Bound to Land, Bonded through clay: Connecting South Carolina Lowcountry Enslaved African Pottery and Embankments

• In Event: Materialities of Earthwork Cultural Landscapes in the Black Atlantic: Technologies, Architectures, and Cosmologies

Description for Program

When we excavate the settlements where enslaved Africans were forced to live on plantations, and when we excavate the earthen embankments they built on plantations in rice fields and upland landscapes, we find and recover one commonality: the product of clay. At settlements, we recover colonoware, the pottery the enslaved made for daily, functional, spiritual/ritual/medicinal use. In embankments, we discover the intricate use of clay as a bonding agent, a waterproofing substance, and an impenetrable core that has resisted time and erosion, without maintenance, for upwards of almost 300 years. Taking cues from these materialities—pottery and embankments—this paper delves into the new idea that pottery production and rice agriculture went hand in hand, linked together through an ecological connection: clay required for embankment permanency and strength was a clay source for pottery that reinforced enslaved African lives and gave them the strength to persevere in the face of slavery day after day in their prison-plantations. In this paper, I highlight my 25 years of both embankment investigations and colonoware research to draw links between the enslaved and the material culture they created.

Author

• Andrew Agha