Weekly Chat from About Archaeology
Moderated by Pat Garrow and K. Kris Hirst
Transcript: April 22, 2001: Speaker Larry McKee
Note: This transcript has been slightly edited for readability.
Printer-Friendly Chat Transcript
| Pat Garrow | Our guest for tonight is Larry McKee, Program Manager of the TRC Garrow office in Nashville, Tennessee. |
| Pat Garrow | Larry spent 11 years directing the archaeological program at the Hermitage, and is an expert in African American archaeology. Welcome to Articulations Larry |
| Larry McKee | Hi all, glad to be here |
| Pat Garrow | Just a little about yourself as we get started Larry. Where are you from? |
| Larry McKee | I grew up in Santa Maria, on the central coast of CA |
| Pat Garrow | where did you do your graduate work? |
| Larry McKee | UC Berkeley, with Jim Deetz back in the early 80's. |
| Pat Garrow | good place to be. Please tell us how you first became interested in archaeology |
| Larry McKee | In high school I got interested in the great outdoors, began to look for a career that would keep me there as much as possible. Got to take some classes at a local JC with Larry Spanne, who at that time was the unofficial base archaeologist at Vandenberg, along the coast. Great Chumash sites. |
| Pat Garrow | did you get to do field work as a volunteer? |
| Larry McKee | It was half volunteer, half class field works. Spent an amazing day bouncing around in a forest service truck looking at inland rock art sites, etc. |
| Pat Garrow | how did you become interested in historical archaeology? |
| Larry McKee | Took Bob Hoover's summer field school at Mission San Antonio south of Salinas, CA. The first few days the light went on about how much easier it all was with a few documents. |
| Pat Garrow | How did you end up at the Hermitage? |
| Larry McKee | By way of five years in Virginia, working with Deetz at Flowerdew and other places. Just happened to see the job advertisement one day as I was finishing up my dissertation, and they saw I was hungry and would work cheap. |
| Pat Garrow | as was the case with so many of us. working cheap that is |
| IreneH | Please tell us what the Hermitage is |
| Larry McKee | The Hermitage is this great 900+ acres pretty much frozen in time, in terms of development and disturbance, with few changes since the 1850's. Huge potential in the 1980's for filling in the "uncomfortable" gaps re: slavery, and they were happen to let me carry the interpretation and research. |
| The Hermitage | |
| Pat Garrow | also the home place of Andrew Jackson is it not? |
| IreneH | And where is it located? |
| Grant | Was it one of the first plantations to interpret slavery through what was found through excavation? |
| Larry McKee | Irene, to answer your question, it is Andrew Jackson's home plantation, just outside Nashville, TN, where he lived in his mature years, prior to his national career, until his death in 1845. Mostly cotton, up to 150+ enslaved African Americans at its height/depths. |
| Larry McKee | Grant, I'd say Monticello and Bill Kelso lead the way on that one, although Noel Hume did some work around Williamsburg in the early 60's and of course Charles Fairbanks in FL and GA. Fairbanks wasn't as linked to museum interpretations though. |
| Pat Garrow | plus the work in the late 70s, early 80s on the South Carolina coast |
| Larry McKee | Oh yeah, Yaughan and Curriboo |
| IreneH | You said there were no changes. Is that because it is the home place of Andrew Jackson? |
| Larry McKee | The State of TN actually bought the place in the 1850's, to ease the family's money problems and with the idea to open a military academy. Then the war, etc., and it just sat there pretty much until the Ladies' Hermitage Assn. took it on in the late 1880's. |
| Grant | Are you familiar with the work of Melville Herskovits and his writings on African cultural patterns and carry-overs? It just seems like those in the field who study African American archaeology never seem to cite him or mention his writing....why? |
| Grant | He was saying there was anthropological evidence 50 years ago before any historical archaeologist ever excavated a single slave dwelling |
| Larry McKee | I'm certainly aware of his work, and the debates with Frazier (sp?) re continuities. I think that's the starting point, but the work has moved on to more recent writings. |
| Grant | I was just curious. I did a research project on Herskovits and the use of this theories in historical arc. a few semesters ago and I always like to get the opinion of those in the discipline about his writings. |
