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An Archaeology of Convict Leasing in the American South 

V. Camille Westmonta* and Cayla B. Colclasureb 

a Center for Southern Studies, University of the South, Sewanee, Tennessee, USA; ORCiD: 

0000-0003-4229-6340 

b Department of Anthropology, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA; 

ORCiD: 0000-0003-1248-0454 

 

* Corresponding Author: 735 University Avenue, Sewanee, Tennessee 37383; 

vcwestmont@gmail.com 

 

Abstract 

Between the mid-nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries, thousands of men, women, and 

children in the American South were forced to labor for private businesses and individuals under 

the convict lease system. This system disproportionately impacted Black men and boys, although 

it also ensnared Black women and girls as well as poor white men, women, and children. 

Motivated by the financial gains achieved through leasing prisoners, states ensured that the 

system continued despite numerous highly-publicized human rights violations. Although 

numerous scholars and grassroots activists have brought attention to the history of convict 

leasing, historical archaeology has only engaged with the phenomenon in a limited capacity. In 

this article, we call for archaeologists, and archaeologists of the African Diaspora in particular, to 

engage with sites and materialities of convict leasing more directly. Our article outlines a 

potential path forward for such a research program. 

 

mailto:vcwestmont@gmail.com


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Keywords 

Convict leasing, forced labor, incarceration, archaeology, cultural heritage, community 

engagement 

 

Introduction 

Today, the United States imprisons more people than anywhere else in the world. Despite 

being home to less than 5% of the world’s population, the U.S. holds approximately 20% of the 

world’s prisoners (Walmsley 2018). People of color are consistently over-represented in 

incarcerated populations in the U.S., with Black Americans incarcerated at a rate five times 

higher than white Americans (Nellis 2021). Angela Davis (2003, 16) has written that prisons 

serve an ideological function to relieve Americans “of the responsibility of seriously engaging 

with the problems of our society, especially those produced by racism and, increasingly, global 

capitalism.” Historical scholarship reveals that the systematic over-incarceration of people of 

color is an effect of anti-Black racism (see Bobo and Thompson 2010), and that racialized 

incarceration began in the years immediately following the U.S. Civil War.  

The Southern convict leasing system arose following the Civil War as a strategy to exert 

control over the newly emancipated African-American population while continuing to exploit 

and profit from Black labor, to recover from the economic devastation of war, and to reassert 

white supremacist hegemony. Although convict leasing had existed in various forms prior to the 

Civil War, the explicitly racial aspects of the system and its rapid growth mark this period as 

distinct from its earlier iterations (Mancini 1996). Given convict leasing’s massive impact on the 

creation of the New South, the legal reification of white supremacy, and the establishment of an 



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industrial economy in the region, this phase of African Diasporic history is central to 

understanding postbellum race relations in former Confederate states.  

The goal of this article is to raise awareness about the presence of sites related to 

postbellum convict leasing across the U.S. South and encourage greater archaeological 

engagement with this aspect of post-emancipation African diasporic history. Sites of convict 

leasing offer vital insights into the systemic means by which African diasporic communities 

continued to be disenfranchised and oppressed—and the ways in which these communities 

resisted these efforts—after the end of formalized chattel slavery. Research into sites of convict 

leasing is central to advancing understandings of African American experiences of racial 

violence, exploitation, and oppression in the post-emancipation South (Lee 2021). Material 

conditions can offer powerful yet complementary perspectives on well-studied areas, including 

new insights on landscapes and material conditions of forced labor.  

Although convict leasing has received consistent attention from scholars in the U.S., 

particularly amongst historians (see Lichtenstein 1996; Oshinsky 1996; Shapiro 1998; Blackmon 

2008; LeFlouria 2015), this interest has barely reached the archaeological community. An 

archaeology of convict leasing that is developed with regard to the ethical and practical 

considerations continually developing in African diaspora archaeology has the potential to go 

beyond merely enhancing comprehension of the system’s material aspects, it could reframe our 

understandings of the system in significant ways.  

This article outlines theoretical frameworks that we believe convict leasing archaeology 

projects should engage with, including theories related to prison abolition, Black Feminist 

Archaeology, and carceral geographies. Archaeologists who approach this period have an 

obligation to do more than record and quantify artifacts; they must also engage with the haunts of 



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these forms of violence (Roberts 2020) and must actively work to dismantle the legacies of this 

violence through descendant community partnerships, engagement with modern prison abolition 

movements, and enaction of anti-racist models of collaboration. An archaeology of convict 

leasing is by necessity a social justice and activist archaeology (see Westmont 2022a); failure to 

connect this system to the modern prison industrial complex is a failure of our responsibilities as 

archaeologists to “not only study the complicated relationships and emergences of race and 

racism in the past, but also their legacy in the present” (Minkoff et al. 2022). Because convict 

leasing was the origin of racialized incarceration in the U.S. South (see Raza 2011), this type of 

research has direct implications for comparable, modern-day systems of oppression.  

Although forced labor has occurred in various forms around the world throughout 

history, the historical circumstances and racial disparities of the U.S. Southern convict lease 

system warrant examination which considers the system’s origins, impacts, and legacy. As 

Talitha LeFlouria (2015,  8) aptly observes, “reckoning with African American…experiences of 

involuntary servitude in the postbellum South . . . encourages scholars to more deeply 

contemplate whether or not, and to what extent, convict labor was in fact ‘slavery by another 

name.’” Archaeology, with its intrinsic spatial and temporal components, offers the ability to 

challenge our conceptions of time while acknowledging and deciphering the ways in which 

subsequent systems of forced labor and population control were altered and redesigned after the 

end of chattel slavery. Further, convict leasing’s interconnectedness with American industry, 

including railroads, extractive industries, and industrial agriculture, have broad implications for 

understanding American industrialization, infrastructural development, and the roles of forced 

labor therein.  

 



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History of convict leasing 

Prior to the American Civil War, relatively few people in the American South were 

incarcerated in jails or prisons. Free offenders were typically sentenced to death or physical 

punishments, while the results of enslaved people’s transgressions were largely determined by 

their enslavers (Daniel 1972; Mancini 1996; McKay 1942; Oshinsky 1996). Most southern states 

were slow to adopt the penal reforms taking shape in the Northeast. The eventual transition away 

from corporal and capital punishment towards incarceration was viewed by many as a victory for 

humanitarian reform. Ultimately, however, the carceral systems born out of the post-bellum 

South resulted in the bodily, social, and political death of hundreds of thousands of people. 

Convict leasing swept the South following the Civil War as state prisons and county jails 

were quickly overcrowded with African-American prisoners (Mancini 1996). Under the convict 

lease system, private companies leased prisoners from the state for a set length of time; in 

exchange for feeding, housing, clothing, and guarding the prisoners, lessees could force prisoners 

to work without pay under threat of physical violence (Muller 2018). By 1877, 10 of the 11 

former Confederate states had begun leasing state prisoners to private industry.   

Although forced prison labor had existed in the U.S. since the late eighteenth century, it 

took on a new, more aggressive, and more racialized form following the Civil War (Mancini 

1996). For example, in Tennessee, Black prisoners accounted for less than 5% of state prisoners 

in 1860, but accounted for 75% of prisoners by 1891 (Shapiro 1998); similarly in Georgia, Black 

prisoners were so few in 1862 that they were not recorded, yet by 1880, they constituted 90% of 

the state’s prisoners (Muller 2018). This rapid rise in Black incarceration rates was the result of a 

concentrated legal effort to oppress and imprison Black people through racist laws such as Black 

Codes as well as stiff punishments for offenses believed to be disproportionately done by Black 



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people, such as livestock theft (Mancini 1996; Pope 2019). While Southern states had a social 

motive for these discriminatory tactics—maintaining white racial supremacy through 

maintaining control over the state’s Black population (Stampp 1965; Blackmon 2008)—states 

also had an economic motive to imprison even more people: more prisoners translated into larger 

lease profits (Pope 2019). Convict leasing was not a continuation of plantation slavery; rather, it 

was a new economic system that privileged corporate slavery, one that removed culpability and 

liability from enslavers, that placed enslaved people more directly into harm’s way, and that 

enabled the creation of the industrialized “New South.”  

An explicit exception written into the ban on slavery codified by the Thirteenth 

Amendment to the U.S. Constitution made the convict lease system possible. One of the three 

Reconstruction amendments passed in the wake of the U.S. Civil War to grant civil rights to 

formerly enslaved people, the Thirteenth Amendment reads: “Neither slavery nor involuntary 

servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, 

shall exist within the U.S., or any place subject to their jurisdiction” (U.S. Const., amend. XIII, § 

1). The amendment’s clause, “except as punishment for a crime whereof the party shall have 

been duly convicted,” has been used for over a century to legally justify the removal of rights 

from individuals convicted of crimes. This is most clearly seen in the 1871 decision in Ruffin v. 

