History Commons^™

African Architectural Transference To The South Carolina Low Country, 1700-1880, Fritz Hamer

Faculty and Staff Publications

There is growing historical and archaeological evidence that African style housing was an integral part of slave communities on plantations in the South Carolina Lowcountry. Besides the "shotgun" house, other African house forms were built in North America before descendants of African slaves became acculturated to western construction techniques. The rarity of historical and archaeological evidence of these structures can be attributed to the culture bias of early white observers and the poor preservation of these impermanent structures in the archaeological record.