Shelter Island digs reveal plantations grew provisions for Barbados business at Sylvester Manor where ships of commerce once tied up and a culturally diverse society took some of its first New World steps. Alice Fiske's late husband's family, dating from the mid 1600s, discovered little known, rarely investigated American colonial history: Northern plantations worked by African slaves. People generally assume plantations with slaves were in the South, not looking systematically at Northern plantation archaeology. New findings combined with old wills, deeds and other documents reveal life and work on the Sylvester plantation, at one time encompassing virtually all Shelter Island. Since 1650 this was a major enterprise with a long economic reach. Unlike Southern plantations with large cash crops like tobacco and cotton this Northern provisioning plantation's main function was to supply food and timber for the Sylvester family's Barbados sugar plantation. Ships regularly carried cured meat, grain, barrel staves and lumber to Barbados, returning with molasses to make rum.
International commerce
In this modern world beginning, people thought of global commerce, African labor, plantations supporting others far away and products traded on 2 continents. English, Dutch, Native American and African cultures came together. Slaves worked at both plantations. 1680s inventories list 20 slaves at Sylvester Manor, 200 on Barbados. A generation after 1607's Jamestown VA settlement and Pilgrims' 1620 arrival at Plymouth, plantation culture spread to the Northeast coast with African slaves. Shelter Island excavations reveal differences in Africans' lives on Northern plantations compared with those in the South, between provisioning plantations and those based on large crops requiring intensive field work. Until 2 decades ago African-Americans were a neglected element in archaeology. Plantation excavations focused on architecture of big houses of white masters and were confined to the South. Investigating slave quarters of historic houses in Annapolis MD shows how slaves maintained their African identity.
Archaeologists only had to dig inches for traces of the original 1651 plantation house, finding Dutch-made yellow bricks and red roof tiles. The present house, built in 1735, was always painted yellow probably because the original one was built of yellow brick. So far the original house's foundations elude archaeologists, perhaps because it stood on the site of the present house. Artifacts from lawn and other dig sites such as 1600s kitchen trash show even more about plantation life. Kitchens were free-standing, occupied by slaves. Excavation exposed wood stains from decayed posts, coral-based mortar and other traces of a building. Post hole and trench arrangement resembles construction patterns of slave houses of clay or mud mixed with branches or straw - wattle and daub - on South Carolina plantations. Slaves built them along the lines of dwellings they or their ancestors had in West Africa. Among animal bones, remains of plantation meals, broken pottery shows evidence of African presence. Unglazed gray to brown pieces were from colono ware earthen cookpots.
African-style pottery was thought to be American Indian pottery. Similarities to pottery in Nigeria and Ghana show Africans, not American Indians, were its primary if not exclusive New World makers. Indian artifacts, primarily wampum shells, were uncovered on a peninsula near the manor house. Indians' role in plantation life is not yet clear. The shells could be from a pre-plantation camp. Indians lived on the island after Europeans arrived. The island's first census, in 1771, counted 140 whites, 27 slaves, 5 free negroes, 23 Indians. Plantation founder Nathaniel Sylvester emigrated from England by way of Holland and with partners acquired the land from Montauk Indians. Alice Fiske's husband Andrew was descended from the Sylvesters. Archaeologists found English, French and Irish coins; fine German ceramics along with humbler colono ware; silver buckles and a stick pin, pieces of Dutch clay pipes and a copper pipe tamper.