Summer 2003 Site Summary

       At the request of the Historic Columbia Foundation, archaeological research

concerning a kitchen building was conducted by University of South Carolina (USC,

Columbia) archaeologists in May of 2003.

        In May 2003, Archaeologists from USC, students, local volunteers and staff from

the Historic Columbia Foundation conducted field work that focused on the Seibels

House Kitchen flanker. The goals of the project included refining our chronology of the

construction events at the Kitchen site, identifying past activities that occurred within the

kitchen, and recovering material culture which can help us interpret the role of African

American’s on the property. In particular, researchers sought to determine whether the

kitchen building was a workspace for food preparation and storage or whether the

structure also served as a residence. In addition to excavating two test units in the

interior of the building, archaeologists placed two test excavations in the service yard

area outside the kitchen. Histories, ethnographies, and archaeological studies suggest that

the service yard was used for gardening or other kitchen related activities.

          Archaeological fieldwork should only be undertaken after the formulation of well conceived

questions that guide the techniques of data-recovery, the analysis of evidence,

and the scope of investigations. During our first field season (2003), our questions were

limited to the local, site scale of analysis, in part because of the priorities and support of

our sponsors. We sought to answer three fundamental questions concerning the kitchen.

First, when was it built? Documents are not available that specify the kitchen’s date of

construction, but the Seibels house was built around 1787. Archaeologists usually

answer this question by exploring the style and form of structures, the clues provided by

builder’s trenches and building materials, and the presence of temporally-diagnostic

artifacts. One month of excavations produced over 5,000 artifacts, most of which date

(approximately 6 feet) deep pit that abutted the hearth, and the original builders trench for

the Kitchen.

       Next, we sought to clarify the function of the kitchen building. Specifically, what

kind of activities were conducted in each room? From the variety and quality of artifacts,

we inferred that a number of activities took place in the kitchen: food preparation

(utensils, pottery, bone); leisure time activities such as smoking pipes or playing marbles;

clothing maintenance or production (pins, buttons, clasps, etc.). Patterns can be

discerned from the distribution and condition of artifacts, site features (e.g. trash pits),

and architectural remains that hint at habitual or synchronic behaviors. We surmised that

inhabitants both lived and worked in the kitchen building.

       Finally, we strove to make a contribution to the growing knowledge of historic

everyday African American life in early Columbia. The small number of names of the

enslaved Africans that were owned by the residents of the Seibels house probably formed

part of a wider Black community that included the servants at the neighboring Hampton

Preston Mansion and the free Black home called Manns-Simon House (Clement 2000).

What can be learned about urban slavery on the property based on the artifacts that are

recovered? Beyond the everyday aspects such as diet, dress, and leisure, we can begin to

explore belief systems or personal aesthetics that may have created artifacts that we have

questions, another important outcome of the project is to provide an assemblage of

artifacts, some of which have already been integrated into urban slavery exhibits

constructed by Historic Columbia.

Taken from Dr. Terry Weik's website 2004.

Photos property of Terry Weik