On June 8, four crews of students began excavation of four test units in a location we hope will contain the archaeological remains of a cluster or "quarter" of eight cabins. While the 1860 United States Census tells us that fourteen slave residences were located on the farm of Charles Davis -- housing fifty-one enslaved African-Americans -- the historical record does not provide many clues as to where those cabins were located.
The few clues available suggest that several of these residences were located somewhere to the west/southwest of the main house. The image below (Courtesy, Clyde Seale, published in History of Homes and Gardens of Tennessee 1936), is a sketch map created in 1936. Although the cabins had been gone for several years when this drawing was created and the scale is not precise, it provides at least a hint that some of the slave residences were located in this vicinity. The eight structures circled in blue are labeled "Negro Cabins" on the sketch.
After examining the "lay of the land" to the southeast of the house, we selected what seemed to be the most likely spot for a series of residences. Each of Our four "crews" opened a one-meter square test unit to see if we can find evidence of these missing log buildings. The photograph below shows three of those crews at work -- the four log buildings in the background are slave cabins moved to the Sam Davis Home from another plantation for exhibit purposes in the 1940s.
.
We discovered our first "feature" fairly quickly. In archaeological "jargon," features are evidence of past human activities that disturbed the soil -- things like pits, foundations, chimney bases, postholes and the like. On the left below (circled in yellow) is an orange clay circular feature surrounded by wire loops. The landscape at a place like the Sam Davis Home records the activities of the past 150 years and more -- this feature turned out to be a relatively modern feature that we were able to lift out using the wire basket (the image at right below shows students proudly exhibiting this feature after lifting it out of the ground.
At the same time, our first day of excavations also suggests that we are in the vicinity of some residential buildings. All of the excavation units are yielding discarded objects that are likely to be near these kinds of buildings -- brick rubble, nails, kitchen ceramics, etc. The image below shows the artifacts from one bag from a single unit.
While we're finding a mix of everything from the mid-1800s through the 1900s, the deeper we go, the more artifacts we get from the mid-1800s. The "closeup" below shows fragments of ceramics, buttons, nails, a stoneware tobacco pipe, and others that could well be artifacts from our 1850-1865 slave residences.
Despite the heat, humidity and several visitations from overly friendly bugs of various kinds, we made a lot of progress for just one day in the field. At the close of our first day of excavation, we took a few moments to complete notes of the day's work in our "field house" provided by the Sam Davis Home.
Stay tuned for more exciting discoveries (we hope!).