Diverse Identities of Plantation Life: Midden excavation on Betty's Hope Plantation

Summary

Betty’s Hope Plantation, on the island of Antigua has been excavated by California State University, Chico, since 2007. The site incorporates a wide-range of diverse use-areas including the Great House, a rum distillery, and slave quarters. Excavations have revealed that every area of the plantation represents a unique community with distinct material culture. In the 2014 season, researchers discovered a midden that appears to have been utilized by two of these diverse plantation communities. The midden, located between the great house and the slave village, was most likely employed by members from both communities. It therefore represents a context that incorporates vastly different cultural expressions and practices on the plantation. Although the Codrington family kept extensive plantation records revealing their elite status and identity they simultaneously overlooked that of the slave population which are limited to the remains found in the midden. This evidence, largely inthe forms of Afro-Antiguan wear indicates those enslaved peoples incorporated their own cultural customs from areas of West Africa. In this poster, I discuss the collective identities on the plantation that are represented through the material culture in this unique midden and how I teased out the cultural expressions of those most underrepresented peoples.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage