Dwelling Practices at the Cabrits Garrison Laborer Village

Summary

Colonial military sites in the Caribbean have traditionally been considered as dominant monuments of European expansion, technology, control, and competition. Missing from these narratives are the diverse communities that came together within the walls of fortifications. At the Cabrits Garrison, Dominica, occupied by the British military between 1763 and 1854, the policy of incorporating enslaved laborers into auxiliary roles and later into soldiers serving in the West India Regiments is a part of the extensive archival record of the site. The dynamics of this changing military labor regime are also evident in spatial and material practices at the household level. This paper compares how administrators in the British Army conceived of domestic areas at the Cabrits Garrison with how they were actually lived in by enslaved and other lower status inhabitants. It relies on archival and archaeological evidence regarding residential quarters occupied by military laborers to document the architectural character of these dwellings as well as their social and cultural content. This household-level analysis provides a vantage point linking Caribbean fortifications to wider trends in the study of enslaved environments throughout the region.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• Built Environments of Enslaved Experience in the Caribbean

Keywords

Spatial Coverage