Panopticism Along the East Branch of the Cooper River, South Carolina: A Model for Neighbor-Assisted Surveillance

Abstract

ABSTRACT In recent years, historical archaeologists have employed the panoptic plantation approach to examine issues of surveillance at plantations. Despite new scholarship in the area of the panoptic plantation, few studies examine the range of the planter-elite surveillance on a regional scale. Failure to broaden the scope of studies beyond the single plantation minimizes the importance of possible shared surveillance among neighbors, especially among those who are related by birth or through marriage. This research question is addressed through the creation of models using ArcGIS 10.6.1. These Visibility Analysis models suggest that the plantations along the East Branch of South Carolina’s Cooper River exhibit a panoptic plantation landscape with shared surveillance at the regional scale. This method can serve as a model for conducting comparative studies of other plantation communities to identify the possible existence of panopticism at the regional scale.