Dan-

I have a couple of papers (SEAC and SHA) that I have delivered on pit
icehouses.  These were sometimes incorporated into other structures but not
residences per se - at least as far as I know.  I also have many, many pages
of notes on icehouses, their use on the plantation, their use on farms,
types of icehouses, icehouses as landscape symbols, social symbols, the
possibility that they were used to store slave grown, owner purchased
produce, etc.

Archaeologically similar pits include tobacco barn ordering pits, true
cellars under houses, and "recycled holes" that were used to hide stills.
Talk to Lea Abbott on this list about stills.  There are also interesting
references in the published literature to "caves" or pit houses dug by run
away slaves.  In VA, pit icehouses were being used by some families as late
as the early decades of the 20th century.  I didn't believe it either until
I ran into a guy who showed me his old family pit icehouse and told me about
having ice-cream made with ice from the icehouse.  I then did a study of
temperatures then and now, and right around 1912 is when winters seem to get
warmer.  I have documented one diary that gives quantities of ice retrieved
from ponds and makes other qualitative remarks on the weather, all of which
give a definite impression of colder 19th century winters.  And I must be
right because I have it in an Excel chart!

I also published a very short note in Historical Archaeology about remnant
construction pits that are sometimes found under houses, near hearths, where
they were presumably used for clay for the hearth.  This is also a location
in which hidey holes show up, and it may be that the use of the hidey hole
came from the use of old borrows for that purpose.  The African American
Archaeology Newsletter had a series of articles and comments on sub-floor
pits around the Spring of 1991 issue, begun, I think, with Anne Yentsch's
Note on page 3 referencing storage cellars.  In the same issue Larry McKee
reports on root cellars at the Hermitage.  Then there are two more papers in
the next issue, Fall 1991, one more paper in the Spring 1992 issue.  I made
some comments to John Sprinkle who forwarded them on to the Newsletter,
Spring 1993.  These are elaborated on in my notes published in Historical
Archaeology. There is also an on-line bibliography but I have lost the URL.
Hopefully, someone else will furnish it.

I will send you copies of what I have if it is not too far off your subject
and  if it will help you, so write back and let me know.

Richard Kimmel