Hostname: page-component-cb9f654ff-fg9bn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-08-31T04:33:48.664Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

African earthen structures in colonial Louisiana: architecture from the Coincoin plantation (1787–1816)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 February 2012

Kevin C. MacDonald  and
David W. Morgan
Kevin C. MacDonald
Affiliation:
1UCL Institute of Archaeology, 31–34 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0PY, UK (Email: kevin.macdonald@ucl.ac.uk)
David W. Morgan
Affiliation:
2Southeast Archeological Center, National Park Service, 2035 E. Paul Dirac Drive, Johnson Building, Suite 120, Tallahassee, FL 32310, USA (Email: David_Morgan@nps.gov)
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

Coincoin, probably of Kongo parentage, was born a slave, became the concubine of a French planter, Pierre Metoyer, bore him ten children, and in 1787 was settled by him on a plantation of her own. Locating and excavating her house, the authors discovered it to be a type of clay-wall building known from West Africa. The house, together with an adjacent clay boundary wall, was probably built by slaves of Bight of Biafra origin loaned from the neighbouring plantation of her ex-partner. These structures are witness to emerging initiatives and interactions among people of African descent—but different African origins—in eighteenth-century Louisiana.

Keywords

USALouisianaeighteenth centuryearthen architectureplantationsslavery

Information

Type
Research article
Information
Antiquity , Volume 86 , Issue 331 , March 2012 , pp. 161 - 177
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 2012

