摘要：A summary of the methods employed and the conclusions reached after nine seasons of archaeological fieldwork are presented. Emphasis is placed on the success and limitations of the methods employed in the investigations at Sylvester Manor and results of those investigations. Although excavations concentrated on the plantation core, additional areas examined produced little in the way of archaeological features. The results, although preliminary, point to a major role for Native Americans as laborers during the earliest phases of the plantation’s operation. Landscape evidence also suggests an evolving economy as the Manor transitions from a provisioning operation to a commercial farm/tenant run operation within a decade of Nathaniel Sylvester’s death in 1680. A third transition saw the commercial farm reconfigured once again as a Georgian-inspired country estate eclipsed it.
