti storici recenti, con particolare riferimento agli spazi pluralistici od oggetto di contesa, come le piantagioni coloniali.
RESUMEN
Asuntos reveladores: la arqueología de los niveles de construcción del castillo de Bacon, condado de Surry, Virginia
El castillo de Bacon es un raro ejemplar sobreviviente de casa virginiana del siglo XVII, aunque a pesar de ello a menudo se considera simplemente como un artefacto arquitectónico aislado y como telón de fondo tanto para eventos históricos como para historias de fantasmas. Aunque la compleja historia por la que ha pasado le confiere un carácter evocador, ésta sigue sin ser estudiada. Además, los niveles de construcción, como los redescubiertos durante la reevaluación de la colección arqueológica del castillo, entusiasman cuando se asocian con "magia" o "ritual", pero los niveles en sí mismos y sus objetos asociados no atraen atención alguna. Basándome en la teoría de conjuntos y la semiótica peirceana, propongo una arqueología contextual holística de los niveles de construcción de yacimientos históricos recientes, sobre todo de los espacios plurales o en disputa, como por ejemplo las plantaciones coloniales.
Rebekah Leslie Planto, PhD Student, Department of Anthropology, William & Mary, P.O. Box 8795, Williamsburg, Virginia 23187-8795, USA [[email protected]]
Notes
1 The site number for the Bacon’s Castle property, the portion of the former plantation under Preservation Virginia’s auspices since 1973, is 44SY0117. “Virginia’s oldest house” is the designation used by Google Maps as of 2020. On their website, Preservation Virginia describes it as ‘the oldest brick dwelling in North America’ (2020); but in site tours they rightly qualify this, as it accounts only for English colonial architecture.
2 On dating of the brick house, see Green, et al Citation2016, 1.3 and 2.1; Heikkenen, Citation1980. Preservation Virginia was previously the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities (APVA) and have owned the Bacon’s Castle site since 1973 (Andrews Citation2001).
4 As described below, these include transfer-printed pearl- and whitewares, as well as one fragment of plain white porcelain.
5 To be precise, the contents of the box labeled ‘architectural finds’ were documented as having been recovered between 1982 and 1984, and those in the ‘surface finds’ box between 1974 and 1977. However, there were two bags from the 1970s whose contents also came from standing structures, and these are included here.
6 On dating of the former quarter, see Green, et al Citation2016 2.51. On its use by into the 20th century, see Young Citation2019, 36-7.
13 For important critiques of these biases, see Manning Citation2012 and Citation2014, and James Davidson Citation2010, respectively. Notable counterexamples in which context is prioritized come from studies of the related (but not identical) phenomenon of subfloor pits in African Diasporic contexts in both the US and the Caribbean, including at several nearby Virginia plantation sites, as touched on later in this piece. Agbe-Davies (Citation2017) studies specific artefacts from subfloor pits to make the point that addressing only symbolic significance is not enough, while Matthew Reeves (Citation2014) emphasizes the role of context in determining whether a deposit should be considered ‘mundane or spiritual.’.
14 Recognition of, and popular interest in the phenomenon locally has risen with the discovery of possible ‘witch bottles’ or similar ‘bottle charms’ (Manning Citation2014), including one recently found in Williamsburg (Gast Citation2020; Jamison Citation2020), which reignited interest in earlier cases (Jean Citation2017). However, to my knowledge to date, none have been the subject of scholarly publications. As suggested below, studies of subfloor pits at sites where enslaved people lived, which explore evidence of both ritualistic and mundane depositional processes, may offer the most relevant comparisons in this case (e.g. Franklin Citation2004; Reeves Citation2014; Samford Citation1998, Citation2007).
17 Horning Citation2018, 6; for a historical archaeology of a colonial context that further develops the assemblage concept, see also Corcoran-Tadd and Pezzarossi (Citation2018) from the same issue of Post-Medieval Archaeol..
22 e.g., Joyce and Pollard Citation2010, 291-2; for an extended discussion of different orders of “assemblage,” see Lucas Citation2012.
38 The main sources for chronologies of Bacon’s Castle remain Kevin Kelly’s Citation1974 report for the APVA called “The Allens of Bacon’s Castle,” and an APVA-published booklet (Andrews Citation2001 [1984]), though other works, as cited throughout this paper, address more specific aspects of the site. My research draws on these, as well as on Surry County’s colonial records, which are remarkably complete for Virginia, where many county archives were destroyed during the American Civil War (1861-65). Various county records from Surry in the 17th- and early 18th centuries have been transcribed and published (e.g., Davis Citation1980; Haun Citation1986; MacDonald and Slatten) and abstracts of colonial land records for Virginia may be found in Nell Nugent’s famous three-volume Cavaliers and Pioneers (Vol. 1 of which is cited here as Nugent Citation1963).
43 Andrews Citation2001, 3-5; Anon. Citation1704/5; The complexities of Bacon’s Rebellion and its significance in contemporary political discourse are far beyond the scope of this paper, but they do bear on the socio-political relations of the plantation context described. The conflict is frequently cited as a landmark event in the early colonial history of both Virginia and what would become the U.S., but perceptions of its significance have changed dramatically in the last century (Billings Citation1969, Citation2004; J. Carson Citation1976; Neville Citation1976; Rice Citation2012). From the mid-20th century onwards, it has been increasingly viewed as both a harbinger and accelerator of shifting labour and class relations, and especially the legal codification of race and racialized slavery and the legacies of these down to the present (Agbe-Davies Citation2015; Tatum Citation2017).
