Intensive Archaeological Testing at the John Howton McIntosh Sugarhouse, Camden County, Georgia

During the months of September and October 1981, the Department of Anthropology at the University of Florida carried out a program of intensive archaeological testing at the John Houstoun McIntosh Sugarhouse and Archaeological Area, Camden County Georgia. This testing program was undertaken in order to determine the extent, nature and significance of the ruins of a nineteenth century sugarhouse and associated archaeology. The study was also designed to provide information for interpretation and management of the site. The project was jointly funded by Camden County and the Kings Bay Impact Coordinating Committee. It was administered by the Historic Preservation Section of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources through a contract with the University of Florida. In part, the study was initiated in order to satisfy terms of a land transfer from the state to the county; this transfer established the Historic Preservation Section as the lead agency for the archaeological investigation. Prior to the land transfer, the sugarhouse ruins and surrounding property were managed by the Parks, Recreation and Historic Sites Division of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources as a detached portion of Crooked River State Park. The property was used for passive recreation. No attempt was made to provide active interpretation of the historic elements of the site. With the creation of the United States Navy Submarine Support Base at Kings Bay, state park personnel found it increasingly difficult to provide proper management at the sugarhouse property. Thus, the state legislature, working with county and Navy officials, determined to transfer the extant ruins and surrounding state owned land to the county for development as a regional interpretative center. Under county ownership, plans for developing the site include constructing a new parking facility, a regionally focused natural history museum, foot trails through the natural and historic areas of the property, and preservation of the ruins. Passive recreation will continue at the site, but will be limited to the areas that are not archaeologically or architecturally sensitive. Active interpretation of the ruins, archaeology, and ecology of the property will be accomplished. The archaeological project designed to investigate the John Houstoun McIntosh Sugarhouse has as its epistemological base the research strategy of cultural materialism. This approach was selected because it offers specific operations to understand relationships between modes of production and reproduction, domestic economy, and political economy (Harris 1979: 51-54). Understanding these relationships is imperative if we are to know why McIntosh built the sugarhouse, why it took the form that it did, why it was abandoned, and how it fit into a plantation system of surplus production. Theodore Sande (1977: 40-41) and Jeffrey Brown (1980: 1) have pointed out that the analysis and interpretation of an industrial archaeological site requires that the research design be developed from the broadest possible context. This is, to say, that an industrial site cannot be fully understood only from the archaeology at the site. It is necessary to understand the economic history of the period involved, the history and evolution of the technology employed by the industry, and the history of the site, all within the context of anthropological theory. The selection of a cultural materialist research strategy is intended to bring together these areas of understanding. In order to accomplish this, a demographic, technological, economic and environmental history, or social history, will be developed for sugar production in the Americas. This social history can be employed to integrate the sociocultural system of plantation economy and the archaeology of the McIntosh Sugarhouse.