Navigable waterways were essential to European colonization of the South Carolina Lowcountry beginning in the late 17th century. Despite early attempts by colonial leaders to keep land grants within close proximity to Charleston, colonists quickly began to establish plantations where the land was amenable for commodity production and scattered throughout the region. Consequently, colonists and enslaved individuals utilized navigable waterways by extending the built environment into the water through wharves, landings, and watercraft, as well as modifying the waterways themselves for irrigation, agriculture, and mobility. Despite the importance of waterways in the function of plantations, most landscape studies have focused on terrestrial contexts. This paper proposes that waterway assemblages should be integrated into plantation landscape studies as a means of understanding the role of movement in commodity production, surveillance, and communication to better reconstruct everyday life, focusing on the preliminary remote sensing fieldwork of two antebellum plantation waterfronts as case studies.

从17世纪后期开始，通航水道对于欧洲对南卡罗来纳州低地国家的殖民化至关重要。尽管殖民地领导人早先曾试图将土地赠予保持在查尔斯顿附近，但殖民者迅速开始建立种植园，使土地适合商品生产并散布在整个地区。因此，殖民者和被奴役的个人通过通航码头，着陆点和船只将建筑环境扩展到水中，并修改了水道自身的灌溉，农业和机动性，从而利用了通航水道。尽管水路在人工林功能中很重要，但大多数景观研究都集中在陆地环境上。