Time, Space, Movement and a

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Time, Space, Movement and a Virginia Plantation
The Fairfield Manor House and Gardens,
Gloucester County, Virginia, 1694-1787
2008
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• The enslaved landscape of a colonial plantation
• The design, construction, use, and maintenance
  of roads, fields, buildings, waterways, and
  forests confined movement and sight, limited
  possibilities and constrained perceptions.
• How people bought, made, used, and threw away
  things can tell us about how they conducted their
  daily lives within these enslaved landscapes.
• Why these things/activities were built/used/took
  place in specific locations, moved or modified,
  persisted or disappeared reflects the shifting
  circumstances each plantation experienced while
  changes in behavior highlight the struggle to
  maintain a sense of control (or, conversely,
  independence) within a larger Atlantic world.
• The association of these beliefs and actions
  with the natural and built landscape of the slave
  plantation resulted in the further legitimization
  of the practice of slavery through the very
  substance of everyday life slavery was an all
  encompassing and inescapable force, inherent in
  every object and space on the plantation.

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It all begins with people.
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incorporates, is inspired by, and feeds off of
objects their meaning, manufacture, and use
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extends into landscapes small and large, built
and natural, contested and ignored
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but ultimately (should) come back to people.
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The Manor House
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Fairfield circa 1720
Fairfield circa 1850
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These dark stains and artifacts in the ground are
all that remain to tell us about the
Image of decorative copper finial removed for
reformatting
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activities and landscape that made Fairfields
17th-century north front façade and forecourt a
carefully designed space imbued with power.
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Subject 2 The Roads
Fairfield
Two roads lead to Fairfield why? And which came
first?
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Mill Pond
Fairfield
The Greate Road (Rt. 17)
To Gloucester Point
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Subject 3 Buildings Fields and
Spaces... The Bigger Picture
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.Change how do we tell? Datable artifacts
(pottery, pipes, nails, bottle glass) were
assigned to contemporary ownership
periods. Lewis Burwell I, II, and Nathaniel
Burwell 1647-1721 Robert King Carter, Lewis
Burwell I(II), and II(II) 1721-1787 Thruston
Family 1787-1828 Leavitt Family and
tenants 1828-1897
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Archaeological sites from Monticello representing
slave quarters, naileries, and other buildings
from a portion of the surrounding fields. The
maps below mark the contrast between tobacco and
mixed grain slave quarter arrangement.
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Subfloor Pit for Structure A
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But whats up here?
Another building?
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The Small Cellar Part of an addition to
Structure A?
9 feet
4 feet
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Dog Skeleton
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• What do I do with my last two weeks at
  Winterthur?
• Read through as many architectural design books,
  garden design and maintenance books as possible
  and research contemporary interior furnishings
  and woodwork while finding time to tour the
  exhibits.
• Develop a more sophisticated understanding of
  the changing definition of time and time
  management on the eighteenth-century slave
  plantation in Virginia.
• Investigate how individuals experienced space as
  they moved through it and how these perceptions
  of space were controlled and manipulated, as well
  as challenged.