From the 1770s to the 1790s Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States, resided a... more From the 1770s to the 1790s Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States, resided at Monticello. This paper will focus on the lives of the enslaved African Americans who worked and lived on his estate during that time. Historical documents and archaeological materials are used to investigate the relationship between spatial proximity of slave quarters to Jefferson's mansion. Building on Diana Crader's work on faunal remains from Mulberry Row and William Adams' and Sarah Boling's scholarship on ceramics owned by enslaved African Americans on antebellum Georgian plantations, this paper attempts to unravel the complex patterns of economic consumption within the slave society at Monticello. By utilizing the Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery (DAACS) database this analysis produces original research on how enslaved African Americans obtained expensive ceramic vessels and what this pattern of consumption meant from the perspectives of Jefferson and the enslaved individuals living at Monticello. An analysis of the value and variability between the ceramic assemblages from Mulberry Row, Sites 7 and 8, and the Elizabeth Hemings site reveal that these individuals had differential access to costly ceramic goods. This article asserts that differential access to high-priced ceramics was related to the proximity of the enslaved individuals to Jefferson's mansion, which is consistent with a model wherein Jefferson distributed expensive ceramics to the slaves closest to his mansion in order to obscure the brutal inequalities of slavery from his view and the view of his visitors.
Objectives: Analysis of a mass burial of seven males at CA-ALA-554, a prehistoric site in the Ama... more Objectives: Analysis of a mass burial of seven males at CA-ALA-554, a prehistoric site in the Amador Valley, CA, was undertaken to determine if the individuals were "locals" or "non-locals," and how they were genetically related to one another.
From the 1770s to the 1790s Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States, resided a... more From the 1770s to the 1790s Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States, resided at Monticello. This paper will focus on the lives of the enslaved African Americans who worked and lived on his estate during that time. Historical documents and archaeological materials are used to investigate the relationship between spatial proximity of slave quarters to Jefferson's mansion. Building on Diana Crader's work on faunal remains from Mulberry Row and William Adams' and Sarah Boling's scholarship on ceramics owned by enslaved African Americans on antebellum Georgian plantations, this paper attempts to unravel the complex patterns of economic consumption within the slave society at Monticello. By utilizing the Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery (DAACS) database this analysis produces original research on how enslaved African Americans obtained expensive ceramic vessels and what this pattern of consumption meant from the perspectives of Jefferson and the enslaved individuals living at Monticello. An analysis of the value and variability between the ceramic assemblages from Mulberry Row, Sites 7 and 8, and the Elizabeth Hemings site reveal that these individuals had differential access to costly ceramic goods. This article asserts that differential access to high-priced ceramics was related to the proximity of the enslaved individuals to Jefferson's mansion, which is consistent with a model wherein Jefferson distributed expensive ceramics to the slaves closest to his mansion in order to obscure the brutal inequalities of slavery from his view and the view of his visitors.
Objectives: Analysis of a mass burial of seven males at CA-ALA-554, a prehistoric site in the Ama... more Objectives: Analysis of a mass burial of seven males at CA-ALA-554, a prehistoric site in the Amador Valley, CA, was undertaken to determine if the individuals were "locals" or "non-locals," and how they were genetically related to one another.
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Papers by Kari Lentz