46 This window once hung in Colonial Williamsburg and is a vestige of the idealization of Bacon that persisted through the early 20th century, when the conflict he incited was romantically styled as a forerunner of the American Revolution (Billings Citation1969, Citation2004; Carson Citation1976; Neville Citation1976; Rice Citation2012). The appeal of this narrative was exacerbated by the fact that the two events began exactly one hundred years apart, hence the number of anniversary publications dating to 1976.
47 Note that according to U.S. conventions, ‘first-’ and ‘ground floor’ are synonymous and the ‘second floor’ is one storey above the ground. Room names are based on probate records for the property, e.g., Allen (II) Citation1710; For additional plans and elevations see Andrews Citation2001 and Green et al, Citation2016.
52 Much of this evidence comes from probate- and court documents (e.g. Allen (II) Citation1710; Allen (III) Citation1728), and from architectural assessments, historical reports, and archaeological surveys carried out by and for APVA/Preservation Virginia (Andrews Citation2001; Barrett-Price Citation1998, 47-48; Edwards-Ingram Citation2007; Green, et al Citation2016, 2.16-17; Hazzard and Luccketti Citation2013; K. Kelly Citation1974; Luccketti Citation1978, Citation1984, Citation2016; Young Citation2019). The footprint of the formal garden was identified remarkably intact by archaeologist Nicholas Luccketti and colleagues in the 1980s, through what remains the most extensive excavation carried out at the site to-date.
62 This is evidenced by various county records (Davis Citation1980; Haun Citation1986; Nugent Citation1963), though whether the two families were ever connected by marriage is unclear.
67 See Anderson Citation2004, 115. A key benefit of this term is that it accounts for contingency and fluidity in the definition of ‘households.’ It also acknowledges the role of unequal power relations, and honors the emic perspectives of diverse plantation residents, particularly enslaved people who may have defined their families, households and communities differently from owners or from the law.
71 Room names used here and elsewhere are based on the probate inventories for the property, beginning with Allen (II) Citation1710; see also Andrews Citation2001 and Green Citation2016.
75 Bryan Clark Green personal communic., 2020.
78 C.f. Battle-Baptiste Citation2011, as further explicated below.
85 Robert Lyon 2020, personal communic.; Matthew Forcier identified the specific editions of the printed publications.
86 The Holy Bible Containing the New Testaments Together with the Apocrypha Citation1854.
87 McGuffey’s Newly Revised Eclectic Spelling Book 1846.
88 The Ladies’ Book 1830, suggested by Robert Lyon, personal communic.
89 Chesapeake Bay Program website 2019.
94 Mike Adams and Spencer Siebeck 2019, personal communic.
97 Jennifer Hurst-Wender 2020, personal communic.
98 Mike Adams and Francis Richardson, respectively 2020, personal communic.
101 When Arthur II and Katherine married is unclear, though it was certainly between 1670 and 1681; but the two families were neighbours with social and economic ties going back to the previous generation (Allen (II) Citation1710; Davis Citation1980; K. Kelly Citation1974), and it is conceivable that the brick house—even if commissioned by Arthur I—was part of a joint effort to cement these connections and consolidate local power through the marriage and consolidation of lands.
105 Mike Adams 2020, personal communic.
106 On mourning jewellery, see, e.g., Art of Mourning 2019. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, I have not had an opportunity to further examine or consult on this piece. It appears to be glass, perhaps imitating jet, rather than the real thing. If it can be dated more precisely, perhaps it could be connected to a specific event in the lifecycle of the household.
107 Mike Adams 2020, personal communic.
110 Bookplate reproduced in the introduction to Byrd Citation1966, n.p.
111 Restrictions due to COVID-19 have prohibited me from verifying the makers mark myself at the time of this writing; but the information was reliably provided by Preservation Virginia’s curator, Lea Lane (2020, personal communic.).
112 Mike Adams 2020, personal communic.
113 Burke 2015, 48, 63, 67; Costello Citation2014, 41; Crossland Citation2010, 398, 400; Easton Citation2014, 10-11; Johnson Citation1996, 160-162; E. Kelly Citation2012, 18; Leone and Fry Citation1999, 378; Manning Citation2012, 18, 357-8; Merrifield Citation1986, 128-36.
117 Rebecca Shawcross 2019, personal communic.
119 Carol Weidel 2019, personal communic.
132 The other authors cited on concealed footwear (see note 126) explore this to varying degrees, and I agree with one of the anonymous reviewers of this piece that it is a hypothesis worthy of further investigation in a comparative study, though it is sadly beyond the scope of the present study.
134 This recalls Alfred Gell’s (Citation1998) notion of distributive, fractal personhood, in which a ritual object nested within a household or temple complex is imbued with the same spiritual qualities as the larger assemblage, and also extends the divine agency of the deity it represents to the structure and its community (137-141). I favour the ontological perspective that affect and agency are emergent qualities of relationships (c.f. Harris Citation2014) rather than unilaterally distributed from people to things (as with Gell’s secondary agency) but, at least in this case, the effect is the same.
138 Manning Citation2012, 94; Museum of London Archaeology Blog 2019.
144 The quarter where the intact bottle charm was found is located at Walnut Valley, a former plantation, now part of Chippokes Plantation State Park, which, as the name suggests, has a similar history as well (Robert Hunter 2020, personal communic.).
152 Andrew Edwards and Robert Lyon 2020, personal communic.
156 Blackwater, Surry, VA, Census, Citation1880, 8; Cobham, Surry, VA, Census, 47.
158 Chesapeake Bay Program website 2019; It is possible, even likely, that the lack of these shells compared to oyster or clam in excavated contexts is due to preservation bias, as they are relatively thin and friable.
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