| Pat Garrow | Fairbanks certainly tried to find what he termed "survivals" in the material cultures of African American sites |
| Larry McKee | Yes, it took us a while to catch on. Of course a lot of it too is trying to sort out, trying to keep archaeology as the primary source. Has its limitations, but that's what we do. |
| Kris Hirst | By survivals are you referring to African material culture (like Colonoware?) |
| Pat Garrow | yes Kris, but Fairbanks did not recognize Colonoware as being made by African slaves |
| Grant | I was talking about culture as well as artifacts (food ways, musical influences, religious practices, etc) |
| Larry McKee | It's interesting to watch these things cycle through - the value of finding continuities is now dismissed by some as a patronizing, static approach to a dynamic culture |
| Pat Garrow | what is the current understanding of Colonoware Larry? |
| Larry McKee | Depends, of course on who you talk to and where they are working. Basically, low-fired earthenware vessels found in abundance on some plantation sites, at first thought to be made and traded by surviving Native Americans, then people like Ferguson and Polhemus started talking about African influences, many began to accept it as made by the enslaved. |
| Larry McKee | More recently, the Native American influence is being pushed, or it's being seen as a product of mixed black and Indian communities. Singleton and Bograd have the best most recent summary in an edited volume called "Lines That Divide." |
| Lines that Divide Historical Archaeologies of Race, Class, and Gender James A. Delle, Stephen A. Mrozowski, and Robert Paynter (eds.), University of Tennessee 2000 | |
| Pat Garrow | Colonoware is found mainly along the southern coast into Virginia and across the entire Caribbean |
| Larry McKee | I've never excavated any! Mostly because I've pretty much stayed in the 19th C. with my investigations. |
| Pat Garrow | identified both African American and Catawba (native American) wares in coastal South Carolina |
| Larry McKee | Pat, you saw a lot at Yaughan and Curriboo. What are your thoughts on why it faded when it did? |
| Pat Garrow | replacement if the pot form by iron pots and the rest by English refined wares, largely gone by the 1820s |
| Grant | From what of it I've seen and held, its really hard to distinguish a sherd of Colonoware from that of a sherd of undecorated Mississippian ceramics |
| Pat Garrow | not true Grant |
| Pat Garrow | African American Colonoware is piece molded, while Mississippian tends to be coil built |
| Grant | yeah, but coiling isn't always evident (at least to me) when looking at a small sherd |
| Larry McKee | I agree Pat, the MS material is in general harder fired and thinner, although lots of variation of course and I haven't really had the opportunity to study much of either directly. |
| Dick | I'm assuming Colonoware is unglazed, what is the temper? |
| Pat Garrow | untempered mainly dick. need to look for laminar paste grant |
| Grant | the temper in the sherds I saw from S. Carolina was marine shell |
| Pat Garrow | Colonoware in Virginia tends to be shell tempered. SC Colonoware is almost always untempered |
| IreneH | Larry, what is your function at the Hermitage? |
| Larry McKee | Until about 18 months ago, I was director of archaeology, working on research and also more or less making sure the sites didn't get disturbed during development. Now I'm with a private contract/consulting firm. |
| Pat Garrow | would you describe the structure of the research at the Hermitage Larry? how you utilized students and volunteers? |
| Larry McKee | Elizabeth Kellar, ABD from Syracuse, is now running the program. She has a small staff for summer excavations and programs, augmented by a few interns and volunteers. I worked with Earthwatch through the nineties there, with crews up to 20 at a time. Exhausting. |
| Kris Hirst | what other artifacts do archaeologists use as indicators of African influence? In the 19th century, for example? |
| Larry McKee | There are a variety of things one expects from "slave" sites - blue beads, drilled coins, out-of-place marine shells, etc. |
| Larry McKee | Kris, these things are exciting to find, dazzling, but the better approach is perhaps looking at the assemblage as a whole and saying, what do these things say about the lives of those subjected to slavery? |
| IreneH | Is it correct to say that African-American archaeology is taking off now? I attended a talk by our state archaeologist (CT) recently, who said they were going to concentrate on African American Farms. |
