BRICKS ON BLACK WATER

Jess Garrison Hendrix

A very unique high school archaeology education program was implemented in Santa Rosa County, Florida, in 2008. Florida Public Archaeology (FPAN) partnered with Milton High School to create a joint education program in which high school students could take a year-long elective to receive hands-on training in archaeological methods and principles. Graduate students from the University of West Florida's Department of Anthropology directed the students in realworld excavations at the site of an 1830s brickyard, known as the Scott Site (8SR1917), located along the Blackwater River not far from the high school. Those excavations resulted in the research discussed in this thesis. This study presents the project and the results of investigations, which illustrate the archaeological importance of historic brickyard research. The historic brickyard that is the Scott Site is intricately linked to the development in Pensacola during Florida's early American Period. As a result of the development of a large U's. military complex in the newly obtained territory of Florida, Pensacola experienced a historic brick boom in the 1830s. The opportunity to profit from brick manufacturing prompted many individuals to establish brickyards along the region's numerous waterways. Industrial slavery became integral to the region's development as slaves were utilized almost exclusively in both brick manufacturing in the area and in the construction of Pensacola's Naval Yard and four Third System forts intended to guard Pensacola Pass. Archaeological investigations of the Scott Site were used to conduct a comparative landscape analysis between the Scott Site brickyard and brickyards previously studied by Dr. Lucy Wayne in South Carolina as part of her dissertation research. Wayne documented a series of intrasite patterns that make up the landscape of historic brickyards in the Wando River basin of the South Carolina Lowcountry outside the Charleston area and, in essence, she created a brickyard landscape model. This thesis expands Wayne's original concept of intrasite patterns to incorporate an industrial context, which allows brickyards to be understood as a single industrial complex consisting of two major components, operational and occupational. The landscape of the Scott Site brickyard is then compared to Wayne's model to test the applicability of the model on a cross-regional scale. Wayne's postulate that historic brickyards contain a slave occupational area in the upland portions of the sites is also tested. Collectively, this research puts forward several key concepts: 1) the study demonstrates that Wayne's brickyard landscape model is applicable outside the region of its origin, 2) the research illustrates the historical significance of Pensacola's historic brickyards, and 3) the research establishes the archaeological significance of brickyards as a major foci of the archaeology of slavery in the region.

BRICKS ON BLACK WATER

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BRICKS ON BLACK WATER

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