Built Environments of Enslaved Experience in the Caribbean

Part of: Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)

This symposium examines the varied living environments of the enslaved in the colonial Caribbean. Archaeological investigations of domestic architecture and artifacts illuminate the nature of household organization, fundamental changes in settlement patterns, and the manner in which power was invariably linked with the material arrangements of space among the enslaved at a variety of sites throughout the region, including plantations, fortifications, and urban contexts. While research in the region has provided a considerable amount of data at the household-level, much of this work is biased towards artifact analysis, resulting in unfamiliarity with the considerations that went into constructing and inhabiting households. Papers within this symposium will provide detailed reconstruction of the living environments of the enslaved and will take into account the cultural behaviors and social arrangements that shaped these spaces. It brings together case studies of Caribbean slave settlements as a means of exposing the diversity of people and practices in these settings. 

Other Keywords
Slavery • Landscape • Jamaica • Architecture • Military • Historical Archaeology • Fortification • Archaeology • Households • Built Environment

Geographic Keywords
Caribbean

Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-9 of 9)

  • Documents (9)
Documents
  • Changing Patterns of Status among White Soldiers and Africans at Brimstone Hill Fortress (2016)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Gerald Schroedl.

    British occupation of Brimstone Hill Fortress on St. Kitts from 1690 to 1854 developed in response to local conditions relating to the economics and organization of enslaved labor and to the strategic needs of maintaining a military garrison. The use, size, placement, and chronology of structures, and their associated material culture show that African slaves differed depending on ownership and military status, whereas branch affiliation (Ordnance, Medical, Artillery, or Infantry) and to a...

  • Constructing Space and Community within Landscapes of Slavery in Early 19th c. Jamaica (2016)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth Clay. James Delle.

    While household artifact analyses contribute a great deal to understanding the enslaved experience in the colonial Caribbean, where possible, landscape studies allow archaeologists to more completely reconstruct past built environments of slavery. Using a landscape approach, this paper investigates the use of space by the enslaved population at Marshall’s Pen, a 19th c. Jamaican coffee estate. Through landscape survey, we can better understand how enslaved men and women actively constructed...

  • Dwelling Practices at the Cabrits Garrison Laborer Village (2016)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Zachary Beier.

    Colonial military sites in the Caribbean have traditionally been considered as dominant monuments of European expansion, technology, control, and competition. Missing from these narratives are the diverse communities that came together within the walls of fortifications. At the Cabrits Garrison, Dominica, occupied by the British military between 1763 and 1854, the policy of incorporating enslaved laborers into auxiliary roles and later into soldiers serving in the West India Regiments is a part...

  • The Historic House Yard Landscapes of St. Kitts’ Southeast Peninsula Plantations (2016)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Todd Ahlman.

    Like most of the Leeward Islands, St. Kitts' historic economy was powered by sugar cultivation. Enslaved Africans and ultimately freedmen were the labor source in the sugar fields and from the late seventeenth century onward enslaved Africans outnumbered Europeans 15 to 1. By the early nineteenth century there were over 100 known slave villages across the island. Using data from three investigated plantation sites from St. Kitts’ southeast peninsula, the spatial arrangement of the enslaved...

  • Housing and Living areas of the Enslaved and Free Servants at the Magens House Compound, St. Thomas (2016)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Christian Williamson. Douglas Armstrong.

    By the beginning of the nineteenth century, the enslaved represented sixty-two percent of the urban population on the island of St Thomas in the Danish West Indies. While St. Thomas never held slave populations comparable to the other colonial empires in the Caribbean, it was an extremely important transshipment hub for the Caribbean and beyond. Slavery within the urban port setting of Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas differed radically from the rural plantations, presenting the enslaved within the...

  • Housing Occupation and Constructing Race in Plantation Jamaica: A Comparative Archaeology between two Slave Villages at Good Hope Estate. (2016)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Hayden Bassett.

    The “slave village” occupies an important place in Caribbean archaeology, though one in which the internal variation and dynamics of a village have yet to be thoroughly addressed. This has resulted in an essentialized picture of the "enslaved community” as a single entity. However, recent excavations at Good Hope estate, an 18th/19th-century sugar plantation in Jamaica, have demonstrated greater internal variation of experience, revealing that the plantation's enslaved community was divided...

  • Plantation Life Beyond the Village: Examining Evidence for Residence in Provision Grounds (2016)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only James Delle.

    The archaeology of the enslaved experience on Caribbean plantations has traditionally focused on life in the plantation village. These spaces, often crowded and providing little privacy, were but one place on the plantation landscape inhabited by enslaved workers. As has long been known, in the British West Indies under slavery, workers were required to grow their own food to supplement the mostly meager rations provided sporadically by plantation managers. The small farms tended by the...

  • Postemancipation Bois Cotelette: An Update on Current Fieldwork (2016)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Khadene Harris.

    This paper is a summary of the ongoing analysis of artifacts and spatial data recovered from postemancipation house sites on the Bois Cotelette Estate in Dominica. This project began as an examination of the social and economic impact of emancipation on the lives of the formerly enslaved. The projects goal is to explore how a shift in labor conditions altered the physical layout of postemancipation settlements and determined the kinds of access individual households had to local and regional...

  • Slave village architecture in the French West Indies. (2016)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Kenneth Kelly.

    Archaeological work in Guadeloupe and Martinique conducted since 2001 has revealed considerable evidence of the housing used by enslaved laborers in plantation villages, both before and after emancipation. Enslaved housing is remarkably diverse in its construction, diverging from the attenuated range of styles described in historic accounts, and generally follows several trends, whether on sugar plantations, industrial sites, or elsewhere. In addition to variations in construction, the placement...