Digging up Dining Habits

Event Details

On Friday, March 3, at 4 pm, The Charleston Museum's Curator of Historical Archaeology, Martha Zierden, will present Digging up Dining Habits, a presentation and book signing in the work yard/garden of the Heyward-Washington house, followed by a tour of the house's kitchen. Zierden, author of Charleston: An Archaeology of Life in a Coastal Community, will be accompanied by Sarah Platt, a graduate student from Syracuse University, in residence at The Charleston Museum for 2017.

Behind the elegant facades of colonial townhouses, the work yard was the center of food preparation, the domain of the enslaved residents whose work supported the urban household. The Heyward-Washington house is the site of multiple archaeological digs that produced thousands of artifacts from the early colonial period to the late 19th century.

Martha Zierden has been excavating and studying archaeological sites in Charleston for over three decades. Her work focuses on diet, foodways, and the urban landscape, as outlined in her new book, Charleston: An Archaeology of Life in a Coastal Community (with Elizabeth J. Reitz, University Press of Florida). Her Pecha Kucha presention for Food +Wine in 2014 focused on the animals raised and consumed in Charleston households; this lecture and discussion will focus on the drinks, with a special exhibit of the elegant wine glasses and gentlemen's bottles recovered from the Heyward house.