Afterlives of Slavery on the Post-Emancipation Caribbean Plantation

Archaeologists working in the Caribbean region have explored plantation spaces with a keen eye toward the daily lives of enslaved persons under the brutal and dehumanizing regimes of power of plantation slavery. Sorely overlooked, however, are examinations of plantations with an explicit focus on the post-emancipation period (1834 and after). After the abolition of slavery, the active landscape of the plantation underwent significant changes that deserve careful attention in exploring the formations that continued to affect the lives of those tethered, physically or psychically, to these spaces of former enslavement. Contributors to this session explore different elements of the post-emancipation Caribbean plantation to provide insights into how these agro-industrial spaces continue(d) their dramatic effects on those most familiar with their contours, as well as colonial logics of race, labor, gender, civility, and modernity in the post-slavery era.