Archaeology Honors Research

Interpreting Sartorial Practices Based on the Archaeological Analysis of the Buttons at Varner-Hogg Plantation State Historic Site

This archaeological work investigates the button collection from Varner-Hogg Plantation in Brazoria County, Texas to interpret the sartorial practices of the enslaved individuals that once labored on the land. This project analyzes a total of 99 buttons which were excavated at Varner- Hogg plantation as a means to interpret the clothing that the buttons might have adorned and the subsequent practices of daily self-making. The research utilizes the theoretical framework regarding identity and its construction through performance and inscription to investigate how enslaved individuals were shaped within spheres of labor, desires for upward social mobility, and threats of racialized violence. I use the archaeological evidence from the buttons to investigate how and why enslaved individuals at Varner-Hogg performed particular dress practices during the 19th century as they strived to create spaces within the most oppressive of contexts in which they desired to distinguish themselves. This project is part of a wider push for community engagement in plantation archaeology and the telling of stories of the enslaved individuals who once lived and labored on the land.

A Zooarchaeological Analysis of Diet and Provisioning Strategies of Captive Laborers at Varner-Hogg Plantation

The experiences of cooking, eating, and dining can be monotonous errands that demarcate the progression of a day or specialized opportunities for socialization and cultural formation and reproduction. Food nourishes the physical body and the spirit, as groups of people gather to eat and share meals with one another at various times and occasions throughout the day, week, and year. The mealtimes, ingredients, dishes, and dining and eating rituals, or the habits that emerge in these moments, are all embedded in the geographic, cultural, and socialstructural environment in which a person is located. This process of obtaining and consuming food constitutes a significant part of a person’s everyday life, a practice embedded with choices, including the meal one chooses to consume, and the strategy used to acquire its necessary ingredients. These choices are also influenced by the limitations of time and resources required to produce a certain meal.

Food, the actual substance referred to on menus, in cookbooks, or in everyday conversation, is a deeply personal aspect of human life shaped by culture, geography, the environment, and social structures. A foodway is a related, but different concept, serving as a lens through which these aspects of food can be understood, and placing emphasis on the social, cultural, and symbolic meaning of food and the processes which produce the meal that appears on one’s plate. Archaeologists study food and foodways from biological, social, and cultural perspectives to learn more about people from the past, because the significance of food-getting, preparation, and consumption varies by community, culture, and time period. Additionally, faunal remains tend to preserve archaeologically, providing researchers with opportunities to understand a critical facet of human life through direct access to food remains, unlike other aspects of life that leave fewer material traces. These studies are pertinent to the archaeology of African American life, particularly in the context of enslavement and other forms of captive labor, because many histories of food and its significance to displaced, oppressed communities have been erased.

Food remains serve as one of the best preserved and most direct ways to access the lives of people who are typically not written about or are understudied. Zooarchaeological analysis of faunal remains (animal bones, teeth, shells, and other preserved body parts) excavated from the ground can help to reconstruct the foods and foodways involved in the lives of African Americans from both the antebellum and postbellum eras. Multiple lines of evidence are required to truly understand African American foodways, but in this thesis I focus on faunal analysis as a starting point to gain fundamental knowledge and lay groundwork for additional studies.

This study continues the work of previous scholars to recover and increase knowledge about the lives and experiences of captive African American laborers through a zooarchaeological analysis of fauna excavated from the Varner-Hogg Plantation. Further, this thesis adds to the study of African American lifeways on plantations in Texas, from which few other sites have been studied. Excavations at the site began in the 1980s and occurred intermittently over a forty-year period, producing a collection of thousands of faunal specimens from various contexts without any examination prior to this study. As the first analysis of fauna from Varner-Hogg Plantation, this research compiles an identified assemblage of over 400 specimens from contexts across the site, with particular representation of contexts associated with captive labor, such as enslavement, convict leasing, and sharecropping. The Varner-Hogg Plantation State Historic Site is located in Brazoria County, Texas in the Gulf Coast region. Long, winding roads lined by live oak trees carrying Spanish moss lead to a site with grassy fields and a trickling creek that may ease the nerves of an unsuspecting visitor.