Commonwealth of Virginia, where the Virginia Supreme Court stated in their opinion that a 

prisoner, “as a consequence of his crime, not only forfeited his liberty, but all his personal rights 

except those which the law in its humanity accords to him. He is for the time being the slave of 

the State” (Ruffin v. Commonwealth of Virginia, Court of Appeals of Virginia, 62 VA. 790, 796 

[Va. 1872], emphasis added). Typically, prisoners were used as a means of generating profit for 

the state, whether through being contracted out to private businesses or by providing free labor 



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for state or public works projects (Pope 2019; Raza 2011; Davis 2000). The combination of 

racially targeted laws with the suspension of rights of prisoners led to extraordinary brutality and 

economic efficacy of the convict lease system. 

While convict leasing and chattel slavery are both forms of forced labor, convict leasing 

gained popularity as part of a broader constellation of means toward population control that arose 

in chattel slavery’s absence, including peonage, sharecropping, lynchings, white supremacist 

terrorism through organizations like the Ku Klux Klan, and the patchwork of legislation across 

the South which constrained African-American livelihoods. Alex Lichtenstein (1996, 3) stated 

that “the convict lease was a fiscally conservative means of coping with a new burden: the ex-

slaves who were emancipated from the domination of the slaveholder only to be subject to the 

authority of the state.” Lichtenstein also points out that the variety of ways former enslavers 

attempted to transform the formerly enslaved into a proletariat throughout nineteenth-century, 

post-emancipation societies represented a broad spectrum of coercive labor relations between 

chattel slavery and free labor. 

Forced labor under the convict lease system varied from chattel slavery in the antebellum 

period in several major ways. Perhaps most importantly, the status of prisoner and forced laborer 

under the convict lease system was not heritable. Prisoners could only be forced to labor for the 

duration of their assigned prison sentence, and this status was not extended to children or 

relatives. This meant that the system for acquiring forced laborers was divorced from natural 

reproductive cycles, thereby fundamentally reshaping women’s roles within enslavement. The 

shift away from women birthing laborers under chattel slavery to the state incarcerating laborers 

under convict leasing meant that pregnancy and childbirth became “threats to economic progress 

and productivity” (LeFlouria 2015:8). The new means of acquiring laborers—the legal system—



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was able to meet seasonal demand for forced labor by rounding up and arresting individuals as 

needed (Blackmon 2008).  

In many instances, prisoners were assigned to the types of jobs that enslaved people had 

done prior to Emancipation, making convict leasing a “functional replacement for slavery” 

(Adamson 1983, 556). Scholars disagree about this designation and whether it is useful to frame 

convict leasing as a “functional replacement” for enslavement. The parallels between the two are 

unmistakable. Chattel slavery and convict leasing both served to violently extract labor on 

racialized terms; both fueled the development of American capitalism at the expense of Black 

lives. In Slavery by Another Name, Douglas Blackmon (2008) draws direct comparisons between 

enslavement and convict leasing, noting that the industrial slavery which arose during the Civil 

War to supply the Confederacy anticipated the convict leasing system in many respects. Angela 

Davis (2003, 33) has remarked on the continuities between these forms of force labor, observing 

that “the appalling treatment to which convicts were subjected under the lease system 

recapitulated and further extended the regimes of slavery.”  

Prisoners worked in traditional agricultural settings, such as on former plantations or in 

turpentine farms, as well as in industrial settings, including mining, quarrying, and railroad 

construction. The use of prisoners in industrial contexts was intentional: as the South sought a 

new class of worker—the industrial worker—prison labor was used to fill that need (Lichtenstein 

1996). The use of prisoner labor in industrial settings was particularly egregious due to the high 

potential for accidents, as prisoners were often expected to meet daily production quotas despite 

having little to no prior training. Injuries from workplace accidents were frequent and could be 

life-altering (Donegan 2019; see R. J. Campbell v. TCIR 1896).  



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Convict leasing became infamous for its brutality. Because lessees were explicitly 

released from liability in the terms of their lease, prisoners became, in effect, entirely disposable. 

This led to the rise of the apothegm, “One dies, get another one,” to describe the system 

(Mancini 1996). This phrase is borne out by the data: in some labor camps, particularly those 

related to railroad construction, fatality rates reached well over 50% of prisoners (Mancini 1996). 

Further, leases often included fines for lessees if prisoners escaped, creating a financial incentive 

for lessees to kill prisoners before allowing them to escape. Those that survived contended with 

hellish conditions. Prisoners were frequently held in inhumane conditions that directly violated 

the terms of the lease agreement, including inadequate and poorly prepared food, unsanitary 

living and working conditions, overcrowding, inadequate clothing, lack of medical care, and 

cruel and unusual punishments (Lynch and Cass 2021; Adamson 1983; Mancini 1996). 

Additionally, women as well as young men were at high risk for sexual violence in the labor 

camps (LeFlouria 2011). Women prisoners were often targeted by camp guards and overseers 

who threatened to whip the women if they refused their sexual advances. Other women died in 

childbirth from pregnancies resulting from rape during their periods of incarceration (LeFlouria 

2011, 60). While accusations of inhumanity and brutality in the convict lease system lent support 

for abolishing the system on humanitarian grounds, getting rid of convict leasing was often a 

long and slow fight (Lynch and Cass 2021; Shapiro 1998). 

The Southern convict lease system has been extensively documented both 

contemporaneously and by modern scholars (see Mancini 1996; Shapiro 1998; Blackmon 2008; 

LeFlouria 2015; Lichtenstein 1996). Historically, activists including Ida B. Wells and Frederick 

Douglass railed against the system’s racism and brutality. Today, legal scholars continue to 

examine the original intention of the Thirteenth Amendment’s framers. Modern evaluations 



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argue that the legal interpretation still in use today, which was originally advanced by former 

enslavers and Democratic politicians during Reconstruction and said that “once convicted of a 

crime, a person could be sold into slavery for life or leased for a term at the discretion of state 

legislatures and officials,” was not the intention of the law as written and that modern-day forced 

prison labor should be heavily curtailed (Pope 2019, 1465; Junaid 2021). Rather, legal scholars 

suggest that the slavery and servitude clause was only intended to be used as punishment—not as 

a means to boost state revenues, to subjugate the Black populous, or to assist private businesses 

experiencing labor shortages (Pope 2019), and that the slavery and servitude should only be 

permitted when it is explicitly assigned as part of the person’s prison sentence by the court 

(Junaid 2021). Given the contention around the law’s wording, historical accounts of the system 

might assist in modern reevaluations of the law. 

 

Current work on the archaeology of convict leasing 

Despite the major impacts convict leasing had on African-American freedom following 

the Civil War, the places associated with convict leasing have largely been overlooked by 

archaeologists and material culture specialists. When sites related to convict leasing are 

examined, it has often been as the result of cultural resource management compliance work or 

grassroots activism coordinated by local and descendant communities to preserve heritage sites 

from redevelopment. Establishing more long-term research projects on these sites will be vital to 

the further development of this area of research. As greater attention is paid to convict leasing, 

more nuances will arise, including the opportunity for comparative analyses. 

The projects currently underway at convict leasing sites in the U.S. provide guidance for 

future projects and demonstrate the diversity of possible directions. Bringing together current 



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and previous archaeological and heritage work at sites of convict leasing in the U.S., including 

the Sugar Land 95, the Lone Rock Stockade, the RAIL project, and the Chattahoochee Brick 

Company, with the lessons offered by archaeologies of industrial labor, forced labor, and 

confinement globally, can provide a foundation for new projects that pursue these themes.  

 

The Sugar Land 95 

Among the best-known convict leasing sites in the U.S. is the recently discovered 

Bullhead Camp Cemetery containing the remains of the “Sugar Land 95.” Believed to have been 

interred between 1875 and 1911, the remains of 94 likely men and boys and one likely woman 

were discovered in early 2018 in the Houston, Texas, suburb of Sugar Land. All individuals are 

believed to be African Americans. The skeletal remains belonged to forced prison laborers who 

had been sold to sugar producers under Texas’ convict lease system. Although Black people 

constituted less than 32% of the state’s population, they consistently constituted 50% to 60% of 

the state’s prison population during the convict lease era (Clarke et al. 2020, 194; Fort Bend ISD 

n.d.). The cemetery is the first known convict labor graveyard in the U.S. to be excavated by 

professional archaeologists.  

 Very little is known about the 95 individuals or their exact historical context. The 

cemetery was never recorded on deed conveyances, topographic maps, county maps, or in prison 

records (Clarke et al. 2020, 232). Between 1875 and 1911, six different prison labor forces were 

located in this area, although the cemetery is most closely associated with L. A. Ellis, who used 

prison labor to grow sugarcane and produce sugar in the area from 1880 until 1907. The land 

associated with the Bullhead Camp Cemetery was part of L. A. Ellis’ Sartartia Plantation, which 

became “one of the largest sugar plantations in the country” (Clarke et al. 2020, 194). 



