| This dissertation presents combined historical and archaeological data relevant to the construction and subsequent interpretation of a sample of five eighteenth-century gardens in Prince George's County, Maryland. The five landscapes considered are: Belair, His Lordship's Kindness, Montpelier, Mount Airy, and Oxon Hill Manor.; Historical and archaeological data are synthesized and interpreted to address six central questions: What do these five gardens have in common? What connections exist between the gardens' geometric layout and the dimensions of the houses they accompanied? What connection exists between the builders (or probable builders) of these five gardens and specific groups within the landed community as constructed via record stripping? What does archaeology tell us about these gardens—does it lend support to, or contradict, the inferences based on geometric analysis and documentary research? When these independent lines of inquiry are combined, what consistencies or patterns emerge and what inconsistencies or variations are apparent? And finally, what did, or might, these gardens have meant to their makers, users, and those who were familiar with them?; A range of evidence consisting of topographic mapping, geometric analysis, documentary research, and below-ground archaeological data are collectively interpreted as demonstrating that eighteenth-century landscaping was a field of social action in which landholders engaged in an ongoing process of self-fashioning. This process consisted of using landscape as just one component of the shaping and reshaping of their public and private selves in much the same way that those charged with the landscapes' care negotiated a constant struggle between cultural desires and natural forces.; While framed as a landscape study at the local level, this dissertation organizes, integrates, and interprets data that are relevant to researchers examining cultural landscapes and material culture in other times and places. |
