The Comparative Archaeology of Anglo-American Slavery Regimes: Reconsidering the Chesapeake from the Perspective of Bermuda

Summary

Recent comparative scholarship by historians of Anglo-American slavery has emphasized the dynamic relationship between statute law and social practice, particularly as this relationship bears on such issues as economic agency, resistance to enslavement, and collective identity.  This paper revisits selected quarter sites excavated in Tidewater Virginia  in view of the material life of enslaved Bermudians during the eighteenth century.  Recent discoveries at a c. 1720-1860 domestic site in the western parish of Southampton, Bermuda  represent the first meaningful sample of consumer goods owned by enslaved Bermudians. When placed into the context of the island's legal codes of the same period, these materials reveal a distinctive kind of particpation in the consumer revolution, a complex pattern that can provide a new way to interpret consumer practices of enslaved Virginians,  More generally, the Bermuda-Virginia comparsion affords crtical insight into the larger process of creolization potentially.at work within each colony.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• The African Diaspora   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2013

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 443