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Bioarchaeological analysis of the Sugar Land 95 revealed the dangerous and difficult 

lives of the prisoners, particularly during their time as forced prison laborers. Incidences of 

skeletal indicators of stress were higher amongst the Sugar Land 95’s remains than in cemeteries 

of both enslaved and freed Black populations. The rates witnessed within the Sugar Land 95 are 

“atypical” and indicate that not only did many of the prisoners suffer nutritional deficiencies in 

childhood, but they likely also experienced unsanitary conditions and inadequate nutrition while 

confined within the prison camp (Clarke et al. 2020: 349). Trauma was prevalent, with fully 40% 

of individuals showing evidence of trauma. Four of these individuals showed signs of gunshot 

trauma–specifically shotgun trauma–around their time of death, indicating that they likely died at 

the hands of camp guards (Clarke et al. 2020, 375). High rates of musculoskeletal stress markers 

in the upper arms indicate that prisoners were required to carry heavy loads in their arms or on 

their shoulders (Clarke et al. 2020, 373), while 33% of their remains showed Schmorl’s nodes in 

the vertebrae, indicating they had to lift heavy loads (Clarke et al. 2020, 368). Overall, the 

bioarchaeological analysis corroborates and expands upon the historical records that indicate 

conditions in the labor camp were “very poor to appalling . . . [with] prisoners suffer[ing] 

shortages of food, clothing, medical care, and proper living quarters” (Clarke et al. 2020, 262). 

The depravity of the convict lease system is recorded on the bones of those who died at its hands. 

While the bioarchaeological analyses provide irrefutable proof of the inhumanity of the 

convict lease system, contemporary disagreements show that the injustice continues. Even before 

the discovery of the Sugar Land 95, local grassroots community activists had been fighting for 

recognition of those targeted by convict leasing. Reginald Moore, a longtime activist who spent 

decades trying to bring attention to the area’s history of convict leasing, had warned city leaders 

and the Fort Bend Independent School District (ISD) that they were likely to encounter human 



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remains. Although Moore was vindicated following the discovery of the remains, city leaders 

continued to ignore him and sideline his advice (Hardy 2020). Although Moore passed away in 

2020, his mission lives on through the Convict Leasing and Labor Project.  

 

Lone Rock Stockade 

Built in 1883 by the Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company (TCIR; later a 

subsidiary of U.S. Steel), the Lone Rock Stockade was the largest purpose-built private convict 

labor prison in the state of Tennessee. The Lone Rock Stockade is emblematic of the Upland 

South’s uneven transition from a slave-holding agricultural society to an industrial economy. 

Research into the materiality of the prison and its environs is revealing how models of chattel 

slavery were imposed onto the state’s convict lease system.  

Although Tennessee’s history of convict leasing has been examined by historians (see 

Mancini 1996; Shapiro 1998), the material aspects of the system have been understudied. 

Convict leasing began in Tennessee in 1871 at the urging of Arthur St. Clair Colyar, a former 

Confederate politician, plantation owner, and the then-president of TCIR. TCIR used prisoners to 

mine coal and produce coke, a product often used in iron and steel production created by heating 

bituminous coal to high temperatures in brick-lined beehive ovens called coke ovens. In 1883, 

TCIR set out to build a newer, larger prison: the Lone Rock Stockade (Westmont 2022c).  

The Lone Rock Stockade allowed TCIR to expand its use of forced prison labor. From 

only 100 prisoners in 1871, TCI had over 650 by 1895. At least 3,500 individuals were sent to 

the Lone Rock Stockade between 1884 and 1896. The prison itself consisted of a wooden 

palisade enclosing a two-acre area and at least nine structures, including prisoner barracks, a 

dining hall, a kitchen, and a hospital (Westmont 2022c). Archival records of the Lone Rock 



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Stockade reveal a place where industrial production was prioritized above all, including above 

prisoner safety and health. State prisoner ledgers reveal that nearly 10% of prisoners sent to the 

Tracy City stockade died annually, frequently from disease and work-related injuries (Sims 

1885). Tennessee’s convict labor system also features a deep racial component: over the 25 years 

prisoners were sent to Tracy City, over 75% were categorized as Black. Black prisoners were 

specifically assigned to the worst tasks, including working at the coke ovens, due to racist beliefs 

that Black people did not feel pain to the same extent as white people (Westmont 2022c).  

Within this brutal and dehumanizing system, prisoners fought back. In acts of defiance 

and resistance, prisoners launched full-scale revolts, including barricading themselves in the 

mines, attacking or killing guards, injuring themselves, escaping, and intentionally sabotaging 

their work (Shapiro 1998; Westmont 2022c). Prisoners also resisted oppression and 

dehumanization through social support networks within the prison population. Members of the 

Black community in the surrounding area created a type of postbellum Underground Railroad in 

which they would help escaped prisoners to flee the area (Hill 1981). 

Today, the Lone Rock Stockade Archaeology Project uses excavation, remote sensing, 

and archival research to examine the lived experiences of those imprisoned at the Lone Rock 

Stockade (Figure 1). The project has partnered with the Nashville chapter of the Afro-American 

Historical and Genealogical Society (AAHGS) in order to carry out collaborative research that is 

community-led. This collaboration has led to two primary goals: to transcribe the state prison 

ledgers that enumerate every prisoner sent to a forced labor site in Tennessee (with the ultimate 

goal being to identify descendants), and to locate the stockades’ cemeteries. Through community 

engagement efforts (see Westmont 2022b), interpretive panels at the site, and the partnership 



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with AAHGS, the Lone Rock Stockade Archaeological Project is working towards an ethical 

archaeology of convict leasing (Figure 2). 

 

[Figure 1 near here] 

 

[Figure 2 near here] 

 

The Western North Carolina Railroad 

North Carolina’s early attempts to exploit the labor of its prison population manifested 

somewhat differently than other Southern states during the nineteenth century. Hiring out 

prisoners of color by county sheriffs was made legal in 1813, however the practice did not 

become common until the Reconstruction Period. North Carolina practiced a state-controlled 

lease system in which prisoners remained under the control and supervision of the Board of 

Directors of the State Penitentiary, who appointed officers to supervise them on-site when leased 

to companies outside the penitentiary walls (McKay 1942). The act specifically authorizing the 

use of convict labor on the construction of the Western North Carolina Railroad was passed in 

1875.1 Thousands of people were incarcerated and forced to build the railroad connecting central 

North Carolina to the Tennessee border. Hundreds of them lost their lives while building the 

winding path through the Blue Ridge Mountains (Abrams 1976).  

At one point in 1878, there were 1,455 men and 403 boys being forced to work on the 

railroad. They worked for a reported average of 10 hours per day doing backbreaking, dangerous 

 
1  Imprisoned men were not the first unfree laborers to lay tracks for the Western North Carolina 
Railroad company; the Civil War created a labor shortage during the early years of the railroad’s 
construction and the company turned to leasing enslaved people from their enslavers (Abrams 
1976). 



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manual labor. Workers faced injury, exhaustion, disease, exposure to severe weather conditions, 

cave-ins, landslides, and violent, sometimes fatal retribution for resistance and attempted escape. 

When the train engine needed to be transported along the winding, 10 mile stagecoach road over 

the mountains, around 300 men were driven by whip alongside oxen and mules to pull the 

engine, laying tracks in front of it and removing them as they went (Abramas 1976). It was 

through this violence that the economy of western North Carolina was transformed by access to 

rail travel and exchange with surrounding states. 

The Railroad and Incarcerated Laborer (RAIL) Memorial Project was founded in 2020 

with the goal of memorializing the lives and labor of the imprisoned workers who built the 

Western North Carolina Railroad during the 1870s outside of the town of Old Fort, North 

Carolina. The RAIL Project has brought together western North Carolina historians, archivists, 

local politicians, and other community members who have worked to bring this history into the 

public discourse. The group unveiled the “Memorial to the Incarcerated Railroad Workers Who 

Built the Mountain Division of the Western North Carolina Railroad” near the important local 

landmark of Andrew’s Geyser on the outskirts of Old Fort on October 17, 2021 (RAIL Project 

2022) (Figures 3 and 4). In addition to the erection of the RAIL Project memorial, the Mountain 

Gateway Museum in Old Fort, North Carolina, also presented an exhibit on imprisoned laborers 

entitled “The Price of Progress” (Mountain Gateway Museum 2021).  

 

[Figure 3 near here] 

 

[Figure 4 near here] 

 



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In 2022, members of the RAIL Project partnered with Martin Archaeology Consulting to 

utilize non-invasive measures such as ground-penetrating radar and human remains detection 

dogs in an attempt to identify possible locations of the graves of imprisoned laborers who died 

while working on the Western North Carolina Railroad. The survey conducted by the RAIL 

Project and Martin Archaeology Consulting received local media attention and furthered the 

group’s efforts to highlight the stories of incarcerated railroad laborers by bringing the discussion 

of their deaths to the pages of the Asheville Citizen Times (Boyle 2022a) and the website of USA 

Today (Boyle 2022b). These investigations are ongoing and according to Dr. Daniel Pierce, co-

founder of the RAIL Project, the group aims to place more memorializing markers in suspected 

locations of imprisoned laborers’ graves along the rail corridor.  

