<P> Plantation complexes in the Southern United States refers to the built environment (or complex) that was common on agricultural plantations in the American South from the 17th into the 20th century . The complex included everything from the main residence down to the pens for livestock . A plantation originally denoted a settlement in which settlers were "planted" to establish a colonial base . Southern plantations were generally self - sufficient settlements that relied on the forced labor of slaves, similar to the way that a medieval manorial estate relied upon the forced labor of serfs . </P> <P> Today, as was also true in the past, there is a wide range of opinion as to what differentiated a plantation from a farm . Typically, the focus of a farm was subsistence agriculture . In contrast, the primary focus of a plantation was the production of cash crops, with enough staple food crops produced to feed the population of the estate and the livestock . A common definition of what constituted a plantation is that it typically had 500 to 1,000 acres (2.0 to 4.0 km) or more of land and produced one or two cash crops for sale . Other scholars have attempted to define it by the number of slaves that were owned . </P>

Who did much of the work in the fields and on the farms in jamestown