| Larry McKee | Irene, I'd say it's spreading from the traditional southern focus areas on out. It'll be interesting to see if some of the patterns on plantations show up on later free black/freedman sites. |
| Kris Hirst | What kinds of things do they say? What have you learned from your years at the Hermitage? |
| Larry McKee | Mostly what we see, imperfectly, has to do with trying to make something out of nothing, so to speak - making very little go a lot farther. That's another familiar theme in studying African American life and culture from other sources. |
| Pat Garrow | have you found that slave assemblages differ little from those of poor Euro-Americans of the same period Larry? |
| Grant | Wasn't it Cannon's Point Plantation....where they examined the assemblage of the overseer and the slaves and found they were similar as far as material culture |
| Larry McKee | As far as comparing slave assemblages to poor white - often the slave assemblages look pretty rich, given the "universe" of goods typically available within the plantation, as hand-me-downs, cast-offs, and pilfered items. |
| IreneH | What was the most important, or most exciting, aspect you found? |
| Larry McKee | I think the most exciting part has been to show people how much there is left in the ground, and to put slavery on the landscape. One slave dwelling, forgotten until we located it during digging, was about 150 feet from the back door of the Hermitage mansion, right outside A Jackson JR's bedroom window. |
| Larry McKee | It was a moment of academic pleasure to watch visitors realize how "close" slave and master lived, what that meant about daily life around the clock. |
| IreneH | <grin> |
| Pat Garrow | we received a lot of criticism from the local historical society leader in SC for digging slave sites in 1980. have you run into any of that at the Hermitage Larry? |
| Pat Garrow | glad to hear that the Hermitage Foundation was really interested in interpreting slavery on the site. most of our criticism was leveled from the leaders in Charleston, who felt is just wasn't important enough to do |
| Larry McKee | Pat, the Hermitage administration was always very supportive - I think they were glad to have somebody take on the topic and combine it with the exotic/attractive element of archaeology. Certainly had some visitors with no interest in hearing about it just walk away - both white and black. |
| IreneH | Is there anything known other than from archaeology, how Jackson treated his slaves? |
| Larry McKee | Jackson approached his human property with a certain military efficiency. He said something in a letter of advise to his son about how a willing "hand" (i.e. slave) would do twice the labor of one who was forced to do it. The willingness part has always intrigued me - wonder what the "hands" actually felt. |
| Larry McKee | Housing was very crowded at the Hermitage, but larger cabins than the general average. High birth rate, low infant mortality, lots of elderly people - some families had four generations living. |
| Larry McKee | I was always uncomfortable addressing the question (asked very frequently) whether Jackson was a "good" master... |
| Pat Garrow | I suppose you must judge him within the context of his time...... |
| Grant | Is the African American community receptive to the projects? Most of the Gullah people that I spoke with in South Carolina recognized slavery as part of their past, but focused on the aspects of culture that survived slavery |
| Larry McKee | It is hard to get a handle on the community's response. Lots of support for including it as part of the tour, telling the full story, etc, but of course the story only starts with slavery. I've always thought the focus on slavery is analogous to a situation where archaeologists would just study reservation life among Native Americans, without looking at before and perhaps after. |
| IreneH | Yes, but how can you reach the "before"? |
| Larry McKee | Paul Mullins' recent book, the title which escapes me right now, is an interesting study of African American life in Annapolis after slavery, with archaeology as the starting point. |
| Annapolis Pasts: Historical Archaeology in Annapolis, Maryland 1998 (Paul Shackle, Paul Mullins, and Mark Warner) University of Tennessee | |
| Pat Garrow | there is quite a growing literature on the archaeology of post-bellum sites in the south. has much been done in that regard around Nashville? |