 

Chattahoochee Brick Company 

At the site of the Chattahoochee Brick Company, located on the Chattahoochee River in 

Atlanta, Georgia, the local community and the Chattahoochee Brick Company Descendant 

Coalition (CBCDC) are working to protect the site and memorialize the imprisoned laborers who 

toiled there. Like other sites of Southern convict leasing, the Chattahoochee Brick Company 

primarily exploited African-American men who were forced to create the bricks that were used 

to rebuild the city of Atlanta after the Civil War. The Chattahoochee Brick Company was 

highlighted in Douglas Blackmon’s (2008) Pulitzer-prize winning book, Slavery by Another 

Name, in which he documents the extensive abuses suffered by those forced to labor at 

Chattahoochee. Like other sites in the South where forced prison labor was used, the owner of 

the Chattahoochee Brick Company, James English, had been a Confederate Army captain before 

becoming an industrialist and later the mayor of Atlanta after the Civil War, illustrating the deep 



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ties between white supremacy, the Confederacy, and Southern convict leasing. English was also 

the largest and most abusive purchaser of forced labor in the state of Georgia (Blackmon 2008).  

The site has received increased attention in the last two years after developers attempted 

to build a fuel terminal on the property (Capelouto 2020). The 75-acre parcel, which sat vacant 

since a modern brickwork on the site closed in 2011, was purchased by an energy company in 

2016 and subsequently leased to Norfolk Southern. When Norfolk Southern began construction 

on a fuel terminal in 2021, preservation and environmental groups immediately moved to pause 

construction, arguing that the city should purchase the land (Capelouto 2020). In April 2022, 

Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens announced that the city was officially purchasing the land, which 

they intend to convert into a park and memorial. Although archaeology is not yet being done at 

the Chattahoochee Brick Company site, the reports of unmarked graves (Capelouto 2020) and 

the plans to establish a memorial will likely necessitate some amount of remote sensing and 

excavation. In the meantime, the local community and the CBCDC are conducting place-making 

activities, including sacred sites ceremonies in 2021 and 2022, to build community interest, 

engagement, and investment in the property and to honor the history that occurred there (Lifsey 

2022). 

 

Recommendations for the archaeology of convict leasing 

As convict leasing archaeology continues to move forward as a subfield in its own right, 

we believe that there are opportunities for practitioners to situate their work within an 

interdisciplinary and conceptually rich, theoretical discourse. We suggest that archaeologists of 

convict leasing consider and engage with theories on prison abolition, Black feminist 

Archaeology, carceral geographies, anti-racism and collaboration in their archaeological praxis. 



19 
 

 

Connections to prison abolition and abolitionist theory 

Convict leasing was one among many systems of oppression that have arisen in the U.S. 

to exert control over the population and reinforce white supremacy. It is essential that we 

maintain a diachronic perspective that situates convict leasing among enslavement, segregation, 

and the prison industrial complex (PIC) as expressions of many of the same persistent underlying 

logics. As such, archaeologists studying the convict leasing era will benefit from engaging with 

Black feminist thought, critical race theory, and learning from anti-racist activists and 

abolitionists across temporal and disciplinary boundaries.  

The archaeology of convict leasing can contribute to ongoing work to understand the 

legacy of that system and its lasting impacts on our society. The exploitation of incarcerated 

labor in the U.S. did not end with convict leasing. In many instances, the same work continued to 

be managed by the state for decades after this policy was eliminated. When the state of 

Tennessee ceased leasing inmates to TCIR in 1896, they constructed Brushy Mountain State 

Penitentiary atop a coal field and prisoners continued to spend upwards of 12 hours per day in 

the coal mines well into the 1960s (Gibson 2018). Across the South, imprisoned people were 

forced to work in chain gangs until the 1950s, their labor enabling the massive road development 

projects of the early twentieth century. In some Southern states, plantations such as Angola2 in 

Louisiana were converted into prisons where unfree, incarcerated workers continue today to till 

the same earth churned for centuries by enslavement. 

 
2 Louisiana State Penitentiary is often referred to simply as “Angola”, a name it shares with the 
antebellum plantation which preceded it. The plantation was named for the country of Angola, 
the place from which many of the people enslaved there had been trafficked from (Leeper 1976). 



20 
 

Since Reconstruction, maintaining white supremacy and racial order has been one of the 

primary functions of the criminal justice system. Examining the post-emancipation criminal 

justice system in Georgia, A. E. Raza (2011) has shown how anti-Black racism is fundamental to 

present-day carceral systems in the U.S. Raza’s work demonstrates how an understanding of the 

convict-lease system is essential to analyzing the historical development of racially 

disproportionate mass incarceration and the PIC. The Georgia Department of Corrections has 

contracts with private corporations to utilize imprisoned labor and the Department operates a 

public corporation, Georgia Correctional Industries, which manufactures products used by 

government agencies, all of which Raza (2011, 161) contends echoes the convict-lease system. 

Although Raza focuses this analysis on Georgia, these patterns can be seen across the U.S. 

Angela Davis (2003, 37) has recognized the convict leasing era as an important predecessor to 

the present-day PIC: 

The persistence of the prison as the main form of punishment, with 

its racist and sexist dimensions, has created this historical 

continuity between the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century 

convict lease system and the privatized prison business today. 

While the convict lease system was legally abolished, its structures 

of exploitation have reemerged in the patterns of privatization, and, 

more generally, in the wide-ranging corporatization of punishment 

that has produced a prison industrial complex. 

These connections are not lost on those who are influencing these policies. Ryan 

Minarovich (2013, 1) published an article entitled “The Modern Chain Gang: How Convict 

Leasing Can Help Repair the California Prison System,” in which he proposed a “regulated and 



21 
 

humane return to the convict leasing system” as a solution to the overcrowding and underfunding 

of California prisons. This, of course, was one of the same central arguments made for the initial 

implementation of convict leasing. 

 The explosive growth of the prison industry in the U.S. since the 1980s is tied to 

neoliberal economic policies that relocated manufacturing industries to countries in Latin 

America and Asia and left huge numbers of working class Americans unemployed (Browne 

2007). Ruth Wilson Gilmore (2007) discussed the growth of the California prison system as a 

strategy to deal with this economic crisis and the people and land it renders surplus, and to 

suppress and control opposition. The entrenchment of the PIC in American economics extends to 

the ways in which prisons are used to secure employment in communities where prisons are 

located, whereby inmates “are the raw materials facilitating the profitability and expansion of the 

PIC” (Raza 2011, 167). Through the PIC, the extraction of labor from imprisoned people has 

become secondary to the entrenchment of prisons-as-industry within the broader political 

economy, wherein prisons and the businesses that they sustain, and which sustain them, employ 

millions of people and are entangled with numerous industries. 

The conditions of modern imprisonment, including unfreedom, physical and sexual abuse 

by guards, and disenfranchisement “exemplify some of the shared logic between slavery and 

prisons and have found similar criticism and opposition to end this form of punishment” (Raza 

2011, 165–166). When calling for the abolition of prisons, Davis (2003) refers to historical 

struggles to dismantle other racist systems of oppression such as slavery, lynching, and 

segregation. She reminds us that for many people, especially those who benefitted from the 

social order they upheld, the dissolution of these falsely naturalized systems seemed 

unimaginable. In Dear Science and Other Stories, Katherine McKittrick (2021) builds off of 



22 
 

Sylvia Wynter’s (1990, 2) “demonic model” to discuss the ways in which “we invest in our 

present normative mode of existence in order to keep the living-system—our environmental and 

existential world—as is.” McKittrick suggests that it is our responsibility to recognize these 

recursive logics and to breach them. Breaching these logics is integral to initiating change.  

Casella (2011, 289) has suggested that in conducting archaeological research into the 

material record of carceral systems such as convict leasing, we have an opportunity to 

“destabalise the perceived inevitability of [places of confinement’s] existence, and by 

illuminating their specific historical trajectory, give voice to the possibility of alternatives.” 

These possibilities allow the archaeology of convict leasing, and incarceration more broadly, to 

contribute to abolitionist analysis of carceral systems by thinking critically about how prisons 

function, and have historically functioned, in society and to apply this knowledge to denaturalize 

these systems and imagine futures without prisons.  

 

Black feminist archaeology 

Black feminist archaeology offers a framework that engages with the racial and gendered 

nature of the Southern convict lease system and the racial and gendered nature of archaeology 

itself. Black feminist theory as applied to archaeological contexts advocates two key points: 

pursuing interpretations that critically evaluate intersecting identities in the past, and instituting 

archaeological practices that are mindful of identity-related power dynamics within society 

(Sterling 2015; Franklin 2001; Battle-Baptiste 2011). Convict leasing archaeological projects 

should look to this body of literature both in their archaeological practice and interpretations. 

