Almost all of the colonial ironworks south of New England used slaves in one capacity or another.  Many were almost exclusively run by slave labor. There are a number of historical works, but not that much archaeology.  You might look at the following:

Bruce, Kathleen
 1926 The Manufacture of Ordnance in Virginia During the American Revolution, Part I.  Army Ordnance VII (39, Nov-Dec 1926).
 1927 The Manufacture of Ordnance in Virginia During the American Revolution, Part II.  Army Ordnance VII (41, Mar-Apr 1927).
 1930 Virginia Iron Manufacture in the Slave Era.  The Century Co., New York and London.
 1968 Virginia Iron Manufacture in the Slave  Era.  Augustus M. Kelley, Publishers, New York.

Dew, Charles B
 1966 Ironmaker to the Confederacy: Joseph R. Anderson and the Tredegar Iron Works.  Yale University Press, New Haven and London.
 1974 David Ross and the Oxford Iron Works: A Study of Industrial slavery in the Early Nineteenth-Century South.  William & Mary Quarterly, Vol.  31(2):189-224.
 1994 Bond of Iron: Master and Slave at Buffalo Forge.  W. W. Norton & Company, New York.

Heite, Edward F.
 1970 Excavation of the Fredericksville Furnace Site.  Quarterly Bulletin  of the Archeological Society of Virginia 25(2):61-97.
 1971a Excavation of the Fredericksville Furnace Site: Chemical Analysis of Iron Ore.  Quarterly Bulletin  of the Archeological Society of Virginia 26(2):108.
 1971b Thinking the Whole Site: Some considerations in Planning an Excavation.  In The Conference on Historic Site Archaeology Papers.  Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology, Columbia, South Carolina.
 1974 The Delmarva Bog Iron Industry.  Northeast Historical Archaeology,  3(2-Fall):918-33.
 1981 Historic Site Report: Accoceek Furnace Property, Stafford County, Virginia.  Unpublished manuscript prepared for the Smithsonian Institution- National Museum of American History.  Camden, DE.
 1983 The Pioneer Phase of the Chesapeake Iron Industry: Naturalization of a Technology.  Quarterly Bulletin of the Archeological Society of Virginia 58(3):133-181.
 1992 Unearthing Business History: Can Archeology Provide Evidence for Interpreting Management Styles?  IA, The Journal of the Society for Industrial Archeology, 18(1&2):123-28.
 2000 More Than Just Technology: Chesapeake Iron and the Beginning of Modern Industrial Organization.  Paper presented at the Gunston Hall Archaeological Symposium.

Hodges, Graham Russell
 1997 Slavery and Freedom in the Rural North: African Americans in Monmouth County, New Jersey 1665-1865.  Madison House, Wisconsin.

This book is very interesting.  The population statistics for Monmouth Cty, NJ were wildly skewed because of the founding of an ironworks there in the late 17C.  The county had many more people of African descent than the surrounding area and did so right through the 18C.

Lewis, Ronald Loran
 1974a Slavery in the Chesapeake Iron Industry, 1716-1865.  Dissertation.  University of Akron, Akron.
 1974b Slavery on Chesapeake Iron Plantations Before the American Revolution.  Journal of Negro History 59:242-254.
 1978 Slave Families at Early Chesapeake Ironworks.  Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 86:169-180.

With the exception of Dew be very careful of taking the descriptions of iron manufacturing at face value.  Most historians and archaeologists haven't got a clue on the technology of iron making.  A good source for that is:

Gordon, Robert B.
  1996 American Iron 1607-1900.  The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore and London.

or to tout myself:
Brothers, James H. IV
    2001 "CARRIED ON AT A VERY GREAT EXPENSE AND NEVER PRODUCED ANY PROFIT"
THE ALBEMARLE IRON WORKS (1770-72).  Unpublished MA thesis, College of William and Mary.

Althought I do not get into the use of slavery in any depth, I think I have a reasonably good overview of the technology of iron making and its history in the Chesapeake.  the iron industry in the South used a lot of "leased" skilled or semi-skilled slaves.  There is a farily recent PhD that covers the operation of the market, I will see if I can find the reference.

There is a bunch more, but it will take me a while to wade through my 75 page bibliography on the iron industry.  As I find more I will post them.

JH Brothers




Bonnie Ryan wrote:

> Afternoon all,
>    I have an undergraduate student in my class in African American Archaeology who would like to do her semester research on any studies done on iron works or foundries in the Chesapeake region, preferably Maryland, that employed slave labor, time period - anytime from the Revolution to Emancipation.  I have not found any archaeological studies in that region on that topic, although there have been some done in the Caribbean.  Any ideas  of some published studies?  If not, I will strongly suggest she move to another topic...
>
> Thanks loads,
> Bonnie Ryan