Slave living quarters and domestic situations seem to have varied greatly regionally and through time, and in urban and rural areas, and in richer and less wealthy households. I think it is necessary to be careful about generalizing, and to try to find as much local and time-focused information as possible. And that's far from easy. Often impossible. But there's a huge difference between a cotton plantation in Alabama in 1855, a home of the Annapolis gentry in 1770, and a frontier farm in Kentucky in 1790. A good overview is John Michael Vlach's "Back of the Big House." There's also a fair amount of information about slave material culture available through archeology - you can contact the nearest university department and see what they know about what has been found locally. 



Also, I remember an excellent exhibit in Richmond, Virginia called "Before Freedom Came" - I think there's a catalog; perhaps someone closer to that exhibition has more information.  



Carol Ely

Historic Locust Grove