Although the majority of prisoners within the convict lease system were men, Black 

feminist theory can enhance the interpretations of convict leasing sites by providing more critical 



23 
 

evaluations of race and gender identities broadly (Sterling 2015; Franklin 2001). This approach 

recognizes that the intersections within the race-class-gender identity triad constitute their own, 

entirely new, experiences of oppression. The addition of other forms of identity oppression is not 

additive, it is multiplicative (Sterling 2015, 96). Black feminist theory encourages scholars to 

understand identity-based oppression as “one overarching structure of domination” (Collins 

1991, 222), rather than layers that can be separated and distinguished. By understanding 

intersectional forms of oppression as a singular experience, scholars can seek to understand how 

the different aspects of identity-based oppression interrelate (Franklin 2001, 111).  

While Black feminist theory is most often applied to the context of women in African 

diasporas, these ideas about structures of dominations can also be applied to other situations 

where race and gender play a role in individuals’ experiences of subjugation (Sterling 2015, 94). 

Talitha LeFlouria’s work on women’s experiences within the postbellum forced labor system 

provides a rich and compelling example of what interpretations of the racial and gendered 

experience of the convict lease system could look like (see LeFlouria 2011, 2015). Archaeology 

of convict leasing, informed by Black feminist theory, could interrogate the ways stereotypes 

about Black men, including stereotypes about Black men’s bodies, their physical strength, and 

their sexuality, shaped their experiences within the convict lease system in ways that diverged 

from white men and from women (see Westwood 1990).  

Black feminist archaeology also encourages critical reflection on current archaeological 

practices. This includes acknowledging the ways that archaeologists’ own identities shape their 

experience in the field and reassessing our approach to non-traditional forms of evidence. In 

Black Feminist Archaeology, Whitney Battle-Baptiste (2011, 36) observes that “Archaeology is 

neither race nor gender neutral, or absent of its share of racist, sexist, and social 



24 
 

misunderstandings.” This statement underscores the importance of a diversified field of 

practitioners who bring unique backgrounds and experiences to this work. Ensuring African-

American representation within the archaeology project can help correct “an overwhelming 

White field of practitioners controlling the Black past” while also promoting more reflexive and 

politically aware narratives of the Black experience (Franklin 2001, 115–116).  

A Black feminist approach to historical archaeology also acknowledges that sources can 

reflect societal power relations and unjustly privilege some perspectives of the past over others. 

To counter this influence, Kathleen Sterling (2015, 100) suggests including more non-traditional 

forms of knowledge, including slave narratives, Black fiction, and personal anecdotes. 

Broadening our sources of evidence and accepting the legitimacy of a broader range of people 

can work towards addressing the unequal power relations within knowledge projection (Sterling 

2015; Collins 2004; Battle-Baptiste 2011).  

 

Carceral geographies 

Archaeologists seeking to explore other disciplinary engagements with the construction 

of carceral systems, the lived experiences of incarceration, and the numerous functions of 

imprisonment within society should familiarize themselves with the body of literature on carceral 

geographies. Carceral geography has grown in recent decades as a subfield of human geography 

which has brought geographers into conversation with criminologists and prison sociologists. 

This subfield focuses on concepts including the spatial geographies of incarceration, the 

relationship between space and the practices of incarceration, and the embodied nature of 

carceral “TimeSpace” (Moran 2012; Morin and Moran 2015). While acknowledging the 

significance of the internal geographies of prison spaces, these analyses often extend beyond the 



25 
 

physical space of the prison to the relationships and permeable boundaries between the prison 

and the “outside” world. Carceral spaces, past and present, encompass numerous locales and 

spatial relationships that function to control and surveil people. While carceral systems from 

different eras of history and geographic regions have specific contexts which cannot be 

overlooked, work on carceral geographies grounded in the present-day can provide those of us 

who work on sites rooted in the past with perspectives about the lived experiences and 

embodiment of imprisonment as well as the ways in which regimes of control and punishment 

are made manifest.  

There are also works on carceral geographies which focus specifically on prisons and 

associated sites in historical settings and examine their legacies. The edited volume Historical 

Geographies of Prisons (Morin and Moran 2015) is of particular interest, as it draws on 

historical examples and invites us to consider the multisensory and embodied nature of 

incarceration, the effects of carceral powers on the performance of masculinity, the 

representation of history at penal heritage sites, and the mutually constructive nature of penal 

regimes and spatial configurations. A primary goal of the historical geography of prisons is 

uncovering a “usable past” that serves the needs of the present. One way of accessing a usable 

past is through the ways in which the past becomes materialized on the landscape (Morin 2013; 

Morin and Moran 2015). Greater archaeological engagement with sites of incarceration will 

enable mutually beneficial dialogue around the subject between historical/ carceral geographers 

and archaeologists.  

 

Anti-racism, collaboration, and other ethical imperatives  



26 
 

The discipline of archaeology has experienced positive change in recent years as 

community engagement and collaboration have become more broadly recognized as an ethical 

imperative (Atalay 2012; Colwell 2016; Colwell-Chanthaphonh and Ferguson 2008), efforts 

towards building anti-racist praxis in academic and professional archaeology have grown (Carey 

2019; Flewellen et al. 2021; Franklin et al. 2020; Ike et al. 2020), and social justice is 

increasingly being prioritized in many archaeological agendas. The Black Lives Matter 

Movement and the racial injustices laid bare by the COVID-19 pandemic have galvanized many 

more archaeologists to instigate change within the field, joining and building alongside the 

efforts made by Black and Indigenous archaeologists, activists, and their accomplices for 

decades (Flewellen et al. 2021; Franklin et al. 2020). Both authors of this article are white 

women whose research interests in the archaeology and legacy of convict leasing and 

incarcerated labor have developed in the context of these ongoing social movements.  

 As Flewellen et al. (2021, 231) have stated, “[w]e cannot in good faith claim an interest 

in accessing the past without serious engagement with communities that bear the unequal burden 

of its consequences in the present.” These authors remind us that there are many avenues for 

redress and that the communities in question are best positioned to determine what shape this 

should take. The concept of “community” is sometimes taken for granted and ill-defined within 

the literature on engaged and inclusive archaeology. While this ambiguity can serve to be 

encompassing, Anna Agbe-Davies (2010, 2011) has indicated the need to think critically about 

this often ill-defined term and to define what we mean by communities in ways which avoid 

essentialization. Reflecting on examples from her work in African diaspora archaeology, Agbe-

Davies (2010, 385) concludes that “[o]ur concept of community must take into account the ways 



27 
 

that communities are continually constituted, their non-homogeneity, and how we might become 

integrated into them.” 

 Collaboration in archaeology is not uniform; there is no singular model for how to 

incorporate the goals, interests, concerns, knowledge, and expertise of various vested groups and 

individuals in a given project (Colwell-Chanthaphonh and Ferguson 2008). One influential 

framework has been written about at length by Sonya Atalay (2012), who has applied 

Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) within archaeology, which emphasizes a 

community-based partnership process that is participatory at all levels of the process, capacity-

building, reciprocity, and the integration of multiple knowledge systems. Critically, Atalay 

distinguishes the CBPR approach from other forms of engaged archaeology by the participation 

of research partners at every step of the project, from the formation of research questions to 

creating and sharing knowledge.  

The principles of CBPR can be a useful starting point for archaeological research in 

convict leasing, where archaeologists and their fellow research partners work to find research 

processes and outcomes which are tailored to the particularities of the project and strive toward 

mutually-beneficial outcomes. It is vital that archaeological practitioners keep communities’ 

desires and needs centered throughout the research process. Meeting early and often with 

descendant or stakeholder communities is key to ensuring proper communication and 

progressive, responsible partnerships.  

Archaeology itself also offers new directions for engagement and public outreach 

(Westmont and Clay 2022). More recently, interdisciplinary studies into the experiences of 

African diasporic communities have expanded in unprecedented directions. Evaluations of 

documents, material culture, and landscapes are increasingly being enhanced through new and 



28 
 

novel methods, including ancient DNA analyses (Schablitsky et al. 2019), digital reconstructions 

(Gonzalez-Tennant and Gonzalez-Tennant 2016), and new approaches to artifacts, such as that 

offered by the Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery (DAACS) (Galle et al. 

2019). These new opportunities provide unprecedented means to actualize Singleton’s (2010, 15) 

call for “the potential of archaeology to provide a new and different perspective on slavery and 

African American life.”  

Finally, given the immense loss of human life caused by the Southern convict lease 

system, archaeologists must be cognizant of the ethical imperatives surrounding any potential 

exhumation and analysis of human remains, particularly the remains of African-American 

prisoners. Bioarchaeologists should only move forward with these types of analyses with the 

informed consent of African-American or descendant communities when these analyses are 

deemed necessary by those communities to serve their research interests and overarching goals 

(see Blakey 2021). In the U.S., people of color have long faced exclusion and structural 

inequality within academic institutions, which remain steeped in white supremacy. Academic 

research has often exploited the same communities these institutions have sought to silence, and 

archaeology in particular has harmed Black and Indigenous communities countless times through 

the violation and disrespect of their ancestors’ bodily remains (Thomas 2021). In line with 

movements to establish a more engaged and decolonized approach to anthropological and 

archaeological research, archaeologists should center “justice, equity, and the reduction of harm 

of key aims of the anthropological project” (Thomas 2021). This requires an acknowledgment 

that those murdered by the convict lease system are part of an ongoing legacy of colonialism, 

white supremacy, and anti-Black violence that continues today. Interpretations and analyses 

should engage with and situate these remains within theoretical conceptions of bodies and flesh 



29 
 

(Spiller 1987) and racialized critiques of biopolitics discourse (Weheliye 2014). We cannot allow 

the osteological remains to be separated from their broader social and political context, both 

historically and in the present day (Watkins 2018). 

 

Actualizing an archaeology of convict leasing 

As this emerging area of study within historical archaeology continues to take shape, we 

hope to consider here what the future of an archaeology of convict leasing could look like. There 

are several anticipated practical challenges that researchers will need to consider which include 

the ephemerality of prison labor camps, depositional mixing that is likely to have occurred, 

various post-depositional processes, and the intentional erasure that has been enacted upon these 

locations. Thankfully, none of these challenges are unique to this subject, and archaeologists can 

look to pertinent areas of existing archaeological work to think alongside their colleagues about 

how to best approach research design, implementation, and interpretation.  

The archaeology of convict leasing can borrow both theoretically and methodologically 

from the robust archaeologies of antebellum enslavement, industrial and institutional settings, 

and various forms of prisons and incarceration camps around the world. We also recommend that 

archaeologists studying convict leasing engage with the more than century-long body of thought 

on (prison) abolitionism in order to understand the diachronic connections the convict leasing 

system has with other forms of forced labor, confinement, and population management. These 

various expressions of white supremacist logics, including enslavement, segregation, convict 

leasing, and mass incarceration, have all served to perpetuate racial hierarchies as the foundation 

for capitalism’s requisite inequalities in the U.S. 



30 
 

Finally, we stress the importance of community engagement and collaboration within the 

archaeology of convict leasing. Black Americans comprised the majority of those impacted by 

the convict leasing system, either as incarcerated persons directly or as members of families and 

communities fractured by that incarceration. While projects will invariably land at different 

points along the “collaborative continuum” (Colwell-Chanthaphonh and Ferguson 2008) 

depending on a multitude of factors, the nature of this subject matter and its relationship to the 

history and legacy of anti-Black racism necessitate a collaborative approach that involves the 

communities who are most closely tied to this heritage.  

 

 Anticipated challenges to the archaeology of convict leasing 

The circumstances of those imprisoned under the convict-leasing system were variable 

across time and space, depending upon factors such as specific state legislation, the type of work 

incarcerated individuals were leased out to perform, and the particularities of the companies and 

individuals involved. The nature of the built environment varied by state, company, industry, and 

circumstance. Though some of the labor camps would have consisted primarily of temporary 

architecture, more permanent structures, such as stockades, kitchens, and medical buildings were 

sometimes constructed to house and sustain incarcerated workers and guards which may yield 

more substantial material records.  

Eleanor Casella (2011) has identified several lines of inquiry central to the archaeology 

of confinement, a term which she uses to include many forms of population management 

employed by states, including incarceration. These areas of interest include who becomes 

confined and for what reasons, how people experience confinement, how it is reinforced by the 

natural and built landscapes, the material conditions of confinement, and the ways in which 



31 
 

people in these contexts “sustain a sense of social being” (Casella 2011, 285). She observes two 

primary signatures which create tension in the archaeological record of these contexts. The first 

signature is that of uniformity, “as expressed through both the anonymous landscapes of 

barracks, corridors, and fence lines, and the identical sets of institutional provisions issued to all 

inhabitants,” and the second is diversity, which is created when inmates use “the material world 

to maintain a sense of personal self and belonging” (Casella 2011, 289). While carceral systems 

may attempt to exert total domination over those they imprison, the actual power dynamics that 

emerge are inevitably far more complex.  

The context of convict leasing sites can be highly variable and present challenges. Many 

sites enmeshed in the convict-leasing system were sites of industrial labor which disturbed the 

surrounding landscape. Activities such as mining, timbering, and major construction can 

destabilize soils and lead to increased erosion and higher likelihood of landslides. These factors 

may impact the stratigraphy of a site, the distribution of artifacts on the landscape, and the ability 

to detect architectural remains and other archaeological features using remote sensing methods. 

There is also the possibility of depositional mixing which could make archaeological remains 

from the convict leasing era difficult at times to distinguish from similar forms of labor done in 

these locations during subsequent eras. 

Finally, as with many sites associated with negative heritage, the remnants of convict 

leasing have often been intentionally erased from the visible landscape. The history of convict 

leasing in many places across the South has been largely forgotten. While forgetting may serve 

different purposes for different communities, erasure from the dominant historical narrative 

serves to obfuscate the ways in which systemic racism, exploitation, and necropolitics (see 



32 
 

Mbembe 2019) were foundational to building up Southern infrastructure and supporting the 

broader national economy long after slavery was outlawed.  

Despite these attempts at erasure and the other issues facing archaeologists in 

investigating convict leasing sites, it will still be possible to identify, locate, and excavate at 

many sites of interest. Extant architectural and infrastructural remains exist in some locations, 

such as the coke ovens near the site of the Lone Rock Stockade in Tennessee. Historic maps, 

images, aerial photography, and documents will be key to locating many sites. Community 

memory and stories may provide clues as to the locations of these sites in some instances. 

Remote sensing technologies such as ground penetrating radar (GPR) and light detection and 

ranging (LiDAR) data may be able to detect architectural remains in some areas, while other 

remote sensing techniques such as magnetic gradiometry may be able to identify anomalies and 

guide excavations.  

Historians and other scholars have written works that provide context for the legislation 

pertaining to the convict leasing system, relevant policies, business records, and other documents 

detailing the living and working conditions of imprisoned laborers during this period (e.g. 

Abrams 1976; Adamson 1983; Blackmon 2008; Connor 2019; LeFlouria 2011, 2015; 

Lichtenstein 1996; Mancini 1996; Shapiro 1998). In most contexts, additional archival research 

will be necessary, and particular attention to details of the materiality described in these 

documents will help historical archaeologists beginning research on convict leasing era sites to 

plan excavations and contextualize findings. The works of ethnomusicologists and folklorists 

who have explored the ways in which the history of convict leasing has been passed down via 

stories and songs (e.g. Kehrberg and Keith 2020; Perkinson 2009) will also provide a wealth of 

relevant information for archaeologists examining prison labor camps from the convict leasing 



33 
 

era. Such perspectives can be enhanced through parallel investigations into the places and objects 

of convict leasing themselves.  

 

Archaeologies of chattel slavery  

As we have established, there are many similarities between the ways in which chattel 

slavery and the convict leasing system impacted African Americans in the South. Historical 

archaeologists have spent decades examining sites of plantation slavery in the Americas which 

provide important points of comparison for an archaeology of convict leasing. Two interrelated 

themes frequently highlighted in the archaeology of chattel slavery are the material 

manifestations of systems of control and methods of resistance (see, e.g., Bailey 2022; Delle 

1999, 2011; Lewis 1985; Norton 2020; Randle 2022; Singleton 2001). These are fundamental to 

understanding how forced labor under enslavement was enacted and experienced, and the ways 

in which archaeologists have explored those themes in the contexts of chattel slavery will inform 

how they address them in the contexts of convict leasing. 

Archaeological studies of enslaved peoples can help archaeologists of convict leasing 

better address questions about the operationalization and experience of surveillance and control. 

Singleton (2001, 110) highlights the connection between Cuban plantations and the philosophies 

of imprisonment, observing: “In an effort to curb the rebellious activities of a growing slave 

population, slaveholders adopted management practices that resembled prison life. This jail-like 

character was particularly evident in the built environment of slave quarters and the spatial order 

of plantations.” At L’Hermitage, an antebellum plantation in Maryland, Bailey (2022) has 

suggested that the spatial organization of the plantation was used as a tool of discipline and 

manipulation by resident enslavers. Bailey (2022, 24) remarks that the lengths enslavers went to 



34 
 

in their attempts at domination suggest that their “paranoia, anxiety, and fear were linked to the 

realization that their power and authority were never complete.” How might the same paranoid 

endeavors to control prisoners have been enacted by the people who leased their bodies and 

labor? Some lessees had direct, prior knowledge of managing forced labor as former planter-

elites. Recognizing the ways in which older systems of control informed the convict leasing 

system in the South requires particular attention to the methods used on antebellum plantations. 

These systems of control extended beyond the individual plantation. By conducting 

visibility analyses in geographic information systems software, Randle (2022) proposed the 

Neighbor-Assisted Surveillance Model to explore how planter-elites in antebellum South 

Carolina created systems of surveillance and control across the landscape. Randle discusses how 

the families, friends, and neighbors worked to create a “panoptic” plantation at the community 

level. This analysis draws on Jeremy Bentham’s (1791) panopticon design, which has become 

synonymous with the perception of constant surveillance. At many convict leasing era prison 

labor camps, escapes were frequent occurrences. So, too, were instances of recapture. For the 

archaeologist of convict leasing, a question arises: did the communities nearest convict leasing 

era labor camps participate in surveilling and policing prisoners? Such analyses of the 

antebellum plantation world may provide guidance for similar studies scrutinizing the 

relationships which emerged at a broader scale between prison labor camps and the existing 

social landscape of the area where they were constructed. 

