Macrobotanical Analysis of Feature ER2352/4, A Subfloor Pit Associated with a 19th-Century Slave Cabin from Thomas Jefferson’s Poplar Forest

Macrobotanicals were analyzed from a sub-floor pit in a 19th century slave cabin located at Thomas Jefferson's Poplar Forest plantation (Virginia) during the tenure of the Hutter family as plantation owners. The thousands of seed and wood remains recovered illustrate that the slaves’ main subsistence strategies were provisioning, or receiving food from the plantation owner, production, or growing their own food, and the procurement of wild resources. These various subsistence strategies reflect different levels of daily autonomy for the enslaved families who practiced them. When combined with documentary research on the daily practices of slave families at Poplar Forest, the macrobotanical analysis of these remains thus reveals aspects of plantation social relations which would be otherwise lost to the historical record.