References

Balandier, G. 1968. Daily life in the Kingdom of the Kongo: from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. London: Allen & Unwin.Google Scholar
Cuvelier, J. 1953. Relations sur le Congo du père Laurent de Lucques (1700-1717). Brussels: Institut Royal Colonial Belge.Google Scholar
Dawdy, S. L. 2000. Understanding cultural change through the vernacular: creolization in Louisiana. Historical Archaeology 34: 107–123.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Denyer, S. 1978. African traditional architecture: an historical and geographical perspective. New York: Africana.Google Scholar
Dmochowski, Z. R. 1990. An introduction to Nigerian traditional architecture. Volume 3: south-eastern Nigeria, the Igbo-speaking areas. London: Ethnographica in association with the National Commission for Museums and Monuments.Google Scholar
Edwards, J. D. 1994. The origins of Creole architecture. Winterthur Portfolio 29: 155–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Edwards, J. D. 2002. Vernacular vision: the gallery and our Africanized architectural landscape, in Hankins, J. E. & Maklansky, S. (ed.) Raised to the trade: Creole building arts of New Orleans: 61–94. New Orleans (LA): New Orleans Museum of Art.Google Scholar
Edwards, J. D. 2006. Creole architecture: a comparative study of Upper and Lower Louisiana and Saint Dominigue. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 10: 241–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Edwards, J.D. & Wells, T.. 1993. Historic Louisiana nails: aids to the dating of old buildings (Fred B. Kniffen Cultural Resources Laboratory Monograph Series 2). Baton Rouge (LA): Geoscience Publication, Louisiana State University.Google Scholar
Ekong, E. E. 1983. Sociology of the Ibibio: a study of social organization and change. Calabar: Scholars Press.Google Scholar
Ferguson, L. 1992. Uncommon ground: archaeology and early African America, 1650-1800. Washington (DC): Smithsonian Institution Press.Google Scholar
Flores, D. L. (ed.) 1984. Southern counterpart to Lewis & Clark: the Freeman & Custis expedition of 1806. Norman (OK): University of Oklahoma Press.Google Scholar
Hall, G. M. 2005. Slavery and African ethnicities in the Americas: restoring the links. Chapel Hill (NC): University of North Carolina Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hume, I. N. 1969. A guide to artifacts of colonial America. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.Google Scholar
Jones, G. I. 1963. The trading states of the oil rivers: a study of political development in Eastern Nigeria. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Macdonald, K. C., Morgan, D. W. & Handley, F.J.L.. 2006a. The Cane River African Diaspora Archaeological Project: prospectus and initial results, in Haviser, J. B. & Macdonald, K. C. (ed.) African re-genesis: confronting social issues in the diaspora: 123–44. London: UCL Press.Google Scholar
Macdonald, K. C., Morgan, D. W., Handley, F.J.L., Lee, A. & Morley, E.. 2006b. The archaeology of local myths and heritage tourism: the case of Cane River's Melrose plantation, in Layton, R., Shennan, S. & Stone, P. (ed.) A future for archaeology: 127–42. London: UCL Press/Cavendish.Google Scholar
Marchand, B. D. 1943. Acadian exiles in the Golden Coast of Louisiana. Donaldsville (LA): Published by the Author.Google Scholar
Maygarden, B. D. 2006. Building in colonial Louisiana: creolization and the survival of French traditions. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 10: 211–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mcintosh, R. J. 1974. Archaeology and mud wall decay in an African village. World Archaeology 6: 154–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mcintosh, R. J. 1977. The excavation of mud structures: an experiment from Africa. World Archaeology 9: 185–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mills, E. S. 1977. Natchitoches: abstracts of the Catholic church registers of the French and Spanish post of St. Jean Baptiste des Natchitoches in Louisiana: 1729-1803. New Orleans (LA): Polyanthos.Google Scholar
Mills, E. S. 1981. Natchitoches colonials: censuses, military rolls, and tax lists 1722-1803. Chicago (IL): Adams Press.Google Scholar
Mills, E. S. 2009. Marie Thérèse Coincoin (1742-1816): Cane River slave, slaveowner, and paradox, in Allured, J. & Gentry, J. (ed.) Louisiana women: their lives and times: 10–29. Athens (GA): University of Georgia Press.Google Scholar
Mills, G. B. 1977. The forgotten people: Cane River's Creoles of color. Baton Rouge (LA): Louisiana State University Press.Google Scholar
Morgan, D. W. & Macdonald, K. C.. 2011. Colonoware in western colonial Louisiana: makers and meaning, in Kelly, K. & Hardy, M. (ed.) French colonial archaeology in the Southeast and the Caribbean: 117–51. Gainesville (FL): University of Florida Press.Google Scholar
National Park Service Historic American Buildings Survey. 2001. LA-1295: Coincoin-Prudhomme House (Maison de Marie Therese). Unpublished manuscript on file at the Cane River National Heritage Area, Natchitoches. Available at: http://www.nps.gov/history/hdp/samples/HABS/coincoin/history.pdf (accessed 24 May 2011).Google Scholar
Parkinson, J. 1907. A note on the Efik and Ekoi tribes of the Eastern Province of Southern Nigeria. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 37: 261–67.Google Scholar
Prussin, L. 1986. Hatumere: Islamic design in West Africa. Berkeley (CA): University of California Press.Google Scholar
Singleton, T. A. 1988. An archaeological framework for slavery and emancipation, 1740-1880, in Leone, M. P. & Potter, P. B. Jr. (ed.) The recovery of meaning: historical archaeology in the eastern United States: 345–70. Washington (DC): Smithsonian Institution Press.Google Scholar
Singleton, T. A. & Bograd, M. D.. 1995. The archaeology of the African diaspora in the Americas. Ann Arbor (MI): The Society for Historical Archaeology.Google Scholar
Stewart, C. 2007. Creolization: history, ethnography, theory. Walnut Creek (CA): Left Coast Press.Google Scholar
Thornton, J. 1998. Africa and Africans in the making of the Atlantic World, 1400-1800. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wells, C. M. 1973. Domestic architecture of colonial Natchitoches. Unpublished MA dissertation, Northwestern State University of Louisiana, Natchitoches.Google Scholar
Wheaton, T. R. 2002. Colonial African American plantation villages, in Joseph, J. W. & King, J. A. (ed.) Another's country: archaeological and historical perspectives on cultural interactions in the southern colonies: 30–44. Tuscaloosa (AL): University of Alabama Press.Google Scholar
Wheaton, T. R. & Garrow, P. H.. 1985. Acculturation and the archaeological record in the Carolina Lowcountry, in Singleton, T. (ed.) The archaeology of slavery and plantation life: 239–59. Orlando (FL): Academic Press.Google Scholar