Landscape of Royalization: An English Military Outpost on Roatán Island, Honduras

Summary

During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the English Crown competed with other European imperial powers for control over the land, labor, and materials of the Caribbean. The English Crown came to view the Caribbean as the geographical hub within which it would be able to obtain key resources and to challenge the rapidly growing power of the Spanish Empire. One of the most contentious ports in the western Caribbean was New Port Royal harbor on Roatán Island, Honduras, because of its strategic location across the Bay of Honduras from the Spanish settlement of Trujillo. In 1742, the settlement of Augusta was established as an outpost of English royalization on Roatán Island. In this paper I utilize the concept of landscape archaeology to explore the spatial organization and artifact assemblages recovered from recent archaeological investigations at Augusta. I argue that Augusta’s function as a military outpost in the Bay Islands dictated the colonists’ use of the landscape and that the daily routines carried out within the spatial layout reflect this overarching goal.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• British Colonial Landscapes of the Outer Caribbean

Keywords

Spatial Coverage