Despite planter’s attempts at panopticism, in some contexts enslaved people were able to 

take advantage of the spaces “betwixt and between,” as explored by Norton (2020) regarding the 

1733 slave rebellion in the Danish West Indies. Norton describes a situation on the island of St. 

John where a sizable number of planters were absentee, and the enslaved people had an intimate 



35 
 

knowledge of the built and natural landscapes which played a role in their ability to wage the 

1733 rebellion. Understanding how enslavers utilized surveillance as a technology of control on 

plantations, and how enslaved people made use of gaps in these systems, will be important for 

exploring whether similar strategies were employed at prison labor camps during the convict 

leasing era.  

 When compared to studies of enslaved labor at agricultural plantations, relatively little 

archaeological research has focused on antebellum industrial slavery in the U.S. This is due, in 

large part, to the fact that the vast majority of enslaved labor in the U.S. occurred within the 

agricultural and domestic spheres. Following the American industrial revolution, however, 

enslaved people were, at times, owned directly by industrial businessmen or leased by their 

enslavers to work in industrial settings such as mining (Blackmon 2009), turpentining (Vollmers 

2010), railroad construction (Abrams 1976), and factories (Miller 1981; Starobin 1970). There 

are a number of archaeological investigations of sites associated with industrial slavery which 

can inform future work on industrial prison labor camps (see Bruwelheide et al. 2020; Kenline-

Nyman 2017; McNiven 2014). 

 

Domestic perspectives on incarceration camps 

There is a growing body of archaeological research on Japanese American incarceration 

camps (see Beckwith 2012; Branton 2004; Burton 1996; Burton and Farrell 2001, 2007, 2012; 

Burton et al. 1999; Camp 2016, 2018; Clark 2010; Farrell and Burton 2004; Lau-Ozawa 2018, 

2021, 2022; Myers and Moshenska 2011; Mytum and Carr 2012; Ng and Camp 2015; Skiles and 

Clark 2010; Slaughter 2012) which provide examples of ways in which researchers have dealt 

with similar methodological challenges at convict-leasing era prison labor camps posed by 



36 
 

ephemerality, depositional mixing, demolition, intentional erasure, and various post-depositional 

forces. In addition to this work on Japanese American incarceration, other prisoner-of-war camps 

in North America dating to the Civil War (see Avery and Garrow 2012; Bush 2012; Jameson 

2012; McNutt 2019; Putman 2011; Thomas 2004), World War I (Beaulieu 2020), and World 

War II (Belcher 2020; Myers 2013; Scalia 1997; Thomas 2011) also belong to the relevant body 

of comparative literature for understanding the archaeological record of temporary incarceration 

sites.  

Stacey Lynn Camp’s (2016) synthesis on archaeology conducted at several World War 

II-era Japanese American incarceration camps discusses the methodological and theoretical 

strategies necessary for dealing with the particularities of incarceration camp contexts. Unlike 

many sites within historical archaeology, Camp observes that these contexts typically lack 

discrete household-specific refuse deposits and what archaeological deposits are present often 

contain mixed contexts and prior occupations. Camp (2016, 173) suggests “this requires that we 

think on a level broader than an archaeological site or feature and retool our definition of an 

archaeological site to include multiple landscapes and deposits.” She maintains that communal 

refuse can be as archaeologically significant as those more directly linked to individuals or 

families and suggests that in the context of high degrees of surveillance, censorship, and 

propagandizing that “in some cases, material culture [. . .] remains the sole evidence of a 

prisoner’s experience” (Camp 2016, 173). 

Whitney Battle-Batiste (2011, 99) stressed the importance of considering landscapes as 

artifacts, saying that they “served as a functional and integral component of the lives of captive 

communities, these living spaces can be seen as a form of material culture, and thus, as a part of 

the archaeological record.” Landscape approaches have been important for the study of 



37 
 

incarceration camps as they provide frameworks for understanding the built landscape and 

people’s relationships to place. Nicole Branton (2009, 61) suggested that taken together, sites of 

Japanese American incarceration during WWII constitute an “eventscape” which is spatially and 

temporally inclusive of locations and “the behaviors such as commemoration, storytelling, 

visitation, and instruction in appropriate behavior that take place at those sites as part of the 

cultural transmission of information about the event across generations.” The concept of 

eventscape emphasizes the connections between past events and present-day communities, 

including direct descendants and more broadly-writ communities whose identities and 

experiences are impacted by the legacies of those events. Koji Lau-Ozawa (2018) uses the 

concept of eventscapes to think of mass incarceration as a shared event, while also using the lens 

of diaspora to situate Japanese American incarceration during World War II in the diachronic 

formation processes of the Japanese diaspora. 

Burton and Farrell’s (2022) work at the Manzanar National Historic Site, a Japanese 

American incarceration camp in California, has shown how critical public archaeology which 

engages descendant communities can be a powerful tool to challenge mainstream historical 

narratives and center marginalized voices. Collaboration with the public around research at 

Manzanar has informed research questions and guided the interpretation and communication of 

the resulting information. Descendant communities have been able to drive the narrative and 

determine how their stories are represented, and people local to the incarceration camp have had 

new opportunities to unlearn the misconceptions they held about the site and its history.  

Camp (2016), Lau-Ozawa (2018), and Burton and Farrell (2022) have all noted the 

importance of language when discussing sites of Japanese American incarceration. The phrase 

“internment” has been criticized by many scholars of World War II as an inaccurate euphemism 



38 
 

which obfuscates the severity of what Japanese Americans endured during this period, and these 

authors are explicit about intentionally using the language of incarceration to describe these 

experiences. When discussing the convict leasing system and the people imprisoned under it, we 

should be similarly cognizant of the implications of our words. The language we choose should 

serve to highlight the wrongful nature of the imprisonment and emphasize the connections to 

subsequent systems of incarceration and forced labor. 

 

International perspectives on incarceration camps 

Examinations of forced prison labor outside of the U.S. also offer vital directions for 

advancing archaeological and material culture investigations of Southern convict leasing sites. 

International perspectives, particularly on sites of incarceration and sites of forced labor, can 

provide insights when considering the various aspects of convict leasing. Other archaeological 

work in Australia, Siberia, Germany, and Angola, can provide lessons for archaeologists, such as 

site type classifications and intersectional approaches to praxis, as well as key comparative 

opportunities for global perspectives on forced labor.  

 

Australia 

The archaeology of incarceration and forced labor has a long and robust history in the 

Australian context. Because prisoners constituted a significant portion of the colonizing 

European population in Australia, the organization, operation, and consequences of Australia’s 

convict system has emerged as a major theme within Australian historical archaeology (Gibbs 

2012, 78). Further, the digitzation of historical records related to Australia’s convict era 

(something currently underway in many American states) has provided new opportunities for 



39 
 

digital humanities projects and analyses (Godfrey et al. 2021). This work offers several major 

lessons for an American archaeology of convict leasing. 

 Australian archaeologists have made major strides towards categorizing different types of 

convict-related sites as a means for ensuring thorough research practices. This categorization can 

also help scholars track which types of sites have received the least attention within the 

discipline, thereby opening new directions for research. Gibbs (2001, 61) outlines three types of 

“convict places” while noting that each has permanent, semi-permanent, and temporary forms: 

1. Places associated with the carceral project itself. This includes sites intended to “house, 

punish, service or administer [prisoners] . . . as well as those managing them on-site” 

(Gibbs 2001, 78) 

2. Places where those overseeing the system, such as guards, are housed.  

3. Places, including buildings and public works, that were built using forced prison labor.  

Expanding the archaeological analysis beyond just cell blocks and work places provides a more 

holistic evaluation of the system as a functioning whole. Taking into account the historical 

function of the sites under investigation within the broader system of forced labor will also refine 

understandings of the varying social roles material culture can serve (Gojak 2001; e.g. Donlon et 

al. 2008; Owen and Casey 2017; Clarke et al. 2020).  

Australia’s utilization of prison labor in industrial contexts also provides a model for 

interdisciplinary analyses that investigate the interfaces of penology and industry. Scholars have 

examined “the convict as worker” (Tuffin 2013, 3), including the organization and management 

of prison labor, as well as the physical impacts of penal industrial labor on the Australian 

landscape (Tuffin et al. 2018). Similar studies of convict leasing in the U.S. context could 

provide texture to our understandings of labor regimes within the convict lease system.  



