Chattels or Colonists? 'Freeblack' Women and Their Households

Abstract

We know very little about the material culture of household and family in Table Valley between 1652 and 1740. Rich sources of information, such as household inventories, have long been tools for historical archaeologists, but such documents at the Cape still need to be systematically analysed. There are few excavated archaeological records from this period. This study indicates the potential for integrated research to provide glimpses into family life in the colony.1 In the Cape of the late 17th and early 18th centuries, power over property, persons and products was vested in the Lords Seventeen of the Dutch East India Company (VOC), then it passed down the social pyramid, through VOC officials and freeburghers, and ultimately dispersed in the household and family.2 Scattered throughout the middle regions were the ordinary inhabitants of the Cape freeburgher and freeblack men and women.3 Although the initial impetus for freeing Company servants was for them to supply agricultural products to the VOC, as many as three-quarters of free persons were in nonagrarian employment by 1730, especially inn-keeping and wine-selling.4 In 1700 there were about 1200 nonVOC persons in the whole Cape District;5 by 1730 about 1550: