"Jouer sur du velours": Archaeological Evidence of Gaming on Sites of Slavery in the Caribbean and United States

Summary

Hand-carved ceramic discs excavated from historic-period sites across North America and the Caribbean suggest the widespread growth of gaming culture during the third quarter of the 18th century. From Spanish missions and French forts to villages of enslaved people across the British, French, and Spanish colonial domains, people fashioned discs from flat portions of ceramic vessels for use in a variety of games. We begin by exploring the production and use of hand-carved ceramic gaming discs of over 60 sites of slavery in North America and the Caribbean. Significant regional differences in gaming practices are revealed through a fine-grained analysis of disc attributes and a comparison with other manufactured gaming pieces such as dice and dominoes. We then focus on gaming among enslaved laborers in the Caribbean, with a close look at the exceptional assemblage of ceramic gaming discs from the Morne Patate Village on Dominica. Our analysis indicates a preference for refined earthenware vessels within a specific thickness range and decoration that could produce discs with decoration on one side, which could effectively result in "heads" and "tails."

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)   •
• Colonial Consequences: Results from the Archaeological Survey of Colonial Dominica

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Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 17132