SUMMARY

As a rare surviving example of a 17th-century Virginian house, Bacon’s Castle is often glossed as an isolated architectural artefact, and a backdrop for historical events and ghost stories alike. Yet, the complex life-history that lends it this evocative, distributed character remains underexplored. Likewise, building deposits – like those rediscovered during ongoing reassessment of Bacon’s Castle’s archaeological collection – elicit excitement when associated with ‘magic’ or ‘ritual,’ while their specific contexts and unique materiality go unexamined. Drawing on Peircean semeiotics and assemblage theory, I propose a holistic, contextual archaeology of building deposits from recent historical sites – particularly pluralistic or contested spaces, like colonial plantations.

概括

作为 17 世纪弗吉尼亚房屋的罕见幸存例子，培根城堡经常被视为孤立的建筑人工制品，以及历史事件和鬼故事的背景。然而，赋予它这种令人回味的分布式特征的复杂生活史仍未得到充分探索。同样，建筑沉积物——就像在对培根城堡考古收藏的持续重新评估中重新发现的那些——在与“魔法”或“仪式”相关联时会引起兴奋，而它们的特定背景和独特的物质性却未经审查。借鉴 Peircean 符号学和组合理论，我提出了一个整体的、上下文的考古学，对来自近期历史遗址的建筑沉积物——特别是多元化或有争议的空间，如殖民种植园。