Plant use and deposition at King’s Reach, a late-seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century site, Calvert County, Maryland

For the past four decades, archaeologists researching the early colonial period of the Chesapeake region have relied on data other than macrobotanical remains to discuss the agricultural practices, dietary staples, and use of plants for medicinal or ornamental purposes. Plant remains from several contexts at King’s Reach (18CV83), the site of two earthfast structures occupied circa 1689–1711, provide information about the agricultural strategies pursued by Richard Smith Jr., the wealthy plantation owner, as he navigated the downturn in the tobacco market in the late seventeenth century. The plant assemblage, which includes bottle gourd seeds and possible cowpea, also hints at the foodways of enslaved laborers. The macrobotanical remains thus enhance our understanding of local agricultural practices as well as add to our interpretations of social relations associated with the contexts investigated at King’s Reach.