Intern Diaries: Allison at Kingsley Plantation

For some, summertime doesn’t mean downtime. It’s just another opportunity to travel, get an internship or otherwise move up in the world. But since you can’t do it all, INsite tracked down a handful of students in places from Thailand to Miami, New York to Paris. Every week, we share their experiences with you. Last week, you read about Sarah’s self-doubts and panic attacks. This week, we bring you Allison’s excavation adventures.

From the moment I arrived at our residence on the Kingsley Plantation, I was greeted by light tapping sounds as swarms of horse flies dove headlong onto the car windows, eager for a meal. The following morning, peacocks crowed me awake at the crack of dawn. Later that day, I would tumble—not once, but twice—into meter-deep holes, finding myself neck-deep in a pit of sand and roots that I had dug myself. These are the joys of archaeology field school, a class offered by the University of Florida’s anthropology department as part of an ongoing effort to excavate the ring of slave cabins surrounding the Kingsley Plantation.

The Kingsley Plantation is located on Timucuan Ecological Preserve in the Fort George Island State Park, which is in north Jacksonville and two hours away from Gainesville. The park appeals to the fantasy of Southern charm, with its stately white-wooden plantation house perched on the water’s edge amid palm trees. The tall grass emerging from the salt marsh surrounding the park harbors redheaded skinks and small crabs, and the palmettos on the island’s interior light up with fireflies at night. Moss dripping from its oak-lined lanes, the park appears utterly idyllic, were it not for the crescent of slave cabins encircling the park—an enduring reminder of the injustice that built this seeming paradise.

This field school focuses on that aspect of plantation life: the everyday existence of African-American slaves that history has largely ignored. Our field school follows a tradition of plantation archaeology created at the University of Florida, by former chair of the anthropology department Charles Fairbanks. At Kingsley Plantation in 1968, Fairbanks became the first person to officially excavate a slave cabin, an act which marked an academic shift away from plantation owner and toward plantation worker.

Under Dr. James Davidson, UF’s tradition of slave cabin excavation continues as part of archaeology field school. Each summer for five years now, a batch of fresh anthropology students is brought to Fort George Island to learn about the field of historical archaeology, only to emerge six weeks later looking like smallpox victims, covered in blisters and bug bites. Already this season, we have dug shovel tests behind the east arc of the slave cabins and around a recently discovered structure believed to be a sugar mill. These shovel tests are small but steep holes, whose dirt is screened for artifacts like ceramics and glass.

These artifacts seem modest; the bottle shards, broken plates and oyster shells we collect disappoint the tourists who expect us to produce gold. Yet, what arguably is trash can give us insight into the lifestyles of slaves, a history barely documented that might otherwise be lost forever. One of our biggest discoveries so far has been a “hand charm,” a small piece of brass stamped with the image of a closed fist, which is believed to be used to ward off evil or provide good luck for its owner. What’s so great about such a diminutive pendant? It happens to be one of only six ever found in an archaeological context in the world. And this is only week one.

-story and photos by Allison Griner