Archeology at Poplar Forest

Lots of folks might pass right by this, but I like discovering what reality was back then.  Interpretive signs tell of finding clues to slave diets:  Bones from opossum, rabbit, raccoon, white-tailed deer, squirrel and ground hog indicate that slaves hunted these animals for food.  Raccoons may also have been killed for their pelts.  Bones from fresh water fish suggest that residents spent some of their "free time" fishing.

Now, I have eaten rabbit and deer.  I've even shot at a 'coon eating my chicken's feed.  Granpa killed one climbing our White Georgia peach tree.  (Granpa truly does love his peach cobbler and homemade peach ice cream...)  Opossum are nasty, scary lookin' critters with jaws full of razor-sharp teeth.  I'd shoot one of them in a heart beat given the chance!  But these animals as steady diet?  I don't think so.


The signs also share which plants slaves (and probably all peoples then) used for medicines and food:  amaranth, carpetweek, dock, goosefoot, jimsonweed, knotweed/smartweed, pokeweed, purslane and verbena.  Today we haven't a clue what ANY of these plants even look like!  I'm guessin' we'd starve to death if someone took away our supermarkets...

During reconstruction a literal rats' nest was discovered.  Somehow they determined that the lil' rats started stealing items around 1846 and continued until the 1960's.  (Now, how did they figured THAT out???)  The neat thing about discovering a rats' nest is that normally decaying objects didn't decay.  But the rats stole anything and everything they could get their lil' paws on:

 










                             Newspapers                                                                             Corn cobs

Wooden items, bits of fabric, fruit and nuts.