Gazing Upward: New Directions at Betty's Hope Plantation, Antigua, West Indies

Summary

Plantation archaeology in the Caribbean region has been grappling with the complexities of plantation life through studying asymmetrical power relationships, spatial organization, and other important avenues of research. As there is no one "size fits all," this provides an opportunity to explore new approaches and methodologies in plantation research. For my presentation, I propose that Betty’s Hope—a 300-year-old sugar estate located on the island of Antigua—serves as a laboratory to test new methodologies in excavating and interpreting a British colonial site. At Betty’s Hope, we have adopted new technologies and scientific testing to address such questions of sustainability and ecological devastation resulting from monocrop agriculture. Using drone technology, we have been able to explore the landscape from an aerial perspective to further ascertain the scope of imprint on the island landscape. Scientific testing in soil sampling is being conducted to test ideas about ecological devastation, while the use of a Bruker hand-held x-ray analyzer allows us to source locally made coarse earthenwares made by enslaved Africans. Such methodologies, in combination with new theoretical approaches are helping us attempt to understand the many facets of colonial plantation life and its impacts, both short and long term, locally, and regionally.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• New Directions in Historical Archaeology: Theory, Method, and Practice   •
• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage