Historical (Colonial) Archaeology in the French Départements d’Outre Mer.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Catherine Losier.

The Guyanese cultural map changed just before the arrival of the Europeans in the territory. The first European explorers to reach Guiana therefore met recently restructured Native Amerindian groups. When the French settled and brought with them African slaves to work on their plantations, they increased the ethnic diversity of the Cayenne region. In this perspective, Cayenne Island was an area where cultural interactions and blends between the various groups in place were intense and frequent....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Diane E. Wallman. Jerome S. Handler.

The eastern Caribbean islands of Barbados and Martinique, formerly British and French colonies, early developed into lucrative sugar-producing territories. Despite the harsh labor demands of plantation slavery on both islands, during their free time, particularly over the weekends, slaves participated in insular domestic economies. This involved activities (e.g., small-scale farming, fishing, collecting wild foods and animals, craft production) whose products were consumed by households or...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nathalie Cazelles.

The situation in French Guiana was not the same as in the other French overseas territories (West Indies or Reunion Island) where sugar was grown. Here, visible remains of the colonial sugar and rum industries are hardly found. Only the foundations of factory buildings and domestic housing can still be seen, and today in French Guiana,  there is only one factory which is still producing rum. Furthermore, very little archaeological research has been undertaken on the territory's colonial period. ...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Noura SAHNOUNE.

This paper poses the questions "what is an archaeology of slavery? why has it only developed in French archaeology in the last twenty years?" In the 1990s a number of organizations began to take an interest in the archaeology of slavery, and worked towards a commemoration of the institution. In the French West Indies, the DRAC and Inrap began to undertake CRM work on cemeteries and other sites associated with slavery.  At the same time, activist organizations in the French West Indies...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Myriam Arcangeli.

In colonial Guadeloupe, tableware was essential to the local ceramic culture. Tableware and beverage services tend to numerically dominate eighteenth-century ceramic assemblages and can shed a unique light on French colonial Creole culture. Although local potteries existed, Guadeloupeans imported the bulk of these vessels from France, and used many of the same faiences as French families. Yet when these French imports did not fit the bill, they also resorted to other strategies to procure the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thomas ROMON. Fabrice CASAGRANDE. Sandrine DELPECH.

The city of Le Moule is situated in Grande Terre, Guadeloupe, French West Indies. The first inhabitants were settled there by 1680. The parish of Le Moule was established in 1712. The early village was built on the right bank of the mouth of the River d’Audoint. It contained a church, a parade ground and two perpendicular streets oriented according to the axis of the river. The cyclone of 1738 annihilated a part of the village and following the cyclone it was reconstructed on the other bank. The...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Patrice Courtaud. Thomas ROMON. Olivier Dutour. Sacha Kacki.

Most French Caribbean slave cemeteries associated with Atlantic trade have been recognized via archival research. For the others, the isolated location of burials usually indicate the presence of slaves; but in the absence of archives, what are the features which typically inform about the status of the cemetery ? Over the past few years, we have excavated several cemeteries of the colonial period were in Guadeloupe in the French West Indies. We shall focus on the slave cemetery of Anse...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kenneth Kelly.

Over the last ten years, archaeological investigations of plantation slave villages in the French West Indies have begun to reveal insights into plantation village organization and structure.  Prior to this work, what little was known about French West Indian slave villages was derived either from standing remains on plantation sites, or more frequently, from a small range of historical documents including images and accounts.  These sources were far from representative.  Archaeological work by...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Reginald Auger.

Our paper reflects on the development of a commemoration concept which takes into account the sensibilities of descendants from the slave trade period in French Guiana. Memory of the trade period is a sensitive issue among most Caribbean Islands; our 16-year experience of research at one site presents various questions with which we are confronted in order for the local population to appropriate the spirit of place. Under Jesuit rule the Loyola Plantation comprised an area making slightly over...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Edouard JACQUOT.

At the beginning of the present decade, France developed a new policy for archaeology in its dependencies in the southern Indian Ocean and a department of the French ministry of culture and communication was created to oversee it. Reunion island was uninhabited before its colonization by the French, and was one of the last places in the world where no organised archaeological research had previously been undertaken. Our research program on the island provided two important discoveries related to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Catherine RIGEADE.

Torcy cemetery is located on the right bank of the River Mahury in Guiana, alongside a row of piles from the Torcy canal. Erosion has exposed both the foundations of a chapel dating from the nineteenth century, and a large part of the associated cemetery. Archival research has shown that between 1845 and early 1848 the church was dedicated to the education and burial of the slave population. Due to the rapid degradation of the ruins, an overall assessment of the site's chapel and cemetery was...