In response to Ned's inquiry on swept yards, a couple of comments.  First, a
swept yard is an old tradition in much of the south, primarily in
African-American areas.  You still see this phenomena in some places,
particularly rural areas.  There is a very interesting book by Richard
Westmacott--African-American Gardens and Yards in the Rural South (Univ. of
Tenn. Press, 1992), which talks about the subject among other topics.
 
And second, we've seen the pattern--we think--on two sites, one here in
Florida and one in South Carolina.  At the South Carolina site, we had a
group of what we believe were post-bellum tenant farmers homes arranged in a
small community within a relatively isolated part of the property.  Most of
our artifacts were found close to the structures or in features.  But the
area between structures was relatively sparse in terms of artifacts.  At one
point, we exposed what appeared to be a fence line with a shallow, linear
deposit of shell and nails (prehistoric shell midden was scattered
everywhere).  We interpreted this as the possible effect of sweeping the
yard up to the fenceline.
 
The Florida site is an intact, antebellum plantation house which essentially
sat vacant after 1895, except for weekend parties.  An intensive survey of
the surrounding acreage recovered almost no artifacts, even in areas known
to have had outbuildings.  Considering the owner/occupant had 15 children
and over 70 slaves, we certainly expected some yard trash.  Examination of
late 19th century photos consistently showed a yard with no grass, and
descendants of the family could not remember the property ever having grass
or shrubby for that matter.  We concluded we must be looking at a swept yard
with the debris transported somewhere (possibly to nearby convenient
sinkholes) for disposal.  One of the rationales sometimes used for swept
yards is to eliminate habitat for snakes and our part of Florida certainly
has plenty of those.  So maybe even the white planter went with the swept
pattern for that reason (got to protect those 15 kids right?).
 
                                Lucy Wayne