| Larry McKee | I guess for African Americans the "before" would be after slavery. Hope that's not too confusing. Also, free blacks before emancipation. I can understand why people ask why is it usually just plantations that get the attention. |
| Pat Garrow | not that many free black sites out there that are not parts of plantations, although I suppose that varies widely state-by-state |
| Grant | Would it be rude of me to ask what everybody in here does. I'm a History/Archaeology Student wrapping up my third year of college |
| Pat Garrow | professional archaeologist--CRM |
| Kris Hirst | professional archaeologist CRM, run this website |
| Dick | accountant/avocational archeologist |
| IreneH | Retired, just interested. I'm involved with the Ancient/Classical History Forum. |
| Grant | cool....I was just curious |
| Larry McKee | You're right Pat - the visibility question is tough, and engendering support for the work, even in compliance/CRM settings is a challenge too. Nashville was a real center of African American life after emancipation, with Fisk University, Meharry Medical College, etc. Could have been some great archaeology done on some of the neighborhoods that got blitzed during urban renewal of the 1960's. |
| Grant | Has any work ever been done to try to trace the genealogy of the Hermitage slaves--Do they have any known descendants living in the area today? |
| Pat Garrow | hopefully there will be more chances in Nashville Larry. There have been a number of African American tenant sites done around the South, but the assemblages tend to be sparse |
| Pat Garrow | of course, tenancy is also much more complicated than it appears |
| IreneH | in what way? |
| Pat Garrow | many labor strategies Irene |
| Larry McKee | There is a small descendents group, most outside of Nashville. Local folks have not been real active in this, for a variety of reasons. The linkage between the descendents group and the Hermitage is not as tight as it could be. |
| Larry McKee | The lack of dense assemblages on tenant/post-bellum sites is frustrating, but shouldn't surprise given the extreme poverty. Certainly harder to build complicated arguments, but nobody said it was easy, right? |
| Pat Garrow | right. there is also the problem of swept yards and trash disposal that is hard to trace |
| Pat Garrow | was the Hermitage cultivated after the foundation took over in 1880 Larry? |
| Larry McKee | A little livestock raising and some leased lands to farmers for a little corn and mostly hay, otherwise pretty fallow. |
| Grant | When did farmers in the Nashville area stop growing cotton? Wasn't it the staple crop of Hermitage and many other area plantations? |
| Grant | And in the many trips I've made to and through the area, I've never seen a single cotton field |
| Larry McKee | There is still a little cotton grown in the counties south of Nashville. Jackson stayed in it later than most. Small operations like his found it pretty much impossible to compete with the big operations to the southwest. Climate isn't real conducive for success every year either. |
| Pat Garrow | a lot grown in west Tennessee as well |
| Pat Garrow | so there were no sharecroppers, renters, or managers working the property then? |
| Larry McKee | Nope, gotta head toward Memphis and wonderful places like Bolivar to see those. Lots of mixed grain and livestock in the region before the Civil War, being sold to planters elsewhere concentrating on less edible crops. |
| Grant | Has the slave cemetery been located on the property at Hermitage? |
| Larry McKee | No, a bit of a frustration during my work there. No obvious field stone scatters or depressions anywhere, no record of any beyond one vague 1930's mention to the "grave field" on a farm map. Should be a few hundred out there somewhere. |
| Larry McKee | I've gotten a little more experienced with a steel probe lately, though, so maybe someday... Just hope the graves don't come to light accidentally during some construction project. |
| Pat Garrow | can certainly find them through probing. maybe we need to work up a volunteer probe party |
| Pat Garrow | Larry- could you describe the hand charms from the Hermitage slave quarters and the current though on what they represent? |
| Larry McKee | The hand charms were a very exciting find during my time there (and before). Small brass items, smaller than a dime, in the shape of a closed human fist. One came to light during the 1970's, when Sam Smith of the State of TN was doing some work there, then during my time two more came up, all three from slave dwelling contexts |
