The Great Dismal Swamp, Spatial Analysis, and Enslaved Liberation Seeker

This essay discusses a suite of geospatial tools—least cost analysis, Digital Elevation Models (DEMs), and cost surface modeling—to show the affordances involved in reconstructing the physical and cultural landscapes that shaped routes to freedom for enslaved people in the Great Dismal Swamp region. Least cost analysis models terrain- dependent pathways; DEMs render elevation changes and natural barriers; cost surfaces integrate rivers, roads, plantations, and patrol routes to simulate the complex decision-making of freedom seekers. Grounded in Black Geographies frameworks, this study demonstrates that combining technical geospatial analysis with interpretive historical methods can illuminate unnamed routes and refuges central to the struggle for freedom. The essay further traces the archaeological origins of these workflows—drawing on foundational applications of least cost analysis and cost surface modeling in ancient contexts—and shows how they enable a dynamic, movement- centered reading of the historical record. Taken together, these methods foreground the ingenuity, resilience, and agency of enslaved freedom seekers as they navigated hostile terrain and persistently reshaped antebellum southern social structures.