Archaeological Excavations at Hacienda La Esperanza, Manatí, Puerto Rico

Author(s): Nydia I. Pontón; Paul Farnsworth

Year: 2015

Summary

Hacienda La Esperanza, a sugar plantation on the north coast of Puerto Rico, was established in the 1830’s by Captain Fernando Fernández, a wealthy merchant and slave trader. Hacienda La Esperanza thrived until the abolition of slavery in 1873. At its height, La Esperanza was the most technologically advanced sugar factory in Puerto Rico and one of the most successful plantations at the semi-mechanized level in the Antilles. It also housed one of the largest enslaved populations in Puerto Rico as documented by the slave census of 1870, which registered 152 enslaved people. The research at Hacienda La Esperanza focuses on the examination of class relations and how these shaped the enslaved people’s experience at the plantation. This paper will report on the results and on-going analysis from three field seasons conducted at the site between 2012 and 2014. The first season evaluated the current condition of the site using ground penetrating radar and documented previous excavations. The second and third seasons tested the results of the GPR survey and excavated in and around structures where the enslaved people of the hacienda lived and worked. Plans for future research at the hacienda will also be presented.

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Cite this Record

Archaeological Excavations at Hacienda La Esperanza, Manatí, Puerto Rico. Paul Farnsworth, Nydia I. Pontón. Presented at The 80th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, San Francisco, California. 2015 ( tDAR id: 397523)

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Keywords

Geographic Keywords
Caribbean

Spatial Coverage

min long: -90.747; min lat: 3.25 ; max long: -48.999; max lat: 27.683 ;