Dr. Whitney Battle-Baptiste, Cornell post-doctoral fellow, will present a talk entitled “Home is Where the Hearth Is: The Cultural Landscape of a Tennessee Plantation” on Tuesday, Feb. 6, 7:30 PM in the Campus Center Conference Room.
The Finger Lakes Chapter of the New York State Archaeological Association is presenting Dr. Battle-Baptiste's lecture, which is open and free to the public. The abstract follows:
Some have said that the hearth is the center of the home. It is the site where people used to gather for the warmth of a fire and the familiar sights and sounds of family, friends, and good conversation. For me, the center of our apartment was the kitchen, meals where prepared, family and friends would gather, and the sounds of laughter was constant. This paper is about the central meeting point for one group of enslaved African
families living at the Hermitage plantation, the home of Andrew Jackson. During the last days of excavations at The First Hermitage site we uncovered a subterranean cooking pit that had one of the most varied assemblages ever to be excavated at the Hermitage. This outdoor cooking hearth was where activities such as food preparation, childcare, clothing repair, recreational storytelling, and music making happened. In my analysis, the quarters served as a bounded and culturally significant space that was not just the background, but the epicenter of black cultural production.
