Carving a Kingdom from the Trunk of the Plantation Tree: Archaeology of the Hutchinson House and the Landscape Legacy of the “Black Kings” of Edisto Island

Emancipation provided the Gullah Geechee of the Lowcountry with the opportunity to craft their own communities and economies. On Edisto Island, South Carolina, prominent members of the Gullah Geechee community were known as the “Black Kings” of the island. James Hutchinson was one of the kings and created a community landscape by forming a consortium of freemen who purchased and subdivided former plantation lands. His son Henry would build a home and farm on one of these lots that would serve as a refuge to others during severe weather as well as providing a cotton gin to process cotton grown by other community members. This home is currently being restored by the Edisto Island Open Land Trust. Archaeological survey of the Hutchinson House illustrates the transition of the landscape from the plantation era to the Hutchinsons’ free-people community, the ways in which the landscape was conceived and organized, and the archaeological imprint of this transition.