40 
 

Archaeological research into prisoners’ experiences in Australia has highlighted the 

importance of an intersectional approach to understanding forced prison labor. Research into the 

roles of women (Bogle 1999; Rees 2001; Hendriksen, Cowley and Liston 2008), children 

(Donlon et al. 2008), and Aboriginal Australians (Whitley 2015; Stasiuk and Hibberd 2017; 

Roscoe 2020) in the country’s system of forced prison labor has revealed stark differences based 

in identity. Other work has also examined prisoners’ agency within the forced labor system 

(Robbins 2005) as well as their resistance to the system altogether (Casella 1997, 2000). 

Recognizing that prison populations are highly heterogeneous, and that heterogeneity will likely 

extend to the use and discard of material culture, is a vital aspect of this work. 

 

Siberia 

Siberia’s long history as a “prison without walls” shares many features with the Southern 

convict lease system. Russia and later the Soviet Union transported prisoners and political 

dissidents to the Arctic Circle and interior of Eurasia as a means of physical control, social 

reform, and colonization (Badcock and Pallot 2018). Approximately 1.5 million people were 

transported to Siberia between 1600 and 1917 during Russia’s Imperial era, while as many as six 

million were deported in the early and mid-twentieth century during the Soviet era (Badcock and 

Pallot 2018, 275). By the mid-nineteenth century, the public saw Siberia as “a vast Asiatic 

wasteland of barren, snowy expanses and frozen tundra” whose only function was as a place to 

exile those deemed socially and politically undesirable (Bassin 1991, 771). The government 

often launched mass deportation events against entire social groups, including against ethnic 

groups and peasants; ordinary criminals, “hooligans,” beggars, and recidivists were also deported 

and/or exiled. After a long transit, oftentimes taking several months and completed in part or 



41 
 

entirely on foot, prisoners were delivered to hard labor prisoners. Many prisoners worked in 

mining and timber industries, while others worked in workshops, gardens, or in the prisons 

themselves. After World War I, prisoners were used on infrastructure projects, including road 

and railroad construction (Badcock and Pallot 2018). Prisoners experienced harrowing living 

conditions, including a complete lack of food, rampant disease and malnutrition, inadequate 

tools, and inappropriate clothing for the harsh environment. One survivor remembered people 

“dying like flies” (Filip Ipatovich quoted in Badcock and Pallot 2018, 291). 

Russian forced labor camps in Siberia were frequently used in the late 19th century as a 

contemporary critique of the Southern convict lease system. Russia loomed large in the 

American imagination following the publication of George Kennan’s books on Siberia, which 

first introduced Americans to the brutality and “exotic horrors” of Tsarist Russia (Mancini 1996, 

33). Anti-convict lease advocates explicitly compared the situation in Siberia to the Southern 

convict lease system, most famously in J. C. Powell’s memoir, The American Siberia, or 

Fourteen Years’ Experience in a Southern Convict Camp (1891), about his time as a prison 

guard at a Florida forced labor camp. Recently, scholars have begun examining the heritage of 

the gulag system (see Comer 2019). These studies on the ways difficult heritage is being 

memorialized could provide insights for scholars of Southern convict leasing. 

 

Nazi Camps 

Since the end of World War II, archaeologists have increasingly used archaeological 

methods to investigate the material and spatial realities of Nazi camps across Europe. The 

geographic distribution of these studies, ranging from Prisoner of War (POW) camps in Norway 

and Italy (Olsen and Witmore 2014; De Felice 2022) to forced labor camps in Berlin (Pollack 



42 
 

and Bernbeck 2016) to concentration camps in Poland (Sturdy Colls and Branthwaite 2018), is 

matched only by the variety of topics, perspectives, and findings at these sites. However, despite 

the breadth of this body of research, the archaeology of Nazi POW, forced labor, and 

concentration camps offer important lessons and insights for an archaeology of convict leasing. 

Reconstructing the material aspects of prisoners’ everyday experiences is another area 

where archaeology has contributed to our understandings of Nazi camps. Although conditions 

inside these camps were extreme, prisoners still interacted with material goods on a continuous 

basis, providing an evocative but ethically-complex material legacy (Myers 2008; Jasinski 2018; 

Carr et al. 2018). Further, the landscapes of these camps can also provide vital insights on social 

relations. Detailed archaeological surveys of the remains of concentration camps could provide 

new insights on spatiality and power within these camps, including insights on the manifestation 

of power relations, functional use areas within the camp, and how the camp environment 

changed over time (Myers 2008; Olsen and Witmore 2014; Sturdy Colls and Colls 2022).  

Archaeology also plays a central role in mediating the memory of the Nazi occupation. 

The painful heritage of Nazi occupation has created a paradox of remembrance: in many places, 

the enduring material remnants of these sites remain embedded in the landscape decades after 

they were abandoned, yet historical silences and willful erasures of the Nazi occupations persist 

(see Starzmann 2018; Olsen and Witmore 2014). Archaeology offers a means of making this past 

visible (Starzmann 2018). Archaeological remnants can be used to create thicker, more detailed 

accounts of what happened at these sites in order to introduce more nuance and subtlety into our 

estimations of this history (Olsen and Witmore 2014).  

 

Angola 



43 
 

Research into the use of forced labor in the modern era on the African continent is 

growing; these investigations can provide key points of global comparison. Beatriz Serrina’s 

(2020) on-going work on the Angola Mining Company, better known as Diamang, and their use 

of coerced labor in diamond mines in mid-twentieth century Angola is one example. Diamang 

adopted lessons from other Belgian companies operating in Africa and began “providing good 

housing and preserving a few African traditions” as a means to reduce the fatality rates and avoid 

riots as witnessed in De Beers’ mining settlements. This academic focus on forced labor in 

extractive industries is still ongoing, but we expect that new insights into forced labor in the sub-

Saharan African context will provide important insights into how systems of forced labor are 

enacted and maintained in the global perspective.  

 

Conclusion 

Convict leasing is a significant aspect of the postbellum African diasporic experience in 

the American South that has been largely overlooked by archaeologists. Archaeological 

approaches to this history framed by ethical, community-led, and theoretically-informed methods 

offer advances for the field as well as for African-American history in the South. Any 

archaeology of convict leasing must center descendant community concerns and work to pursue 

the aims these communities espouse. In instances where descendant communities are 

unidentifiable, archaeologists must still make every effort to collaborate with interested African 

American communities. Archaeologists must also consider the opinions and ideas of local 

communities, and work to balance the various desires of multiple stakeholder groups.  

Archaeologists must also contend with the fact that the impacts of convict leasing are still 

being felt today. Racialized incarceration and a racially-biased justice system were both central 



44 
 

to the success of the convict lease system; in the century since the official end of private convict 

leasing, these forms of systemic racism have expanded. Archaeologists have an obligation to not 

only acknowledge the role of convict leasing in laying the foundation of the modern U.S. 

carceral state, they must also work, where possible, to confront these systems of inequality that 

ingrain and perpetuate social and economic achievement gaps.  

Finally, an archaeology of convict leasing has a rich set of theoretical and perspectives 

comparative data within which to view forced prison labor. Drawing on theoretical perspectives 

rooted in race and class, as well as in labor archaeology, carceral studies, abolitionist theory, and 

examinations of gender and masculinities, provide opportunities to advance these theoretical 

perspectives. Archaeological examinations of the materialities and landscapes of enslavement 

and imprisonment provide additional spaces in which to examine commonalities and divergences 

in these various systems. 

 

Acknowledgements 

The authors extend their appreciation to Lydia Marshall for organizing the 2022 SHA session 

and this thematic issue. Westmont would like to thank John Grammer, Sarah Sherwood, and 

Woody Register from the Center for Southern Studies at the University of the South. 

 

Funding Details 

This work was supported by the University of North Carolina’s Townsend Family Southern 

Futures Graduate Scholars Program; the University of North Carolina’s Wilson Special 

Collections Library Pre-Dissertation Prospectus Fellowship; the American Council of Learned 

Societies Fellowship. 



45 
 

 

Disclosure Statement 

The authors report there are no competing interests to declare.  

 

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Figure Caption List 

 

Figure 1. Excavations in 2021 at the Lone Rock Stockade reveal architectural features related to 

the stockade’s wash house. Photograph by author. 



63 
 

 

Figure 2. Interpretive panels about the history of convict leasing and coal and coke production in 

the area have been erected in the South Cumberland State Park near the location of the Lone 

Rock Stockade. Photograph by author. 

 

Figure 3. Front panel of the “Memorial to the Incarcerated Railroad Workers Who Built the 

Mountain Division of the Western North Carolina Railroad,” outlining history of prison labor on 

the WNCR. Photograph by author.  

 

Figure 4. Rear panel of the “Memorial to the Incarcerated Railroad Workers Who Built the 

Mountain Division of the Western North Carolina Railroad,” listing names of prisoners. Photo 

by author. 

 

Figure 5. An altar at the 2021 Chattahoochee Brick Company Sacred Sites Ceremony honoring 

the memories of some of those enslaved there. Photograph by author. 

 

Figure 6. A cross at the 2021 Chattahoochee Brick Company Sacred Sites Ceremony. The names 

of some of those enslaved there have been written on the cross. Photograph by author.