| Pat Garrow | where are the other known hand charms from? |
| Larry McKee | Don't know the referent for the image - all three are slightly different, but show the same thing - very similar to the clenched Black Power fist, but different from the well-known Brazilian figa symbol, with the thumb between the index and middle. |
| Pat Garrow | aha. the Brazilian charm is what I saw in New Orleans the past week |
| Larry McKee | Two other similar charms from Annapolis, one from a root cellar of a slave dwelling near Memphis, another from a slave dwelling one county north of the Hermitage. |
| IreneH | You said smaller than a dime? That must have been rather difficult to make. |
| Larry McKee | One of those artifacts that take your breath away a little - you can't help but think it is meaningful and powerful. Some good links to references to "hands" in African American folklore, but nothing definite. |
| Larry McKee | Irene, these were probably "trinkets" of Euro manufacture, stamped or made in small and detailed molds. |
| Pat Garrow | any evidence that the charms and blue bead or marine shells were from similar areas within the slave dwellings? |
| IreneH | That makes it even more intriguing, Larry? |
| Larry McKee | Irene, I guess the intriguing part is the possible Old World/Mediterranean/Islamic connection, possible spreading to Africa (or the other way?) through overland trade. Pure speculation here, but that's part of the job. Almost every culture gives high value to the hand as a symbol, so sorting out the influences/diffusion a good challenge. |
| Grant | Was the charm found in situ or in the screen? |
| Larry McKee | One charm in the screen, first bucket load done by an Earthwatch volunteer. The second found under my watch by an intern in situ - when I mentioned it looked like a bit had been broken away, he went back and found the rest of it. Very talented - a Patty Jo Watson student, as I recall. |
| Larry McKee | None of these things found in caches, unfortunately - as with the beads, drilled coins, just coming out of the general destruction layer, or in one case a good sealed midden in association with an 1840's coin. Tiny, easy to lose. |
| Pat Garrow | that's too bad |
| Pat Garrow | what do you think should be done with the archaeological program at the Hermitage in the long run Larry? |
| Larry McKee | Well, I certainly hope it continues to play a big role in the Hermitage as a research and interpretation tool. Certainly left them with lots to study and gradually get on display. |
| Kris Hirst | Isn't there, and you'll have to forgive my lack of complete memory, some discussion of colonial behavior of putting sacred things in walls? Like bottles? near chimney as I recall. Any suggestion that that might be it? |
| Larry McKee | Kris, lots of Euro folklore about such caches under doorways, hearths, etc. Some of this found archaeologically, some anecdotes about things coming to light during restorations. |
| Pat Garrow | all of the hand charms found so far are 19th century aren't they? |
| Larry McKee | All the charms are 19th, except of course for the similar items found at Pompeii ;-) |
| Pat Garrow | Pompeii? |
| Larry McKee | Yes Pompeii for an intriguing hand shaped item, looks close to the charms, but like I say it's always been a popular symbol. |
| Pat Garrow | I wonder what influence the rebellion in Haiti and the spread of materials and ideas from there had on slaves in the South. I have actually found a Haitian military button (after the rebellion) on a slave site in Georgia |
| Larry McKee | Yes, we got one of those Phoenix buttons too - hadn't heard of the one you found (neither had Rick Sprague mentioned it, in his recent HA article?) |
| Pat Garrow | found on one of the Plant Vogtle data recovery sites |
| Larry McKee | I think the Haitian revolt was one more thing that put slave owners on very high alert. Lots of migration to Louisiana too, right? |
| Pat Garrow | I believe there was migration, but have wondered for quite a while if there was direct contact between the successful Haitian revolutionaries and slaves in the south |
| Kris Hirst | I'm sorry guys; what is "Plant Vogtle" |
| Pat Garrow | Plant Vogtle was a nuclear power plant in southeast Georgia. It had a 300 mile network of electrical transmission line corridors which my company investigated |
| Pat Garrow | just another report buried away Larry. we found very little else on the site |
