Analysis of Mollusks from the Slave Village at Betty’s Hope, Antigua, British West Indies

Summary

Since 2007, excavations at Betty’s Hope plantation have yielded a large amount of faunal material from a variety of contexts on the site: the Great House, Service Quarters, Rum Distillery, and Slave Village. The faunal analysis has begun for the Great House and Service Quarters contexts by focusing on the fish and mollusks in order to ascertain the roles of local vs. nonlocal/imported resources and their incorporation into English foodways at Betty’s Hope. Excavations in the Slave Village began in 2014, and the ongoing faunal analysis will include this important contrast. This paper will discuss the role of local tropical mollusks in three distinct, class-defined contexts to demonstrate both the variety of mollusks utilized at Betty’s Hope plantation, their incorporation into diet, nonfood uses of those mollusks, and the daily role of acquiring local  tropical resources for those who lived in the Great House, Service Quarters, and the Slave Village.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Paper / Report Submission (General Sessions) 2016   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2016

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 918