Race and Class on Antebellum Plantations

F or several decades, archaeologists who have excavated sites in complex societies have confronted the same problem: How are status differences reflected in the archaeological remains? Traditionally archaeologists have routinely inferred the status of site inhabitants from the qUality and quantity of archaeological evidence, even though the true status of the inhabitants was unknown (e.g., Trigger in Chang 1968). Many archaeologists have assumed that there was a perfect correlation between the archeaological remains they found and the status of the former site inhabitants. They assumed that high status was always associated with higher quality and quantities of housing, possessions, and foods; in tum, they assumed that low status was always associated with lower quality and quantities of material rewards. In complex societies, however, there are a great variety of status differences which may produce ~tteming in_lhe a[.c£laeoLogical re_cgrd. In addition to age and sex differences, there are racial, ethnic, linguistic, occupational, legal, and political differences. These various status positions are ranked in hierarchies and have differing access to symbolic and material rewards. These rewards include power or the legal right to coerce others; psychic rewards such as prestige, dignity, security , and a sense of independence, and property or access to material wealth and labor (Tumin 1967: 39-46 ; Warner in Tumin 1970: 233, 241) . Evidence of these symbolic and material rewards may be difficult to recover at archaeological sites. The symbolic rewards such as power and prestige, which may have been of equal or greater concern to site inhabitants than material rewards, will be lost or only partially described in the incomplete written record. In turn, since so much of material culture is perishable, material rewards such as housing, possessions, and foods will be only partially preserved in the incomplete written record.