| Larry McKee | This summer the Hermitage team is going to investigate the cotton gin area, which probably also included some kind of residence, possibly for young men. Should be an interesting new direction. |
| Pat Garrow | contrast should be fascinating |
| Larry McKee | There are a variety of other "light industrial" elements to the site - a weaving house, a blacksmith shop, etc. Bringing these things in will help round out the interpretation. |
| Pat Garrow | how does the Hermitage recruit volunteers? is it entirely Earth Watch? |
| Larry McKee | Earthwatch is on a hiatus at the Hermitage, but may return. We worked with some local folks, with mixed success, but had our most loyal volunteers from returning Earthwatch-ers. |
| Pat Garrow | I understand there is also a substantial prehistoric component at the Hermitage |
| Larry McKee | No surprise about the prehistoric component - two strong springs, in a large bend of the Cumberland River. Never found anything in situ, and never any pottery - just lots of flakes and archaic/early woodland tools. |
| Larry McKee | Given Jackson's dealings with Native Americans, I always found it ironic that the densest flake scatters we recovered were right around his own house, garden, and tomb area. |
| Pat Garrow | lol |
| Pat Garrow | I believe there was a Mississippian component somewhere near the main house that was investigated before you arrived |
| Larry McKee | I don't think so. You may be remembering a Kevin Smith job where he was working on Andrew Jackson's previous house site, right on the river, with some significant Mississippian house floors nearby. |
| Pat Garrow | right--I think that must be it |
| Kris Hirst | I assume the Hermitage has a museum, as well as funded archaeological digs? Has there been a strong public archaeological component to the work there? |
| Larry McKee | Yes, there is a museum gallery and a professional curatorial staff, and an active education program that makes use of a lot of archaeology. Our summer excavations were always very open to the public, and we emphasized to the excavators that talking to the public was an essential part of the job, etc. |
| Dick | did you use any remote sensing techniques to help locate features? |
| Larry McKee | No - I'm a low tech guy, made the choice to hire students for six weeks rather than a couple of guys and their equipment for a few days. I guess I heard and saw too many disappointing results with the approach in my formative years. |
| Pat Garrow | in the few minutes we have left, can you tell us a little about what you are doing now? |
| Larry McKee | Since November of 1999 I've been working for TRC, helping to run the Nashville office. We do the standard array of contracted archaeological survey and excavation work. Quite different - I get to cover a lot more territory, and I've learned a little about prehistory as well. So far, I haven't had the opportunity to work on any specific African-American sites, but that's certainly part of how we market ourselves. |
| Pat Garrow | hopefully that opportunity will come up soon |
| Grant | I thought I had read somewhere that a few prehistoric lithics were found in some of the slave assemblages? was that at Hermitage? |
| Larry McKee | As far as lithics go, Doug Armstrong makes the convincing case for limited stone tool use at one of the plantation sites he investigated in Jamaica. Nothing formal though - just an expeditious sharp edge. |
| Larry McKee | I never saw anything like that at the Hermitage. Argument could be made that the slaves were collecting stone tools as curios, and possibly as another "spiritualized" item. |
| Pat Garrow | we are within the final 10 minutes, which means we need for your to address any questions that are left so we can wrap up this chat |
| Pat Garrow | any last questions? |
| Kris Hirst | Why are there so few African-American archaeologists? what's your feeling on the subject? |
| Larry McKee | I think it is a combination of a lack of tradition and a lack of opportunity. Obviously complicated. I think there is a very strong upcoming generation, and I think this will become less and less of an issue, thankfully. |
| Pat Garrow | Thank you Larry for being our guest on Articulations. This has been an excellent chat and should be a popular transcript. |
| Larry McKee | The time flew. Thanks for the opportunity, and the questions. |
| Pat Garrow | Our topic next week will be Cultural resource Management, and we will have multiple guests. One confirmed guest at this point is Mike Polk of Sagebrush Research in Utah |