KINGSLEY PLANTATION


Occupied by circa 1792, this slave plantation derives its name from Zephaniah Kingsley, who occupied the site between 1814 and 1839. Kingsley was a slave trader and ship’s captain. Defying convention, he took as a wife Anna Madgigine Jai Kingsley, an enslaved girl from Senegal.

Objecting to the harsh laws regarding interracial marriage and biracial children when Florida became American territory, Kingsley and his family moved to Haiti in 1839. The plantation was subsequently owned by a number of individuals into the early 20th century (Stowell 1996; 2000).

The entire field of African-American archaeology can actually trace its origin back to Kingsley Plantation, where in 1968 Dr. Charles Fairbanks conducted the first-ever scientific excavation of a slave cabin. At present, UF researchers are entering their third year in reassessing previous work here.

A partially intact chimney in one of the slave cabins onsite at Kingsley Plantation
(Photo: Dr. James M. Davidson)

USING GIS IN THE FIELD


Kingsley Plantation included 32 slave cabins in a semi-circle when constructed in 1814 (most likely in the spring or summer) by Kingsley, his wife, or someone in their service; sixteen cabins to the east of the main road and sixteen to the west. Several of the west slave cabins were destroyed during the 1870s by John Rollins (Davidson 2006; 2007).

In answer to Ian Hodder’s (1999) ongoing call for a ‘reflexive’ approach to archaeological practice in the field, total station data was downloaded and analyzed every day it was collected. This habit allowed the authors to estimate the locations of the seven missing cabins on the western half.

After organizing the data into maps, the authors were able to calculate the angles between each cabin as well as average distances between extant and missing cabins. This exercise demonstrates the utility of GIS in the field as well as the ingenuity of the site’s original designers.

Above: estimated corner points used to estimate missing cabins.
Left: average angle (~5.5o) and distance measurements figured by using ArcGIS

DIGITAL, PUBLIC, AND ANALYTICAL ARCHAEOLOGY AT KINGSLEY PLANTATION


Digital Archaeology (Evans and Daly 2006) as a movement within archaeology accepts that recent information and communication technology is having enormous impacts on the actual practice of recording, representing, and presenting archaeological investigations to a variety of audiences.

As Kingsley Plantation is operated by the National Park Service (NPS), it has always been a central goal to create publicly-accessible 3D reconstructions of the site. The first step in this process was to model each structure in three dimensions. For this step, complete HABS/HAER drawings were used to accurately model the site with Google SketchUp. This program is relatively cheap and easy to learn as its creators offer free educational licenses and extensive online tutorials.

In addition, this program seamlessly integrates models with Google Earth. Therefore, archaeological sites modeled using Google SketchUp can be uploaded to internet sites and disseminated to users around the world.

Rudimentary viewshed analysis of Kingsley Plantation has led researchers to propose new hypotheses for the unique alignment of the cabins in a semi-circle to the south.

These include theorizing areas of freedom (Whitley 2002) in relation to personal/familial activities in and around the cabins. Drawing on Foucault (1995) and his ideas about panopticism, one of the authors is interested in analyzing the expression of power in the landscape at Kingsley.

Also, this arrangement, when seen in its entirety and minus modern vegetation, suggests to both Davidson (2006) and the authors that the cabins were being used as a defensive arrangement to protect Kingsley and his family from neighbors.  This was likely a response to previous attacks on local plantations by Seminoles and Patriots, whom he may have feared would return to finish the job.

Viewshed analysis from the main house towards the slave quarters

GOOGLE EARTH FILES


Kingsley Plantation circa 1800 projected in Google Earth

Download the above Google Earth Files here.
Download Google Earth here.

MANAGING ARCHAEOLOGICAL DATA


The archaeological data collected was managed and articulated with environmental and other forms of background data using ESRI’s geodatabase structure (Tennant 2006; Gonzalez-Tennant forthcoming). The central goal of utilizing this organizational scheme is to help insure that researchers can continue to integrate future data with previous archaeological research. Also, when previous datasets are located like the HABS/HAER drawings, they can be incorporated quickly and effectively. This structure remains the only published example to draw upon in relation to archaeological data.

Left: 2006 & 2007 excavations at Kingsley | Right: Geodatabase structure for Kingsley

BIBLIOGRAPHY


Davidson, James M.
2007     University of Florida Historical Archaeological Field School, 2007 Preliminary Report ofInvestigations, Kingsley Plantation (8Du108), Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve, National  Park Service, Duval County, Florida/. Submitted to the United States Department of the Interior, National Parks Service, Southeast Archaeological Center, Tallahassee, Florida.


Davidson, James M.
2006     Preliminary Report of Investigations of the 2006 University of Florida Archaeological Field School, Kingsley Plantation, Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve, National Park Service, Duval County, Florida/. Submitted to the United States Department of the Interior, National Parks Service, Southeast Archaeological Center, Tallahassee,  Florida.

Evans, Thomas L. and Patrick Daly
2006     Digital Archaeology: Bridging Method and Theory. London, Routledge.

Foucault, Michel
1995     Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York, Vintage Books.

Gonzalez-Tennant, Edward
(In Press)  Generating ‘Living Documents’ with GPS & GIS for Archaeology: A Case Study from the Otago Goldfields, New Zealand. Accepted by Historical Archaeology.

Hodder, Ian
1999     The Archaeological Process. Oxford, Blackwell.

Stowell, Daniel W.
1996     Timucuan Ecological and Historical Resource Study. U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, Southeast Field Area, Atlanta, GA.

Stowell, Daniel W. (editor)
2000     Balancing Evils Judiciously: The Proslavery Writings of Zephaniah Kingsley. University Press of Florida, Gainesville.

Tennant, Edward W.
2007     A Sample Geodatabase Structure for Managing Archaeological Data and Resources with ArcGIS. Technical Briefs in Historical Archaeology 2:12-23.

Whitley, Thomas G.
2002     Landscapes of Bondage: Using GIS to Understand Risk Management and Cognitive Dynamics in a Slave Society. Paper presented at the 2002 Computer Applications in Archaeology Conference.

Authors:

Edward Gonzalez-Tennant
Diana Gonzalez-Tennant