Project Proposal

 For my final project I would like to examine the placement of tenant homes around the Gist mansion on Rose Hill Plantation in Union, South Carolina. Post emancipation many previously enslaved individuals continued to live and work on the land they were tied to but now as tenant farmers, sharecroppers, and wage laborers. The same was true for Rose Hill Plantation, there are fourteen known tenant farmer homes that were associated with the property, though only four of these house sites have been excavated and have recorded gps points for their location. Another important question regarding this site is, where were the enslaved cabins located? Over the course of 128 years of this plantation being in use, 280 individuals were enslaved on the property. I have found reports of ground penetrating radar being done and locating evidence of structural remains of enslaved housing. I would like to compare this data to current known locations of tenant houses to see if there are similar patterns with the placement of these later house sites. Through this analysis I would like to see if there is any evidence of residual affects of panopticism. The idea of Panopticism has been applied to the layout of plantations in relation to their enslaved housing, creating the idea of constant surveillance. Are the tenant homes placed where they can still be seen by the "Big House" or is there possibly a tenant house that operated as an overseer and were they able to see all of the other homes around them? I hope I will be able to answer these questions using spatial analysis methods through ArchGIS Pro.