Rival landscapes of Georgia’s coastal plantations

•Develops rival landscapes as a continuum of integrated space and place.•Wattle and tabby daub slave cabins identified at two settlements on Sapelo Island.•Reflections of ideological tensions between planter and enslaved spaces.•Negotiations of rival geographies within enslaved people’s plantation spaces.•Spatial settlement patterns reflected Caribbean and African heritage. Plantation landscapes on the Georgia coast were created and maintained by plantation owners and enslaved peoples with influences from the broader Atlantic World. Though plantation owners at the Sapelo Plantation defined the structure and boundaries of certain plantation spaces, enslaved people could manipulate, maintain, and control certain parts of those rival landscapes. The degree to which enslaved people could engage in reconfigurations of private places and spatial control of settlement spaces is reflected in the social rigidity of the plantation landscape and places.