However, this seemingly peaceful existence contrasts starkly with the history of slavery and other forms of captive labor that occurred on land now neighboring modern suburban housing developments. Varner-Hogg Plantation was firmly entrenched in the political, social, and economic system of slavery and later forms of captive labor in the American South; at one point in its productive lifespan, enslavers forcibly kept between forty and sixty enslaved people living and working at the site.

Leased by Stephen F. Austin to Martin Varner in 1824, the land now known as Varner- Hogg Plantation initially served as a small farm that was also involved in livestock production (Texas Historical Commission, n.d.). In 1834, the land was sold to Columbus R. Patton, who expanded the enslaved labor force and scale of sugarcane production at the site. These enslaved laborers constructed the main house, smokehouse, sugar mill, and the slave cabins or quarters with hand-made bricks (ibid.). Postbellum, the land shifted ownership several times, a period during which systems of convict leasing and later sharecropping, two other forms of exploitative labor that continued the oppression of emancipated African Americans, were utilized to continue business in cotton production and cattle ranching. Eventually, the site was purchased by the family of Texas Governor James Stephen Hogg in 1901, who used the land as a weekend vacation home. In 1958, the daughter of Governor Hogg, Ima, donated the site to the state, prompting its eventual transition into a Texas state historic site. Documentation of and examination into the lives of the oppressed people whose labor produced the physical buildings on the plantation and the wealth of several generations of enslavers and plantation owners is scarce. Only recently has attention shifted from the white occupants of the main house, particularly the philanthropist Ima Hogg, to the enslaved and captive people who lived and worked at Varner-Hogg Plantation.

The current study is located within this wider effort to recover, understand, and reconcile the difficult history of slavery and oppressed labor in which the plantation is entrenched. This thesis begins with an overview of the archaeological literature on African American foodways in Chapter 2, specifically focusing on zooarchaeological studies on plantations and on the complex relationships between food and enslaved and captive labor. Chapter 3 discusses the history of excavations that have occurred at the Varner-Hogg Plantation, the specific faunal assemblage studied, and the methods used to identify and analyze faunal specimens. Chapter 4 presents the results of the analysis, and highlights information about the preservation and identifiability of the assemblage, the taxonomic representation, the breakdown of wild versus domestic species and medium versus large mammals, and a taphonomic analysis of the survivorship of skeletal elements and the distribution of cut marks on medium and large mammals. Finally, Chapter 5 discusses these results, investigating the potential dietary elements and provisioning strategies involved in the foodways of captive laborers at Varner-Hogg Plantation, and outlining opportunities for future research to build upon the current dataset.

Exhibiting a Hidden History: An Analysis of the Presentations of Slavery at Southeast Texas Plantation Heritage Museums

On May 25, 2020, a Black man named George Floyd was killed by a White police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Another death in a horrific history of Black people losing their lives to police violence, this event sparked protests against racial injustice across the country, from New York City to Hays, Kansas (Hatzipanagos et al. 2021, Taylor 2021). Although pushes for racial justice have been ongoing for decades, 2020 marked a turning point with a new wave of the Black Lives Matter movement. Almost two years later, George Floyd’s murder continues to inspire activists to fight for racial justice in their workplaces, schools, and governments. These racial justice sentiments permeated many different aspects of life for people in the United States, including students at Rice University. In June 2020, a petition to remove the statue of William Marsh Rice was circulated among Rice University circles, garnering over 2,000 signatures (Morgan 2020). The statue of William Marsh Rice, the founder of Rice University and a man who enslaved 15 people, was seen as a representation of racist sentiments embedded into the university’s history. Following months of daily sit-ins in protest of the statue, a recommendation to remove the statue by the Task Force on Slavery, Segregation, and Racial Injustice, and a resolution to remove the statue passed the Student Association, Rice University recently announced that the statue would be moved from its current location to elsewhere in the academic quadrangle (Arif 2021; Task Force on Slavery, Segregation, and Racial Injustice 2021; Zhao 2022). More changes pertaining to the racist history connected to William Marsh Rice have included removing the name “Willy” from events and locations to dissociate from the founder of the university and the ideals he vocalized (Gordy 2022, Morgan 2021). As a student at Rice University, all of these recent events have been at the forefront of my thoughts and have inspired me to connect my studies to issues of racial justice.

This thesis works to critically assess the current presentations of slavery in plantation heritage museums and offer suggestions to improve those presentations that are lacking. Recently, museums more broadly have come under scrutiny following the 2020 racial justice protests. Racial injustice criticisms of museums have taken shape in a variety of avenues. Exhibits, collections, histories, and staff demographics have all been targeted for reinforcing legacies of racism and colonialism, the former especially so in the United States (Trouillot 2020, Pogrebin 2021, McGlone and Smee 2020, Miranda 2020, Markham 2020). Many recentcriticisms have pointed to structural issues behind the lack of action from museums in response to public disparagement. The focus of the disapproval stems from present-day racism in exhibitions and staff diversity and inclusion rather than the racism embedded in the past decisions of museums in acquiring pieces for their collections. This public outcry is a turning point for museums to move past empty statements about diversity and make concerted efforts to be anti-racist in their exhibit curations, hiring decisions, staff training, collection management, and all other museum decisions. Although many museums have been scrutinized during this wake of racial justice protests, the American Museum of Natural History in New York City has responded to this scrutiny with decisive action. Several protests were organized against this museum due to the statue of Theodore Roosevelt that had stood in front of the museum for decades. This statue features Roosevelt on a horse with an African man and a Native American man on either side of him. Long considered a monument to racism and colonialism, calls to remove the statue were recently put into action, and the relocation of the statue began in January of this year (Small 2022). The decision to agree to the removal of the statue optimistically points to future relationships between museums and protesters of racial injustice. With the impact of the 2020 racial justice protests affecting museums and prompting changes at these places, a new question arises: why have these criticisms and changes not affected plantation heritage museums? In this thesis, I define a plantation heritage museum or site (terms used interchangeably) as a site that publicly interprets the history of a specific plantation from the antebellum period. As places that are inextricably entangled with slavery and racism, it seems only natural that calls for racial justice be applied at these plantation heritage museums. Unfortunately, most criticisms of these museums come from academics conducting research (Adamkiewicz 2016; Alderman and Campbell 2008; Carter et al. 2014; Eichstedt and Small 2001; Moody and Small 2019) rather than from visitors or popular media. Without public pressure, it is uncertain whether plantation heritage sites will be inclined to change outdated historical narratives to be more representative. However, it is my hope that the research I conduct in this thesis will inspire my studied sites to revisit their public history interpretations and make changes to improve their presented narratives.

In my thesis, I look specifically at four plantation heritage museums in Southeast Texas (Barrington Plantation, Varner-Hogg Plantation, Lake Jackson Plantation, and Levi Jordan Plantation) and assess their representations of slavery, whether they be accurate and extensive, misinformed and scarce, or somewhere in between. After analyzing the current state of the narratives at these plantation heritage museums, I use this information to create my own recommendations and examples for future exhibits. My work falls within a wider discipline of plantation heritage studies, which encompasses a variety of research topics, including inaccurate presentations of slavery, the importance of narratives, the importance of archaeology, and use of artifacts. My research builds upon these themes while offering a unique contribution to prior literature through new analysis of previously unstudied sites in the under-researched geographical and temporal area of antebellum Texas.

Employing Antiracist Tenets in the Archaeology and Heritage Management Practices at Varner-Hogg Plantation State Historic Site

This archaeological and cultural heritage project investigates Varner-Hogg Plantation in Brazoria County, the fifth-largest sugar producing mill in the largest sugar producing county in Texas and a State Historic Site for heritage tourism. It critically analyzes theoretical frameworks implemented in the archaeology of slavery and the heritage management of plantation sites, and draws upon the recent developments in antiracism to reflect on future trajectories. By defining and implementing antiracist tenets, the research recognizes problems with past approaches in archaeological practice and heritage management, outlines current trends that embrace this new approach, and offers suggestions for future investigations. This project supplements its theoretical research with two analyses: a study of a transferware ceramic collection excavated from a slave quarter at Varner-Hogg that investigates the enslaved community; and a heritage management project that creates a new walking tour for the site to show how antiracist tenets can be applied to public history and the presentation of archaeological results.

The Material Culture of Enslaved Childhood and the Stories It Tells: Archaeological Analysis of a Marble Assemblage from Levi Jordan Plantation, Brazoria County, TX

This study aims to understand the daily activities and lives of the enslaved individuals (and later tenant farmers and sharecroppers) held on the Levi Jordan Plantation (LJP) in Brazoria County, Texas. As one of the archaeologically richest and most well-preserved plantation sites in North America, this site offers unparalleled potential to shed light on these topics. Out of the 600,000+ artifacts excavated from LJP’s slave quarters area, I will examine 66 ceramic, lithic, and glass marbles. These common, yet relatively unstudied and often overlooked, archaeological objects can provide information on another oft-overlooked population: children. Historically, perhaps shaped by modern perspectives, children’s activities, actions, and ideas have frequently been considered peripheral and unrelated to those of adults. Until relatively recently, archaeologists did not focus on the material record left by past children, nor on interpreting the lives of such individuals (especially not within enslaved contexts, see Baxter 2005a; Kamp 2001).

Foodways Beyond the Yard: A Zooarchaeological Analysis of Nineteenth-Century African American Provisioning Strategies at Levi Jordan Plantation

There is something roundly unsettling in the brunchified menus of white-owned restaurants that market themselves as purveyors of a genteel Southern charm: meals are overpriced, portions are small, and everything—even the food—is quietly gentrified, histories obscured. White celebrity chefs are easily able to build their fortune upon appropriating and claiming credit for dishes invented by people of color (Hadadi 2020). In recent years, Soul food—often defined in its Southern Blackness—has been subject to no small amount of appropriation. Even the term “Soul food” has largely been replaced by “Southern food,” allowing white chefs and restaurateurs to claim food created by African American men and women as part of a de-politicized and common Southern food culture. In the erasure of Black hands in food artistry, the complex histories of these foods can be easier forgotten in favor of a decontextualized communal food tradition. This is exacerbated by the institutions of race and racism within the United States that continue to reward white chefs for appropriations and exclude Black chefs from the cooking industry, and from the positions that might influence the way we talk about food (Borelli 2012).

Even with the recent public turn towards understanding the food that we are eating—the valorization of the organic label, the proliferation of local farmers’ markets, the mounting fears around processed foods—we often forget that a meal is more than the sum of its ingredients. There are histories in the biscuits, in the stews, in the flavor profiles and cooking techniques that have built the idea of the Southern cuisine into something full of care and warm hospitality. Many of these dishes are versions of those foods created by innovative Black women in the 19th and early 20th centuries, working to craft comforting and delicious meals for their families from the difficult and often low-quality ingredients that were accessible on plantations. In forgetting the histories of this food that so many of us love, we also make it easier to forget the horrors of slavery and the resilient humanity of those who suffered in the South. We make it easier to forget how much of this country was built by Black hands, and how great a debt the United States owes to its African American roots.

I attempt to contribute to the work of remembering through food throughout this thesis. Through a zooarchaeological analysis of the animal bones left behind, I reconstruct an idea of what the diet of African Americans may have looked like at Levi Jordan Plantation in Brazoria, Texas. Because Levi Jordan left behind no well-kept record of the rations that he provided the enslaved persons on his plantation, there is a need to use primarily zooarchaeological evidence to reconstruct what an enslaved person's diet may have looked like, and to investigate how and why the community at Levi Jordan would have acquired these meats that contributed to their diets. In the following chapters, I hope to provide insight into the foodways constructed and used by enslaved and free African Americans at Levi Jordan Plantation.

I first lay the foundations of historical and ecological background knowledge needed to engage with the study of foodways in Brazoria County, Texas. In chapter 2, I explore the pre-existing literature that has provided both foundation and guidance for plantation zooarchaeology, self-provisioning, and the understanding of agency through foodways. Chapter 3 contains the methodology and relevant data produced through careful zooarchaeological analysis of the faunal assemblage. In chapter 4, I draw the faunal data through the work and insights from my archaeological predecessors, seeking to understand the nature of self-provisioning and foodways in the cabin block 3B. Finally, I conclude with the overarching evidence for the visibility of Black agency through foodways at Levi Jordan Plantation. 4

Through cruel and demanding seasons, enslaved people at Levi Jordan continued to make decisions—even seemingly small choices—about what they ate and how they ate it. The aftermath of these decisions, carried through the passing-on of well-loved recipes, is responsible for much of the “Southern” cuisine of today. It is my hope that in giving space to the foodways of the people at Levi Jordan Plantation, we see beyond the pure data of faunal fragments, and instead remember the pain, survival, and creativity that created this archaeological assemblage, and contributed to the most beloved foods of the American South.